Fox & Friends Will Burn Whoremongering Isabel Allende Books Now, Thank You

Today, from the Department of Oh Do Shut The Hell Up, we have Fox's Elisabeth Hasselbeck giving airtime to some random lady who is making life hell for North Carolina's Watauga County school district because they assigned a book that random lady does not like because of how it is all about mandating abortion and prostitution, probably.

On the March 3 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck reported that "parents are outraged over a new book being assigned to their high school students containing references to abortion and prostitution," and was quick to tie the book to the Common Core educational standards -- falsely labeling them the "Common Core classroom curriculum." [...]

The campaign to censor The House of The Spirits in North Carolina's Watauga County school district has sparked national scrutiny in recent weeks. As Michael Keegan, president of the free speech advocacy organization People for the American Way noted, Lesesne's censorship attempt ignores that "The House of Spirits is an internationally renowned work that is taught in high school Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs throughout the country."

For fuck's sake, everybody. People have been making students read The House of the Spirits for forever and two days. Perhaps North Carolina lady doesn't like it because it is by a brown modern person instead of a white old-timey person? We bet North Carolina lady is not agitating to have, for example, William Faulkner removed from the canon we ram down student throats, even though he sometimes was hella rapey. But who cares! All this really is about is another opportunity for Fox & Friends and their fellow travelers to yet again yell about how the Common Core standards, which are actually a super harmless toothless thing that basically says kids should learn some stuff, is the very devil's work.

Fox's eagerness to attack Common Core, however, has been well documented. The network has previously characterized the standards as a partisan agenda designed to "indoctrinate" children, suggested that the standards will use data mining to track children, and claimed they will mark incorrect math answers as correct. [...]

What Fox doesn't seem to understand is that Common Core is a set of standards that define the proficiency levels students should reach at the end of each grade. It is not, as Hasselbeck claims, a "classroom curriculum" and does not mandate how those standards should be reached. Instead, Common Core leaves decisions about classroom content to the states.

In this particular case, Hasselbeck's interview with Angry Southern Mom Lady makes clear that Allende was not imposed by Obama personally calling every school in the South and demanding they teach this newfangled writing with all the perverse sex, but was instead chosen AT THE SCHOOL DISTRICT LEVEL. And then Angry Southern Mom Lady got to go TO A SCHOOL BOARD MEETING and plead her case. But the district declined to agree with Mom, which is totally fascist socialism, because the very best and only way to create a school curriculum is to let random angry moms choose the curriculum and force every teacher to offer a choice of books with each assignment so that students can opt out of things their moms don't like. No, really, that's totally her plan. Go watch the video. Too bad Obama's militarized weaponized Common Core shock troops will prevent this mom from ever having her way.

[ Media Matters ]