So, let me get this right: It’s not OK for Livingston County’s youngsters to be anywhere near a ticketed, adults-only Drag Queen Bingo event; however, it IS OK for the local GOP to mail information it says is porn to Hartland homes in which it’s safe to assume a kid or two lives.
Confused? You’re not alone.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Drag Queen Bingo brouhaha created by Meghan Reckling, acting as the chair of the Livingston County Republican Party, click here for all our coverage.
The mailing, paid for the the Livingston County Republican Party, is in support of the Clean Slate Team of Michelle Blondeel, Glenn Gogoleski, Greg Keller, and Bob Merwin. These candidates for the Hartland Consolidated Schools Board of Education, with the focus of “Education, not Indoctrination,” OK’d a Livingston GOP mailing that steers readers to a website with excerpts from some books it finds unsuitable for a school library, content it deems pornographic.
I pass no judgment on whether the books are pornographic or not; I write this to point out the extreme craziness of this culture war mailing, sent out by the Livingston County Republican Party, for a non-partisan school board race.
Now, I can choose whether or not to attend a ticketed, adults-only Drag Queen Bingo event, one at which there would be no one under the age of 21. It would have been my decision. But the Livingston County Republican Party — through its chairperson — raised such a fuss that Howell officials blinked, backed down and cancelled the event. The local GOP didn’t want me to make my own decision about Drag Queen Bingo; it thought it knew best for us all.
I can also choose whether or not to read certain books, as can anyone in any library. Realize that none of the books the Livingston County Republicans and the extremist Clean Slate folks say are inappropriate in the mailing are required reading. Both groups want to decide for us all what’s best for kids to read.
And here voters are, with absolutely no control over what lands in their mailbox, and absolutely no control over what the Livingston County GOP sends them. They have to at least glance at what’s been delivered when they fetch their mail. Now, I might be the kind of person who finds this mailing offensive; I might be the kind of person who finds it hypocritical; I may welcome the message that it contains; I may love porn. But it really doesn’t matter because I HAVE to look at it. The Livingston County GOP and the Clean Slate folks don’t give me a choice, which is, I am sure, the purpose of this mailing.
I’ll bet that with so many working parents in Livingston County, there are a lot of kids fetching the mail before mom and/or dad gets home. Won’t inquiring young minds want to read the mailing that screams at them to look away? And which kids with internet won’t click on over to the website on the mailing, even though the local GOP says the content it has posted there is totally unsuitable for them?
I give local GOP and the Clean Slate Team big points for hypocrisy.
While I ask why the Livingston County Republican Party is so against people making up their own minds about stuff, and why it feels it alone should be the arbiter of what we can read, I have to question the decision-making wisdom of the Clean Slate Team, running for school board while putting into the homes and hands of kids a mailing featuring content they themselves believe is pornographic, so pornographic that they use it as a campaign cudgel.
Oh, if only culture wars could raise test scores.
If you’d like to see the GOP mailing, click here and here.
