These culture war salvos were intended to advance the GOP efforts to eviscerate public education by invoking the sanctity of parents’ rights to decide what their children learn. senator, but if I ever saw a face that might - hypothetically, figuratively, fantastically, in a fevered dream sort of way - invite a smack or two, it would be Ted Cruz’s hirsute and oleaginous mug. I don’t condone violence, especially against a U.S. CRT is not in schools (although much-needed diversity and inclusion work is) and the relentless attacks were the worst kind of pandering to the GOP’s racist base. Jackson’s sentences were well within the judicial mainstream. The Grand Old Proselytizers focused their disrespectful attacks primarily on two imaginary issues: Jackson’s supposed tolerance for child pornography and her attitude toward Critical Race Theory (CRT) and inappropriate sex talk and gay indoctrination in America’s schools.Īs to the child porn, I couldn’t help but wonder if Graham, Cruz, Hawley and others protesteth a bit too mucheth. However deep my discomfort with yet another demonstration of our quasi-theocracy, things went downhill from there. Precisely what part of the constitutional prohibition of any “religious test” for office does Graham not grasp? Neither Jackson (understandably) nor any member of the committee objected. Lindsay Graham asked her, “What faith are you?” followed by a request to “rate” the power of her faith on a scale of 1-10. While Judge Jackson comported herself admirably, I wish she had not felt it necessary to explicitly refer to religion in her opening statement: “And while I am on the subject of gratitude, I must also pause to reaffirm my thanks to God, for it is faith that sustains me at this moment.”ĭespite this unnecessary reaffirmation of her faith, Sen. The Judiciary Committee hearings were pretty awful from start to finish.
Smith had gone to Washington, where a few Republican senators might have benefited from a smack in response to their dismal, racist, disingenuous, gratuitous attacks on a Black woman: Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. Quite ironically, many a Black man has been incarcerated for a lesser offense - like taking a toke instead of not taking a joke.
While a very few, including New York Times columnist Roxane Gay, defended the “slap heard round the world,” most folks properly criticized the act as indefensible. Will Smith’s impulsive smacking of Chris Rock at the Oscars has gotten more media coverage than the movies themselves.