Talking trash

Just the facts.

That’s all that voters and television viewers want from Gov. Glenn Youngkin. And a little backbone and truth to go along with them.

Sadly, that’s not likely to happen as the Democratic Party of Virginia points out in a Wednesday evening news release titled, “First, Then, Now.”

The release (and its target) comes close to channeling one of Chris Rock’s zingers in his new Netflix comedy special. Like Mr. Rock’s brash, in-your-face routines, the release gets straight to the point.

“Youngkin’s Superintendent Scandal (So Far). First, thanks to Governor Youngkin’s astonishing incompetence, K-12 schools across the Commonwealth lost $201 million in state funding.”

It gets better.

“Then, a full three months later, Youngkin’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jillian Balow, resigned her post, without explanation. Jillian Balow’s last day is March 9, the same day that Youngkin takes his roadshow of disasters to the national stage, joining Jake Tapper for a CNN Town Hall.

Last week’s Free Press featured an Associated Press article regarding Ms. Balow’s resignation in a letter to the governor that did not offer a specific reason for her departure. The AP article noted that the state’s Department of Education has faced criticism for recent missteps, including an error in a mathematical formula the agency provides to local K-12 school divisions that led schools to expect more state funding than they were set to receive.

“I am grateful and humbled to have had the opportunity to serve the children and families of Virginia and I continue to strongly support you and your vision for education in Virginia,” Ms. Balow wrote in her letter.

Gov. Youngkin’s press office did not respond to a question from The Associated Press about whether the governor asked Ms. Balow to step down, instead offering a one-sentence statement thanking her for her service.

The announcement didn’t go unnoticed by Virginia Democrats and neither did the governor’s failure to respond to the question.

“Meanwhile, the Virginia Republican Party dismissed the concerns of families and educators, calling the unusual and murky departure of Ms. Balow a “routine staff turnover,” according to the Virginia Democratic Party news release.

The release continues to note, “Now, Glenn Youngkin refuses to answer to Virginian parents, teachers, and students. When asked directly by CBS6, Glenn Youngkin refused to answer whether or not he asked for Barlow’s resignation – not once, not twice, but three separate times.”

Switch to the news release’s embedded video, click and listen to the governor’s attempt to answer a journalist’s question without answering the simple question: “Did you ask for her resignation?”

Showing his growing mastery of evasion, smooth talking and/or arrogance, here is how Virginia’s governor responded:

“So, first of all I want to thank the superintendent for her commitment to the Commonwealth. She stood for excellence ... she loves kids. I couldn’t ask for a better qualified (person). I wish her the best in all that she’s doing. One of the most important things we recognize is … learning loss during the pandemic. We have got to build back high expectations.”

The question is repeated.

The governor again evades the question, giving his own idea of an answer.

“We have got to build back high expectations,” he said, looking as earnest as he could muster. “We’re moving to find the next state superintendent of education. Part of what we are managing right now is a big transition … education is hugely important … We want to make sure we have the best person we can to do that. I’m just so appreciative of the superintendent’s commitment to the Commonwealth.

“Will you answer the question,” the journalist asked?

“Yes, next,” the governor responded.

Ahhhh. Slick.

Liam Watson, the Democratic Party’s press secretary, fails to mince words in his assessment of Gov. Youngkin’s response … or lack thereof.

“Virginia’s parents, teachers, and students all deserve better. They deserve better than Youngkin’s incompetence and they deserve better than his deflections and lies.”

Drop the mic.

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, now a major figure in the House Republican Caucus, is calling for a “national divorce,” that would “separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government.”

Like her hero, Donald Trump, she claims widespread anonymous support for the idea:

“Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issue shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”

This is a call for secession.

The last move for a “divorce” led to the Civil War, the bloodiest war in American history. If taken literally, it is treasonous.

The conservative former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney reminded Rep. Greene that “our country is governed by the Constitution. You swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Secession is unconstitutional.”

Rep. Greene is just vamping for the MAGA crowd, looking to create another splash to expand her audience on social media, and — not insignificantly — increase her online fundraising. She has offered no legislative proposal to divide the country, nor written up a declaration

Scott Adams, creator of the popular “Dilbert” comic strip, has faced a backlash of cancellations after a tirade on his YouTube livestream in which he described Black people as mem bers of “a hate group” from which white people should “get away.”

Instead, hundreds of newspapers, including the Chicago Tri bune, where I work, decided to get away— from “Dilbert,” even though it has ranked as one of the nation’s most popular comic strips.

A devastating blow hit the comic Sunday evening when its distributor, Andrews McMeel Universal, severed ties, citing the company’s policy of rejecting “commentary rooted in discrimination or hate.”

Discrimination? Hate? Dilbert? Who would have expected such ugly allegations would rise up around dutiful office drone “Dilbert,” his faithful pet-pal Dogbert and the other familiar characters in the 34-year-old strip, as well as a bonanza spinoff of “Dilbert” books, calendars and toys that decorate office cubicles around the globe?

Alas, things turned ugly after Mr. Adams posted a YouTube livestream last week in which he riffed on a Rasmussen Reports poll of racial attitudes.

My ears perked up as soon of independence. She’s just babbling for effect — but the babble is revealing.

Like the segregationists of the South, a first target is education. Red states after secession, she suggests, “would likely ban all gender lies and confusing theories, Drag Queen story times, and LGBTQ indoctrinating teachers and China’s money and influence in our educa - tion.” Blue states “could have government-controlled gender transition schools,” or even “Antifa communist training schools.” Again, this is babble, but it is echoed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, and his much-ballyhooed war on “woke,” including how Black history is taught, what books can be in libraries, even what Advanced Placement courses are sufficiently politically correct for conservatives.

Rep. Greene also argues that after secession, red states could control their own elections. Then they would have “one day elections with paper ballots and require voter ID with only the red state citizens or even red state taxpayers voting.” Anyone from a blue state moving into a red state would have to wait five years or so to vote, time for as I heard the name Rasmussen. The firm often has been accused of a pro-conservative, pro-Republican bias, but it also comes up with polling questions too provocative to be ignored by talk shows or sociopolitical columns like mine.

Or by YouTube livestreams like “Real Coffee with Scott Adams,” in which Mr. Adams flew into a rage over a Rasmussen poll that found only a slim majority of Black Americans agreed with the statement, “It’s OK to be white.”

As a Black American who believes it’s quite OK to be whatever color the Almighty made you, I thought the question was “simple” and “uncontroversial,” as Rasmussen’s head pollster described it to The Washington Post.

But as a news junkie, I knew the phrase “It’s OK to be white” has a loaded history in light of today’s racial politics.

”It’s Okay To Be White” is a slogan popularized in late 2017 as a trolling campaign by members of the controversial discussion board 4chan, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The idea behind the campaign was to choose an apparently innocuous slogan and put it on fliers or websites in public locations and “own the libs,” as the alt-right calls anything that upsets liberals, thus “proving” his or her cultural attitudes to acclimate to red state views. that liberals don’t think it’s “OK” to be white.

This too is echoed in the systematic effort of Republicans — particularly in red states where they have a legislative majority — to suppress the vote, making it harder for urban and young voters to cast a ballot, to gerrymander districts to lock in partisan advantage, to purge election rolls to throw off minority voters, to open the floodgates to corporate and dark money and more. And it’s enforced by the right-wing justices on the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act and removing restrictions on big money in our politics.

Rep. Greene probably doesn’t realize it, but secession would leave most Southern states even more impoverished. Over one-third (37.7 percent) of Georgia’s revenues come from the federal government. Red states constitute eight of the top 10 states that gain much more revenue from the federal government than they pay to the federal government in taxes.

Citizens in several red states already suffer from more medical debt, worse medical care and lower credit ratings — and thus pay higher interest rates — largely because their Republican governors have refused to extend Medicaid to their citizens out of opposition to Obamacare.

In other words, it’s a trick question — and Mr. Adams, who leans quite conservative on such matters, appears to have been a bit too eager to fall for it. “If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with white people ..., that’s a hate group,” he fumed in his livestream.

And, “The best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people,” he continued. “... You just have to escape. So that’s what I did. I went to a neighborhood where, y’know, they have a very low Black population.”

In fact, the poll’s results were not all that clear. Some 53 percent of Black respondents agreed that it’s OK to be white, and only 26 percent disagreed. To reach his “nearly half of all Blacks,” Mr. Adams had to add the 21percent who were “not sure” to the group that flatly disagreed.

Frankly the question as phrased itself is so unclear—Are you “OK”? Am I “OK”? — that I, too, am unclear and more than a little suspicious about the motives behind it.

Not to be left out of this toxic tiff, Twitter CEO Elon Musk chimed in with an odd defense of Mr. Adams, saying the “media is racist” and, without evidence, opined, “for a very long time, U.S. media was racist against nonwhite people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians.”

In other words, it’s all the media’s fault. Got it.

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It’s easy to dismiss Rep. Greene who is just, as they say, “building her brand,” saying outrageous things to get attention like a petulant adolescent. But there is a real menace in the fear and loathing that she spews.

After the Civil War stopped the last secession, the plantation class used the Ku Klux Klan, a reign of terror and lynching to retake control, strip the newly freed slaves of their rights, and institute segregation — legal apartheid — on the South. They justified this with the kind of lies and slanders that Rep. Greene traffics in today. Their purpose was to suppress democracy and implant one-party rule — and for more than a century they succeeded. Rep. Greene’s performance may be “insanity” as Mitt Romney says, but it feeds fears and hate that are a far greater threat to a democracy.

Regina H. Boone reginaboone@richmondfreepress.com James Haskins, Rudolph Powell and Clinton A. Strane Vice President – Administration Tracey L. Oliver traceyoliver@richmondfreepress.com

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