I remember how it was -- JR
Rep. Stefanik Reacts After Harvard Kicks Her Off Senior Advisory Committee
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) says she is proud to join a growing list of conservatives who have been banned or shunned by college campuses. On Tuesday, the Harvard Kennedy School informed the conservative lawmaker that they have decided to boot her from the school's Senior Advisory Committee for what they referred to as her baseless claims of voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election. Stefanik was in Harvard College's class of 2006 and has been mentoring students ever since.
In a message to the Senior Advisory Committee of the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School, Dean Doug Elmendorf explained his decision to kick Stefanik off the panel. He added that he was still "grateful for her long and committed service."
Following this consideration, I spoke with Elise and asked her to step aside from the Senior Advisory Committee. My request was not about political parties, political ideology, or her choice of candidate for president. Rather, in my assessment, Elise has made public assertions about voter fraud in November’s presidential election that have no basis in evidence, and she has made public statements about court actions related to the election that are incorrect. Moreover, these assertions and statements do not reflect policy disagreements but bear on the foundations of the electoral process through which this country’s leaders are chosen.
In their conversation, Rep. Stefanik refused to resign, and so Elmendorf told her he would remove her from the panel himself.
"The decision by Harvard's administration to cower and cave to the woke Left will continue to erode diversity of thought, public discourse, and ultimately the student experience," Stefanik writes in a blunt new statement.
"The Ivory Tower's march toward a monoculture of like-minded, intolerant liberal views demonstrates the sneering disdain for everyday Americans and will instill a culture of fear for students who will understand that a conservative viewpoint will not be tolerated and will be silenced," she said of the school.
With her expulsion, Stefanik added that congratulations are in order for the Senior Advisory Committee, which is now composed solely of "Joe Biden voters."
Stefanik was one of several Republican lawmakers who still followed through on their plans to object to last week's electoral college certification, despite the violence that occurred in the Capitol following a Trump rally. She has since fielded demands for her resignation.
"They have the right to those opinions, and they also have the constitutional right to speak out,” Stefanik told her critics. “President-Elect Biden was certified, but that debate was important for the American people to hear.”
Is the Wisdom of Homer Immune to Cancel Culture?
Amid the current hysteria of toppling statues and renaming things, we keep mindlessly expanding the cancel culture.
We are now seeing efforts to ban classics of Western and American literature. These hallowed texts are suddenly being declared racist or sexist by preening moralists.
Or, as one Massachusetts high school teacher recently boasted on social media, “Very proud to say we got the Odyssey removed from the curriculum this year!”
Proud?
Over 20 years ago, John Heath and I co-authored “Who Killed Homer?” We warned that that faddish postmodernist race, class, and gender theories—coupled with narrow academic specialization—was killing the formal discipline of classics in universities.
We worried that without custodians, the appeal of the great literature of Greece and Rome might wane in high schools as well. And it apparently has.
But why should we still read classics such as Homer’s “Odyssey” in the first place?
Classics teach us about the great challenges of the human experience—growing up, learning from adversity, never giving up, and tragically accepting that we are often at the mercy of forces larger than ourselves. All of these trials are themes of “Odyssey.”
Sometimes, Odysseus needs more than brains and brawn—like luck and divine help. How does the old Odysseus, after 10 years of wandering to get home to Ithaca, differ from his younger heroic self on the battlefield at Troy? What old skills and what new ones allow him to defeat the human and inhuman forces of the universe that try to stop his return home?
Great Western literature also questions, or even undermines, the very landscape it creates. Why is Athena, the tough female god, so much more astute than male Olympians like the touchy braggart Poseidon?
How does a supposedly docile, wifely Penelope outsmart the purportedly best and brightest male suitors on Ithaca?
Why are slaves such as poor Eumaeus more generous, loyal, and savvy than the free and rich? “Odyssey” does not just present the so-called white patriarchy; it simultaneously questions it.
Homer also offers archetypes and points of lasting reference—not just for future literary creation, but for all of us as we mature and age, and as we seek examples to warn or encourage us.
The undaunted spirt of Odysseus, the threats to his return, and the skills needed to overcome those threats become models for subsequent masterpieces, from James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and Constantine Cavafy’s “Ithaca” to Stanley Kubrick’s film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows,” and the Coen brothers’ film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?
When we worry about the fragility of civilization, imagine the creepy dystopia on the island of the Cyclopes. And if we act like greedy pigs, then perhaps we will be turned into them—in the manner sorceress Circe did to the crew of Odysseus.
Great artists do not just craft great stories. They also do so in great fashion. Homer’s epic poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey” were composed orally in a dactylic hexameter, a meter that offers melodic enrichment of the narrative and dialogue
The epics’ often archaic vocabulary, formulaic style, and rich metaphors and similes remind us how artistic skills are force multipliers of plot and characterization.
Homer may be the first poet of Western literature, but he offers us a masterful tutorial in the art of using flashbacks, unintended consequences, incognito characters, and mistaken identity.
Great works of literature such as “Odyssey,” Virgil’s “Aeneid,” the Bible, and Dante’s “Inferno” offer lasting cultural referents that enrich the very way we speak and think. When we do not know the names of people, places, and things from “Odyssey” like the Olympians, Trojan horse, Calypso, Hades, Scylla, and Charybdis, then we have little foundation for understanding the logic and language of much of the present world.
Finally, from classic literature we learn values, both reassuring and troubling. Remember the fate of the goatherd Melanthius and the suitor Antinous. Arrogant bullies like these two do not end up well in “Odyssey.” But the humble and kind usually do.
For Homer, loyalty, responsibility, courage, and keeping a clear head are not optional, but rather lifesaving virtues. Odysseus possesses them and thus makes it home despite losing his crew.
Yet in the pre-Christian pagan world of early Greece, morality is also defined as hurting enemies and helping friends, not turning the other cheek.
Hubris begets divine retribution, not Sermon on the Mount forgiveness of one’s sins. But to appreciate the values of the New Testament requires knowing a few of the more brutal tenets it sought to replace.
Our current cultural crisis is not from reading too much, but from not reading much of anything at all. Most of the people who deface monuments and wreck statues know almost nothing about the targets of their furor.
Canceling Homer is not virtue-signaling. It is broadcasting ignorance.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/01/11/is-the-wisdom-of-homer-immune-to-cancel-culture
How COVID, Masks, and Disinfectant Got a Florida Teacher Slapped With Child Abuse ChargesFlorida. It’s the state that keeps on giving concerning crazy people ending up in the news. It’s a real gem of a state. I mean that sincerely. I like Florida a lot. But when it comes to COVID and mask-wearing, one teacher in Pinellas County took things a bit too far. The state has pretty much re-opened. That might make some people more uneasy. Whatever the case, what this teacher did to a few students who weren’t wearing their masks properly got her arrested and slapped with child abuse charges. Someone should tell this person that in this country, spraying disinfectant on someone else’s face is dangerous, illegal, and potentially lethal. It’s an assault (via The Blaze):
According to the Largo Police Department, Reszetar became aggressive because four students refused to wear their face masks properly in the classroom. Reszetar, an Exceptional Student Education math teacher, allegedly sprayed aerosol disinfectant into the faces and bodies of the students.
Reszetar was escorted from the Largo High School, located in a suburb of Tampa, and booked into the Pinellas County jail on Wednesday. She was charged with four counts of felony child abuse with great bodily harm.
[…]
"I think I can fairly characterize this as a severely misguided attempt at discipline," the judge said in court…
The incident was reportedly captured on surveillance video, but police have not released a copy of the footage. Reszetar said in court that the video would show the allegations are not true.
[…]
Reszetar was released from Pinellas County Jail on Thursday night on her own recognizance. Since the teacher had no serious prior record, the judge released her from jail without bond. A Pinellas County School District spokeswoman said Reszetar is still employed with the school district.
The Blaze added that Reszatar told the judge she couldn’t afford a lawyer on her salary. She was released from county jail without bond due to no prior criminal record.
Everyone needs to relax. If anything over the past three years has shown us that the media is terrible at their jobs, they will highlight the rarest of COVID incidents to drive panic, and in the end—the information will be wrong. We were told not to wear masks, and then said it was mandatory to wear them.
Also, it helps stop the spread, only to have that claim blown up by a new study from Denmark. Also, California has had 1 million new COVID cases in six weeks. If it weren’t for California, national COVID cases would be decreasing. The point is the state has a mandatory mask ordinance with near-universal compliance. Masks don’t appear to be working, and this was The New York Times that reported on the story.
Surface touching doesn’t appear to be a main source of transmission either. In New York, a state hit hard by COVID, bars and restaurants contributed to just 1.4 percent of COVID spread. What about the gym, hair salons, and barbershops? They contributed to a whopping 1 percent. They’re all low-risk areas, but also the businesses being crushed by the boot of the state with the lockdown regimes.
Schools, where this Lysol incident occurred, are not sources of so-called super spread. Kids don’t get it and they don’t spread it. They’re low risk. How do we know this? They’re not in the first wave of vaccinations. For those who are still queasy about re-opening schools, push for kids to get vaccinated first. That won’t happen. Why? Because kids are a low-risk group. You’re seeing this merry-go-round of idiocy, right?
And now COVID panic slapped her with child abuse charges. I blame the media for shoveling this nonstop for a year now. I’ll also say that for a medical expert community that has oftentimes acted more like Democratic operatives; this is where the pediatricians sere right from the start: it is safe to re-open schools.
It’s the teacher’s unions who are gumming up the works. It’s almost as if these public-sector unions are extensions of the national Democratic Party. Oh right, they are—and they rather not work and prevent kids from getting an education.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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