Politickles

Back in the summer of 1991, I began writing news articles for Phyllis Schlafly’s Education Reporter. As I learned more and more about the preposterous programs and policies to which public school students all across America were being subjected, I realized that the journalistic exposé was insufficient to capture their absurdity and that satire was what was called for. I’d written limericks for years, just for the fun of it, and decided to adapt this light-verse form to my purpose.

In my first “blackboard jingle,” I poked fun at the disingenuity of sex-ed instructors who pretend to offer “balance” by combining prophylactic and abstinence perspectives:

MIXED MESSAGE
When a boy and a girl have a date
And it looks like he’ll get to homeplate,
They must have protection
To ward off infection,
Though it’s better, of course, if they wait.

I devoted a second limerick to drug-education instructors who offer similarly ambiguous advice:

JUST SAY NO?
Today we discovered the thrills
Of powders, potations, and pills.
Our teacher gave plugs
For all sorts of drugs –
To test our assertiveness skills.

As it happened, 1991 was also the year when George Bush, Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, and miscellaneous unmemorable others were gearing up for the next presidential election. There was quite a lot of confusion as to why Perot was even in the race, so I took it upon myself to offer an explanation:

PEROTS & CONS
“Perhaps some of you are at a loss
Why I want to be President Ross.
It’s simple, you see:
It’s better for me
If I am the one who is boss!”

Another limerick was inspired by a longstanding pet peeve of mine, the boneheaded practice of television anchormen “explaining” to their viewers what they and the viewers have both just seen together:

INSTANT ANALYSIS
Jennings, Rather, Brokaw
Seem determined to jabber and jaw.
They think we’re too dumb
To discern the outcome
Of the campaign debate we just saw.

The problem with limericks is that they tend to become addictive. Once you start writing them, it’s hard to stop. Over the last 20 years I’ve churned out hundreds of these political limericks (politickles) and have distributed them on a weekly basis to email subscribers (subscribe [at] politickles.com). Politickles, Limericks Lampooning the Lunatic Left, published in 2000, contains only a small sample. The rest can be found in my online archives at politickles.com.

Politickles are the verbal equivalent of editorial cartoons. They make a point quickly, forcefully, humorously. Like editorial cartoons, they’re ideal for energizing allies or demoralizing opponents. So, please, take advantage of them. Feel free to publish, post, or pass on “Your Weekly Politickle,” and encourage your likeminded friends and relatives to subscribe.

All three of the essays excerpted below were recently reprinted in Phyllis Schlafly’s Education Reporter.

Judged by all the billions of dollars now flowing into “education reform,” it appears that Washington, and especially the Obama administration, is obsessed with improving academic achievement. The billions are certainly real enough, but the intent is just the opposite. Rhetoric aside, the Obama administration, like Bush II’s before it, is profoundly opposed to brainpower. Our “commitment” to academic excellence is a cruel joke — we love stupidity and hate smart kids. Tellingly, not even “conservatives” who bemoan America’s educational decline will admit this awkward reality — they, too, are passengers on this reform gravy train heading to the bottom. – Robert Weissberg, “The War on Academic Achievement”

To sum up, we have little to show for the $2 trillion in federal education spending of the past half century. In the face of concerted and unflagging efforts by Congress and the states, public schooling has suffered a massive productivity collapse — it now costs three times as much to provide essentially the same education as we provided in 1970.

Grim as that picture may seem, it fails to capture the full measure of the problem. Because as productivity was falling relentlessly in education, it was rising everywhere else. – Andrew J. Coulson, “The Impact of Federal Involvement in America’s Classrooms”

In the 1960s, America’s education schools began conditioning teachers to peddle impossible social and economic theories to captive human sponges in K-12 classrooms. Since then, teachers taken in by progressive indoctrination have been planting fallacies in students’ minds using a pernicious device: the “deconstruction” of reality.

Deconstruction aims to disassemble traditional Western culture and replace that culture with a collectivist utopia operated under rules set by the deconstructors. – Chuck Rogér, “The Toxic Influence of Progressive Education on K-12 Curricula”

In the 1990s, I wrote articles for Phyllis Schlafly’s Education Reporter about the outrageous things going on in American public schools. I talked to mothers all over the country whose children had been subjected to various kinds of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of teachers and administrators. I ended most of my interviews by asking the mother if she planned to take her traumatized child out of the public school system. Not one of them did. Which raised the question, What would it take — what horrible thing would have to happen to a child — for an ostensibly loving parent to choose the obvious remedy?

This book gives me an eerie sense of deja vu. For the past 50 years or more, the Democratic Party has promoted abortion, contraception, pornography, perversion of every kind, the socialization of our economy, the regimentation of our citizens, the hollowing out of our defense and intelligence agencies, etc. My parents, lifelong Catholic Democrats, left the Party in disgust in 1972 — as did thousands of others. How to explain the thousands who have remained? What will it take to make them leave?

How it all began

Back in the summer of 1991, I began writing news articles for Phyllis Schlafly’s Education Reporter. As I learned more and more about the preposterous programs and policies to which public school students all across America were being subjected, I realized that the journalistic exposé was insufficient to capture their absurdity and that satire was what was called for. I’d written limericks for years, just for the fun of it, and decided to adapt this light-verse form to my purpose.

In my first “blackboard jingle,” I poked fun at the disingenuity of sex-ed instructors who pretend to offer “balance” by combining prophylactic and abstinence perspectives:

MIXED MESSAGE
When a boy and a girl have a date
And it looks like he’ll get to homeplate,
They must have protection
To ward off infection,
Though it’s better, of course, if they wait.

I devoted a second limerick to drug-education instructors who offer similarly ambiguous advice:

JUST SAY NO?
Today we discovered the thrills
Of powders, potations, and pills.
Our teacher gave plugs
For all sorts of drugs –
To test our assertiveness skills.

As it happened, 1991 was also the year when George Bush, Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, and miscellaneous unmemorable others were gearing up for the next presidential election. There was quite a lot of confusion as to why Perot was even in the race, so I took it upon myself to offer an explanation:

PEROTS & CONS
“Perhaps some of you are at a loss
Why I want to be President Ross.
It’s simple, you see:
It’s better for me
If I am the one who is boss!”

Another limerick was inspired by a longstanding pet peeve of mine, the boneheaded practice of television anchormen “explaining” to their viewers what they and the viewers have both just seen together:

INSTANT ANALYSIS
Jennings, Rather, Brokaw
Seem determined to jabber and jaw.
They think we’re too dumb
To discern the outcome
Of the campaign debate we just saw.

The problem with limericks is that they tend to become addictive. Once you start writing them, it’s hard to stop. Over the last 20 years I’ve churned out quite a few of these political limericks (politickles) and have distributed them on a weekly basis to email subscribers (subscribe at politickles dot com).

Politickles are the verbal equivalent of editorial cartoons. They make a point quickly, forcefully, humorously. Like editorial cartoons, they’re ideal for energizing allies or demoralizing opponents. So, please, take advantage of them. Feel free to publish, post, or pass on “Your Weekly Politickle,” and encourage your likeminded friends and relatives to subscribe.

It is clear that “social justice teaching” does not mean justice as most Americans understand the term. Those who speak of “social justice” mean the United States is an unjust and oppressive society and the solution is for government to “spread the wealth around.” Activists who favor this solution know that influencing public school teachers, who can then influence the rising generation, is the most effective way to disseminate ideas they hope will soon become majority opinion. — Phyllis Schlafly, Education Reporter

I’ve fought for social justice, properly defined, all my life — as did my parents, and grandparents, before me. Nowadays, however, “social justice” has become a euphemism for socialism, concealing its radical, destructive agenda. While most Americans naturally find socialism repugnant, it can be difficult to resist when it masquerades as something noble and compassionate. Oppose any program or proposal that purports to help the poor, or children, and see how quickly you are dismissed as an uncaring ogre. Can you explain how said program or proposal will actually hurt its alleged beneficiaries? It doesn’t matter. You’ve already been demonized and everyone’s stopped listening.