No textation without representation!

     The Stupid People are feeling their oats again. Evidently fired up by the demagogic right-wing author Brigitte Gabriel, they caused a ruckus at last night's meeting of the Fountain Valley School Board.   
     Read all about it in today’s OC Reg:

Trustees decline to change portrayal of Islam (OC Reg)

     The gist of the story is that Gabriel’s group, “ACT! For America,” has read the text used in Fountain Valley to teach “social studies” to 7th graders—namely, Houghton-Mifflin Harcourts' "World History: Medieval to Early Modern Times.” The book includes a 55-page section about Islamic history.
     Uh-oh.
     ACT!'s complaint is that the book’s treatment of Islam portrays it too dang positively.
     The solution, proposed by an ACT!ual resident: just add some “supplemental materials,” provided by ACT!
     You can just imagine what that stuff is like. ACT! is really down on Islam and A-răbs. More on that in a moment.
     According to the Reg, about one hundred people filled the board room and many spoke passionately in favor of the “supplement” proposal. In the end, however, the board unanimously declined to take action, owing to a lack of authority. After all, the state must authorize all texts, trustees said.
     Yes, the State! Damn them, anyway! No textation without representation! Kill the bastards! Let's start with that guy! String 'im up! Garrrrrrrrrrh!
     Naturally, the board's inevitable decision not to take any action pissed off the ACT!-inspired people in the room, who, um, wanted some kind of action. Is this not a democracy? People groaned and grumbled. Someone farted loudly. Cops had to be brought in to restore order.
     Not all of the speakers were clueless right-wing Neanderthals. One guy reminded the crowd that some of the district’s students are Muslims and that “Muslims have died fighting for this country.”
     Hey yeah! What about that?
     On the other hand, another guy used part of his speaking time to suddenly put hand on heart and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Many in the audience dutifully stood up and followed his goofy example. I guess nobody laughed or snickered when they all got to the “liberty and justice for all” part. I woulda snorted.
     Toward the end of the meeting, the district Superintendent spanked the crowd a bit, suggesting that they had forgotten the “tenets of the … constitution” and our system’s reliance on law and “the appropriate process by which to resolve differences of opinion.”

* * *

     I checked into Ms. Gabriel and her crusade against Islam and Arabs. She’s tapped into the right-wing’s tendency to love Israel, right ‘r wrong, and to paint all Muslims (i.e., A-răbs) with one nasty stereotypicalating brush.
     I came across a couple of her most demagogic and clueless remarks:

“It is not politically correct to say that our Western societies are better than the Muslim Arab societies, but we are, we have been, and we always will be.”

“The difference, my friends, between Israel and the Arab world is the difference between civilization and barbarism.”

—Yeah, that sort of talk will be a big help in our efforts to get along with all those pissed off Muslims in the world.
     I looked up Ms. Gabby's books on Amazon. The blurb on one of ‘em sports this glowing remark from Publishers Weekly: “Her writing is eloquent and her passion tremendous."
     Sounds great!
     But no. It turns out that Ms. Gabriel isn’t into the “context” thing. Here’s what Publishers Weekly actually wrote about her:

With strident confidence, …Gabriel rebukes the American public for being "weak, asleep or careless" in the face of Muslim terrorism. A Christian survivor of the vicious civil war between Lebanese Christians and Muslims in the 1970s, Gabriel leans on her own terrifying experiences to condemn Muslims, without apparent regard for their ethnicity, ideology or historical role. Consistently using the words "Muslim" and "Arab" as if they were interchangeable, she concludes that the U.S. is "facing total destruction" at the hands of people who are uncultured and cruel, and prescribes such solutions as "profile, profile and profile," and banning "hate education" in Islamic institutions. Though her writing is eloquent and her passion tremendous, Gabriel's strict dichotomy between "evil versus goodness" is too extreme to be informative….

Gosh, I’d say that that was a negative review. Wouldn’t you?
     You can learn all you need to know about the woman by watching the following oddly edited chunk of video on YouTube, which includes Ms. Gabriel’s visit to Bill O’Reilly’s show. O’Reilly pits the always-yelling Ms. Gabriel against an always-purring Muslim apologist. The poor guy can hardly purr forth two words before the bullying bulldogging commences.
     Check it out. Or not.