We seem to have hit some sort of “Twilight Zone.” Over the weekend, there was a report from a school in Florida where the Principal retired because of a parent’s complaint that children were exposed to photographs of the statue of David as part of an art class. It seems that the “parent” was aghast that their children would be exposed to a statue of a naked man with his hangy-down parts showing. It’s just nuts!

The wags have been having a bit of fun about this outrage, dressing the statue in dresses (uh-oh… Drag!) or covering the offending parts in (among other things) a map of Florida and an AK-40. There was even a drawing of God handing Adam a pair of underwear in the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (Tighty-Whities. Boxers are out because you might be able to see Adam’s hangy-down parts through a gap which “lets your business breathe”)!

Apparently, the state of Florida allows even a single parent to have something removed from the classroom if they object to it. Lessons about the struggle for Civil Rights? Gone. Books about the hardships of Slavery – “Who says it was that bad?” The list is endless as it keeps growing by the day. And it’s likely to get worse before it gets better, especially since anyone with any objection will be taken seriously.

Had this nonsense been in place when I was in elementary school, my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Gillahan, would have been fired on several different occasions. Like, when she talked about milking a cow and pulling on the cow’s teats (pronouncing it “Tits.”) When the inevitable laughs came from the boys in the room, she went into her “Don’t fool around on me, I’m serious” mode, staring us down and smacking a ruler across her desk as a warning as to what may happen if we continued. Or, there was the time when she excused the girls while the boys in the room were given a clinical description of what was involved in circumcision.

You could have heard a pin drop.

To her credit, Mrs. Gillahan was the product of a different age. She was likely older then than, say, Willie Nelson is today. She may still be around. I wouldn’t put it past her. But she couldn’t teach school in Florida.

Back to Florida – I read an essay recently about a trend where opinion becomes the truth. The gist of the article was that there are certain groups of people who listen to opinions that are taught as truth. Anything not aligning with what is being taught as truth is automatically condemned as part of some sort of “Culture War” being waged against what is (inaccurately called) the Silent Majority.

It’s more like a vocal minority that the state of Florida (among others) is allowing to run things. It’s one thing for a parent to object to what his or her child is exposed to – It’s quite another for a parent to be able to keep all children from being exposed to something that one parent objects to.

Nuff Said