Vito Perrone was looking forward to returning to Easthamption.
He was a school principal there, he had coached football there. He was even willing to take a $14,000 a year pay cut to return to the city as school superintendent and was offered the job.
Apparently when he sent them an email concerning the position he referred to the women he addressed his letter to as “Ladies” and they had a conniption fit claiming a “microagression”.
Kwiecinski responded to Perrone saying that his use of “ladies” was “hostile and derogatory,” and that “the fact that he didn’t know that as an educator was a problem.” She also added that the term “ladies” was a “microaggression.”
And just like that the job offer was gone and he remains where he is.
Talk about catching a break! Could you imagine being stuck in that school system for three years with clowns like that as your bosses?
My congratulations to Mr. Perrone and my deepest sympathies to the parents of the Easthamption school district who voted for this school committee and whose kids are apparently getting the education they voted for.
The left has a new mantra. Well, they always have a new one. And their newest mantra is, “The right doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘woke.'”
As far as I can gather, the earliest use of “woke” was by African American musician Lead Belly, who added “stay woke” in an afterword of his recording of “Scottsboro Boys,” which was about the injustices faced by nine black youths accused of raping two white women in 1931.
But words often change meanings. For instance, centuries ago “garble” meant “to sift.” In the spice trade “garbling” was the process of removing impurities from spices. Over time, “garble” evolved into meaning confusing, unclear, and yes, impure. For instance, someone might say, “I couldn’t understand the voicemail message you left for me, it was garbled.”
The definition of woke has similarly evolved. It appears woke made a reappearance in the public dialogue in 2016 after the police shooting of Michael Brown in 2016, but by 2020, conservatives had adopted and co-opted the word. People who are woke–this is my take–are rigidly beholden to far-left political beliefs and they will use mob action to enforce their viewpoints.
“Politically correct,” a term that emerged from the left, was similarly co-opted by the right, so liberals dropped it years ago.
The word woke is a much more serious problem for the left, which is why libs, in a futile effort, are trying to reclaim it, or at least neutralize its meaning. After all, woke is an unpleasant word with only four letters and just one syllable, it is better suited for our contemporary sound bite and pithy headline culture, compared to the more cumbersome “politically correct.” Over the past week leftist journalists, an intellectually incestuous lot, pushed back. An opening to them was given by Bethany Mandel, the co-author of the best seller Stolen Youth, which is about the dangers of woke culture. Last week, in an interview captured on video–one that went viral–Mandel suffered, in her words, “a momentary brain freeze,” and she wasn’t able to clearly answer a question about the definition of woke.
But shortly afterwards on Twitter, Mandel was able to clarify what woke means.
“A radical belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination,” Mandel Tweeted last week, “and claiming that all disparity is a result of that discrimination. It seeks a radical redefinition of society in which equality of group result is the endpoint, enforced by an angry mob.”
A radical belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination, and claiming that all disparity is a result of that discrimination. It seeks a radical redefinition of society in which equality of group result is the endpoint, enforced by an angry mob.
Just now, as I was finishing up this entry, I watched as Jen Psaki, in the premiere airing of her MSNBC show declare, “Republicans have gone all-in on their anti-wokeness.” Psaki, a smug know-it-all, then presented a one-sided view of Mandel’s “momentary brain freeze.”
All but admitting defeat in the word war, Matthew Cooper in Washington Monthly says the word needs to be disposed. The headline of his article is, “Let’s retire the word ‘woke.'”
Too late!
The legacy media is up woke creek without a paddle.
This month two woke mobs attacked in California. The Federalist Society invited a US Appeals judge, Kyle Duncan, who was appointed to the bench by Donald Trump, to speak at the Stanford Law School. Only the mob, the led by the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusivity dean, Tirien Steinbach, all but prevented the judge from speaking. Diversity to the left hasn’t meant diversity of opinion for years.
In my opinion, outside of the ten percent or so of the populace who is indeed woke, no one can argue that such boorish antics are justifiable.
As is also the case of the second California campus woke outburst, when Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk spoke at the University California, Davis. “Black-clad goons” goons is how the Daily Mail described the protesters who pepper-sprayed attendees and smashed windows at the hall where Kirk spoke.
Kirk’s UC Davis address is available in podcast form. Unlike Duncan, Charlie was permitted to speak. And in his opening remarks, Kirk vowed, “Tonight, you’re going to see that anyone who disagrees with me tonight is not just allowed–but is encouraged to go ask [me] a question.” Kirk even called for his dissenters to head to “the front of the line.”
Now, that’s what I call diversity.
Those leftist protesters–I believe it’s fair to call them rioters–were probably egged on by a woke Sacramento Bee opinion columnist, Hannah Holzer, who, in a since retracted claim, said Kirk “called for the lynching of trans people.” In his remarks that evening at UC Davis, Kirk responded, “That is a lie. I have never done that,” adding, I’ve always been clear about peaceful activism.”
Charlie Kirk responds to Sacramento Bee for saying he has “called for the lynching of trans people.”
“That is a lie. I have never done that … I’ve always been clear about peaceful activism.”
The unpeaceful ones that night at UC Davis were the members of the woke mob.
The great majority of Americans don’t have politics on the top of their informational diet. But this truly silent majority, the ones who decide the outcome of elections, is aware of the evils of leftist violence, intimidation, misinformation and censorship. And now there is an ugly word for that and more that is now entrenched in the mainstream conversation.
“Woke” is that word.
To my conservative writers and influencers: The other side has betrayed a weakness and a fear. They hate it when we say “woke” to decry radical policies and angry leftist mobs. What is worse than “woke?” Well, those odious things that the word describes, such as the recent outrages at Stanford and UC Davis.
You know for an awful long time we’ve been told that
Critical Race Theory is not being taught and those who say it is are lying
Governor DeSantis is banning books
Now suddenly we see this from the NYT:
Look at that headline and opening lede. Instead of screaming “Book Banning” you see an acknowledgement of CRT in the course and that topics dear to the left were in fact an option.
In January, Governor DeSantis of Florida, who is expected to run for president, announced he would ban the curriculum, citing the draft version. State education officials said it was not historically accurate and violated state law that regulates how race-related issues are taught in public schools.
The attack on the A.P. course turned out to be the prelude to a much larger agenda. On Tuesday, Governor DeSantis unveiled a proposal to overhaul higher education that would eliminate what he called “ideological conformity” by among other things, mandating courses in Western civilization.
In another red flag, the College Board faced the possibility of other opposition: more than two dozen states have adopted some sort of measure against critical race theory, according to a tracking project by the University of California, Los Angeles, law school.
Fighting Back against the left’s agenda works!. Who knew? The left did, that’s why they do all they can to demoralize us.
America’s worst big city mayor, Lori Lightfoot of Chicago, finds herself in trouble again.
Last week, Chicago’s PBS station, WTTW, reported that Lightfoot’s deputy campaign manager, Megan Crane, sent an email to Chicago Public Schools teachers and City Colleges of Chicago instructors, telling them the campaign was seeking students to volunteer as “externs” for Lightfoot’s reelection effort. “Lightfoot for Chicago is seeking resumes from any volunteer interested in campaign politics and eager to gain experience in the field,” the email read. Later in that message comes a quasi-bribe, “Externs are expected to devote 12hrs/wk to the campaign. Students are eligible to earn class credit through our volunteer program.”
When the email became public, the campaign quickly defended its call for volunteers, avowing in a statement that the request was done “to provide young people with the opportunity to engage with our campaign, learn more about the importance of civic engagement and participate in the most American of processes.”
But in a second statement, the campaign said it would “cease contact with CPS employees” citing an “abundance of caution.”
Finally, a couple of hours later, in a third statement, they finally surrendered. “All campaign staff have been reminded about the solid wall that must exist between campaign and official activities and that contacts with any city of Chicago, or other sister agency employees, including CPS employees,” the campaign said, “even through publicly available sources is off limits. Period.”
Last summer, after Willie Wilson, a gadfly candidate who is running for mayor, gathered a lot of attention for gasoline and grocery giveaways, Lightfoot followed suit with her giveaways. But unlike Wilson’s generosity, the mayor’s handouts were paid for by taxpayers.
Laura Washington, a liberal Chicago Tribune columnist, had this to say back in August in a behind-the-paywall op-ed:
Thanks to an “avalanche” of federal stimulus funds, Lightfoot is “running for reelection armed with a seemingly bottomless gift bag of giveaways that includes everything from gas cards, Ventra cards, bicycles, locks and helmets to more than $1,000-per-household in rebates to defray the cost of security cameras, outdoor motion sensor lighting, cloud storage and GPS trackers to hunt down vehicles in the event of an auto theft or carjacking,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported in June.
Lightfoot’s “Chicago Moves,” is the city’s $12 million transit response to skyrocketing fuel costs and inflation. It will distribute up to 50,000 prepaid $150 gas cards and 100,000 prepaid $50 transit cards to Chicago residents.
Earlier this year, Lightfoot pushed through a controversial guaranteed income program for low-income families. The pilot program will provide no-strings-attached $500 payments to 5,000 Chicago families per month for a year. The recipients were chosen through a lottery system.
“By coincidence,” Fox Chicago’s Mike Flannery sarcastically opined this morning on his Flannery Fired Up program, “each [gas and public transit] card had Mayor Lighfoot’s name emblazoned right on it.”
The ACLU of Illinois forcefully condemned the campaign’s call for student volunteers. “It is striking that Mayor Lightfoot presented herself four years ago as a candidate who would eschew the old corrupt patronage ways of Chicago politics,” the ACLU of Illinois said in a statement, “Now her campaign employs practices that harken back to the worst days of the Chicago political machine.”
Mayor Lightfoot campaign emailed CPS teachers to urge them to offer extra credit to students as an incentive to volunteer on the Mayor’s re-election campaign. This was inappropriately coercive and raises First Amendment concerns.
Crime has skyrocketed since Lightfoot took office. And it shouldn’t surprise you that Chicago’s population is declining. “The city is dying,” former Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass has said at least a couple of times in his Chicago Way podcast.
Lightfoot faces eight opponents in next month’s first round of voting for mayor. In the likely scenario that no candidate achieves a majority in the initial round, the top two candidates face the voters again in April.
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