Every morning Don gets in the car and goes in search of a
local paper or a paper from a major city nearby. This week we have been reading
the Houston Chronicle. Last week it was The Daily Advertiser in Lafayette, LA.
The Advertiser has the USA Today logo on the front page which leads me to
believe that it really doesn’t get much from local reporters anymore and most
of it is canned material from another media source. The editorial cartoons were
totally lacking in satire or insight into their subject and simply bashed
President Obama and the Democrats. I certainly didn’t expect the paper to be
liberal but the lack of thought or good satire was jarring. It didn’t help me
in trying to be open minded and develop an understanding of the conservative
position since I am going to be spending the next few months in a very red
state. Remember when being Red meant you were a Communist? I digress. So I was
very pleasantly surprised when Don started bringing home the Houston Chronicle.
Especially this week when President Obama used his executive power to make some
badly needed changes in immigration policy. No one would ever state that the
Chronicle is a liberal paper but the reporting on the impact of the immigration
policy changes was pretty balanced. This state has a huge Mexican population
and a long border which they have been using the National Guard to try to
control illegal immigration so it is probably impacted more than just about any
other state. While this morning’s cartoon was critical of Obama it was incisive
and witty satire that couldn’t fail to impress me. I began to believe that
possibly some Republicans while being misguided are not stupid. Actually I have
many friends who are intelligent thoughtful people and are Republicans. But
then there is the story of the Texas State School Board who has been debating
the social studies curriculum and whether to include Moses’ influence on the
founding fathers’ development of democratic principles. The total lack of
understanding of history just blows my mind. I wonder if they even thought
about Jewish and Muslim inclusion of Moses in their holy books. And why do
these people have anything to do with deciding curriculum. Shouldn’t the people
making the decisions be educated first? Fortunately, there was a thoughtful
editorial on that issue in this morning’s paper but I don’t know that it will
have any influence on what Texas children will be learning about history. Sorry
about this. Maybe I need to go back to reading the funnies and stick with
Victorian mystery novels.
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