Egad!

From The Week Magazine:

Schools in Nashville have stopped posting honor rolls so as not to hurt the feelings of underachieving students. After several parents complained that the honor rolls were embarrassing, lawyers warned that the school district could be sued under a law that bars schools from releasing academic information without permission. “If there are some children that always make it and others that always don’t make it, there is a very subtle message that is sent,” said one principal. He said that a public honor roll doesn’t “fit my world view of what a school should be.”

NewMexiKen wonders if the “letter” men and women will be forbidden to wear their letter jackets/sweaters to school, too, so that the underachieving jocks won’t have their feelings hurt.

When Freedom Rings Hollow

From the Los Angeles Times, columnist Steve Lopez:

Maria Suarez called me from a jail in San Pedro and said Tuesday she could see harbor boats through the window. After roughly two-thirds of her life in captivity, freedom was close enough to raise her hopes and break her heart at the same time.

Suarez, now 43, legally entered the United States from Mexico at the age of 16, only to be raped and beaten as the teenage sex slave of a man 55 years her elder. She was convicted of killing the monster, despite her claims of innocence, and finally won her parole last month after battling for years.

Now she sits in another prison, awaiting a deportation hearing scheduled for today. Suarez is a permanent legal resident, but not a U.S. citizen, and immigration law says that, with an aggravated felony on her record, she is to be deported.

“Justice,” Suarez said, “is so hard to understand.”

Read the rest of her story.

Dumbing down our past

The Georgia Department of Education recently unveiled a draft of the new high school history curriculum. A Georgia high school history teacher says “the plan will gut the subject.” Read his essay in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Excerpts:

The new curriculum calls for teaching only the period from 1500 to the 21st century. Students will no longer study such figures as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, William the Conqueror or Joan of Arc.

“The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” will not be mentioned. The development of democratic government in Greece and the fall of the Roman Empire will be skipped. Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha and Confucius are not to be found in the new curriculum. Great civilizations like ancient Egypt will no longer merit study, and the concept of feudalism will not be discussed….

In the proposed changes, teachers will spend two or three weeks discussing the foundation of our country, with the remaining time devoted to studying events from 1876 to the present. Gone is any mention of the Louisiana Purchase or Lewis and Clark. There will be no discussion of Indian removal and the Trail of Tears.

Students probably will not be remembering the Alamo; it won’t be a topic of discussion in Georgia’s high schools. Daniel Webster and Henry Clay will be omitted, as well as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and the Underground Railroad.

Search in vain for discussion of the Civil War; that topic is off limits. In a course entitled “American History,” students will not study our most devastating war. There is no mention of Fort Sumter, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee or anything else associated with those years.

The neighboring state phenomenon

NewMexiKen wonders about the conventional wisdom that says politicians should do well in neighboring states because they are known commodities there. The media repeatedly cite this canard. Supposedly Gephardt’s failure in Iowa, for example, doomed him because he was from Missouri next door and therefore should have done well in Iowa. First Kerry’s low numbers in New Hampshire, then his surge to victory, were reported as partially because he was from Massachusetts next door and known to New Hampshire voters.

Isn’t this pretty silly? I live in New Mexico and am relatively informed (20 for 20 on The Week Quiz!). I can name both of my U.S. Senators, of course. And Arizona’s. But I can’t name both of the Senators from the other states that border on New Mexico; in most instances I can’t name either. I sure can’t name more than a couple Representatives (Udall in Colorado comes to mind). I can’t name any of the governors except Arizona’s, and I couldn’t spell her name.

Now admittedly, the states that border New Mexico are larger than the states that border Massachusetts, but I am not sure that means anything. While some New Hampshire residents may read The Boston Globe, I doubt that many do. I suspect that most residents of New Hampshire watch local news on New Hampshire TV stations, not the Boston stations. Would anyone in Iowa read a Missouri newspaper regularly? Would they watch St. Louis or Kansas City TV?

I concede that a politician may do well regionally (Edwards in the south, for example — perhaps). I think that is not because they are better known in neighboring states, however, but because their home region is part of their image. Some voters indeed may identify with the homies.

But that is not what the media is saying when they say Gephardt should have done well in Iowa because he is from nearby Missouri.

Reuters/MSNBC/Zogby poll

News report from The Washington Post Friday morning.

The poll found Kerry at 45 percent in Missouri. Edwards, the senator from North Carolina, was the only other candidate to hit double digits at 11 percent. Dean, the former Vermont governor, was at 9 percent, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut was at 4 percent, Clark at 3 percent, civil rights activist Al Sharpton at 2 percent and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio at 1 percent.

In Arizona, Kerry had a huge 38 percent to 17 percent lead over Clark, the retired general and former NATO commander, with Dean at 12 percent, Edwards and Lieberman 6 percent, Kucinich 2 percent and Sharpton 1 percent.

In South Carolina, the first primary in the South and the first contest where a large number of black voters are expected to participate, Kerry has pulled into a virtual tie with Edwards. Edwards, who has said he must win in South Carolina to continue his campaign, leads Kerry 25 percent to 24 percent, with Dean at 9 percent, Clark at 8 percent and Lieberman and Sharpton at 5 percent.

Clark was leading Kerry in Oklahoma 27 percent to 19 percent, with Edwards right behind at 17 percent, Dean at 9 percent, Lieberman at 5 percent and Sharpton and Kucinich at 1 percent.

[Excerpts with bold added by New MexiKen]

The Week Quiz

NewMexiKen got 10 correct out of 10 again. That’s two weeks in a row. That’s 20 correct out of 20! Take The Week Quiz.

Thieves in Santa Fe

A series of thefts of art has infected Santa Fe. Read report on the most recent stolen painting (depicted below) in the Santa Fe New Mexican.

Police don’t have a suspect, and Johnson said it’s too early to say whether the theft might be connected to other prominent thefts in the past two months, such as the taking of two Georgia O’Keeffe paintings from downtown museums. A Canyon Road gallery had a $30,000 Indian pueblo bowl stolen in late December or early January, and last week a burglar stole a $1,200 14th-century African sculpture from a Cerrillos Road gallery….

A $500,000 O’Keeffe painting, taken from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, was recovered, and former security guard William Crumpton was charged in the case. No arrests have been made in an earlier theft of an O’Keeffe valued at $500,000 to $1 million from the Museum of Fine Arts, and the painting hasn’t been found.

The Lone Ranger rides again

The radio program The Lone Ranger debuted on WXYZ radio, Detroit, on this date in 1933. The show became so popular it was one of the reasons why several stations linked together to share programming on what became the Mutual Broadcasting System.

Several characteristics were unique and central to the premise of this western, and the initial episode which explained the legend was occasionally repeated so young viewers would under-stand how the hero gained his name and why he wore a mask. The Lone Ranger was one of six Texas Rangers who were ambushed while chasing a gang of outlaws led by Butch Cavendish. After the battle, one “lone ranger” survived, and was discovered by Tonto, a Native American who recognized the survivor as John Reid, the man who had saved his life earlier. Tonto thereafter referred to the ranger as “kemo sabe,” which is translated as “trusty scout.” After Tonto helped him regain his strength, the ranger vowed to hide his identity from Cavendish and to dedicate his life to “making the West a decent place to live.” He and Tonto dug an extra grave to fool Cavendish into believing all six rangers had died, and the ranger donned a mask to protect his identity as the single surviving ranger. Only Tonto knows who he is … the Lone Ranger. After he and Tonto saved a silver-white stallion from being gored by a buffalo, they nursed the horse back to health and set him free. The horse followed them and the Lone Ranger decided to adopt him and give him the name Silver. Shortly thereafter, the Lone Ranger and Tonto encountered a man who, it turns out, has been set up to take the blame for murders committed by Cavendish. They established him as caretaker in an abandoned silver mine, where he produced silver bullets for the Lone Ranger. Even after the Cavendish gang was captured, the Lone Ranger decided to keep his identity a secret. Near the end of this and many future episodes, someone asks about the identity of the masked man. The typical response: “I don’t rightly know his real name, but I’ve heard him called… the Lone Ranger.”
– From the Encylopedia of Television

The show remained on radio for 23 years.

“A fiery horse with the speed of light! A cloud of dust and a hearty ‘Hi-Yo, Silver!’ The Lone Ranger!”

Gene Hackman…

is 74 today. He was born on this date in 1930.

Franklin D. Roosevelt…

was born on this date in 1882.

First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.