Seeing Through the Election Year Theater (Lies and Damn Lies)

Doug Berger 0:03
The stench of Trump has been absorbed into the corpuscles of the Republican party so that now it isn’t about policies but what fake outrage you support or are against. The electorate suffers. We take a look at some examples of this theater called a primary season here in Ohio. This is secular left.

Doug Berger 0:45
I believe it was in the last episode, where I talked about House Bill 616. It was recently introduced in the hyoe legislature. And basically, it was just an amalgamation of two really, really evil ideas. The first evil idea was a copy of the Florida don’t say, gay bill. And basically what it would do is it would attempt to erase any LGBTQ plus kids that may be going to school by prohibiting teachers from acknowledging that they exist, talking about gender identity, and, and also about LGBTQ people, all of them. And it’s one of those bills that you’re like, why are they doing this? Well, it’s an election year. So that’s part of it. The other part of this bill, House Bill 616, would prohibit teachers from teaching what they subjectively called divisive topics, teaching about racism. You can’t you can. I saw a meme on Twitter the other day. In Florida, you can celebrate Jackie Robinson, it was recently Jackie Robinson day in Major League Baseball, you can celebrate Jackie Robinson for breaking the color barrier in major league baseball in the 1940s. But you can’t teach a kid about why that is a monumental occasion to celebrate. That’s how this that’s how this this device of topic Bill works. And I know I’ve seen reports recently that Florida has even started canceling books, math books, because they for some AI for some reason they they forward an agenda that Ron DeSantis the governor there doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t like but Ohio is like here, hold my beer. Let’s put both of these bills together into one giant humongous cluster F of evil. And so there’s been a lot of backlash towards it around the state. There was a bunch of academics and teachers unions and people that that wrote letters against it. There’s been several cities, Ohio city mayors and and other people that have written against it. The Ohio Chamber of Commerce is against it. And and in other places students have protested they’ve walked out. One such place was Hilliard Darby High School. Hilliard is a suburb of Columbus, in central Ohio. Predominantly, a fluent suburb, they do have some some subsidized housing and such because it’s close to Columbus. It’s a kind of an old, older suburb. So you have a good strong economic socio economic status in Hilliard. But Hilliard is located in western Franklin County, and Western Franklin County tends to be Maga red. And so Hilliard Darby high school students walked out to protest House Bill 616. And they had invited several of the candidates running for US Senate for Ohio to stop by and so that they could talk to them about this this cluster F of evil. That is House Bill 616. And the only US Senate candidate that showed up was Morgan Harper. She is a progressive Democrat. She is supported by people such as Alexandria, Ocasio Cortez, who is with the what’s better known as the squad And so she was, Harper was the only one to show up at this protest at Hilliard Darby High School. And according to the news reports, Harper stopped by for 15 minutes chatting with the students and then she left. Well, what happened afterwards was ridiculous. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to play the audio of a news report from local TV station. Wb ns 10. TV in Columbus. It was the station I used to follow all the time when I lived there. And here is how they described US Senate candidate Morgan Harper, her stop at Hill your Darby.

WBNS-TV 5:45
Tonight Senate candidate Morgan Harper’s campaign is defending her actions. That’s after Hilliard city school officials say she went on to school property without permission. Now her campaign confirms she was at Hilliard Darby high school yesterday, as students walked out of class in protest of House Bill 616. A spokesperson for Harper says she was invited by student organizers and was there for about 15 minutes before leaving. In a statement to parents, the district Rota, Darby and district leaders were not notified of her intent to attend or have her presence on school property in clear violation of our visitor policies. A Harper was not invited by school administrators to attend the walkout and came of her own accord. The district has filed a police report, that report is not yet available.

Doug Berger 6:34
Yes, you heard it correctly. The school district filed a police report. And they plan to complain to the Ohio election commission. You know, this wasn’t like she was a this wasn’t like she was a stranger, trying to entice kids into a van with candy or something. They knew who it was and why she was there. And there is some conflicting commentary about this. The school claims they were never notified. The students say that they notified the school that they had invited people to stop by. And the school district did nothing at that time. They didn’t say no, don’t have these people. Now I understand the school needs to control who is on the property. I get that. You know, if they don’t believe that she if they weren’t aware that she was invited fine. They say, hey, Morgan Harper, you weren’t, you know, we didn’t know you were gonna be here, please leave the property. And leave it at that. But they had to file a police report and report her to the Ohio election commission. You know, just see how ridiculous how much of a political theater that is. And I doubt hardly, I highly doubt that if it had been, let’s say Mike Gibbons, or Josh Mandel, I highly doubt that they would have been calling the cops and complaining to the high Election Commission. It was just ridiculous. And then later, in a response to the Columbus Dispatch, Harper called the police report a waste of resources and a political attempt to stifle student speech. Now they didn’t. The students, they they that here, here’s the thing that administration knew the students were walking out. And they didn’t punish the students. They allow the walkout to happen. Most schools do that. If there’s some thing that’s going on. In most cases, you know, as long as it doesn’t disrupt the entire school day, they’ll let students walk out, say their piece, and then they have to go back to class. Which is unusual, because when I was in school when I was in high school, and our administration found out we were going to walk out, they locked the doors to the interior courtyard that we had at our school, and came over the intercom and said, if anybody walked out, they would get one week’s detention. So, you know, a lot of schools are more liberal. But yeah, I mean, it was just a waste of time. You know, all they had to do was, all they had to do was as soon as they saw she was there 15 minutes. And I’m sure the administration was watching the students. They weren’t out there with no supervision at all. You know, all schools have cameras on the outside. And like I said, I get that they want to protect the kids and they have to control who comes on school property. But this took place outside, which is less less likely to be able to control it. And it was Morgan Harper, they knew who she was. So that was just ridiculous, but that’s just one. Just one of the political theater. Things that we’re going be talking about in this episode today, you know, and I’ve been used to it in my my long years on this planet, I’ve witnessed some pretty good political theater. Most of it was pretty innocuous, like voting for having bipartisan support for post office naming, which is one of those political things that people you know, politicians vote for, because it makes them look good. And they can say, Hey, we got this post office name for your your kin or whatever. Then we had, then we have things in, and here’s the thing people are gonna say, But Doug, both parties are subject to political theater. And, and I would agree that both parties do put on some good shows. The difference is that one party, their theater, hurts people. And it’s not the Democrats. When the Republicans pull this crap, people get hurt. Like that. Don’t say gay build in Florida. Now there’s going to be some kids that are probably going to commit suicide now because they don’t feel safe in their own school to let people know that they don’t feel like they’re the gender that they were born with. You know, and it’s one of those things where, what difference does it make, really, as

Doug Berger 11:34
actor George Takei pointed out, you know, gay children are exposed to heterosexual books and stories and learning through their whole entire school life. And it doesn’t turn them head overs heterosexual women and men that want to identify with a different gender, they are exposed to the gender normative stet stories like blue is for boys and trucks are for boys and dolls are for girls. And yet, they still don’t feel like they’re biologically male or biologically female. And what does difference does it make really, it’s political theater, it’s ginning up outrage in a particular issue in order to get votes. Because in the end, the people that care about this will be the ones that will go out and vote. And there’ll be scared people this, this is this is trying to get your voters to come out based on fear. And it’s just, it’s just ridiculous. And, and unfortunately, that is what our political system has come down to.

Doug Berger 12:47
This is Doug. While we take a short break between segments, I wanted to let you know about another way to get content from secular left, I started a sub stack, it will be a place to jot down some quick thoughts about something going on in the news, or about some kind of political issue that may or may not show up in an episode of the podcast. I call this notepad of ideas, the secular left nuggets, and you can find it at secular left.substack.com I hope you can check it out.

Doug Berger 13:18
Okay, while I calm down from that previous segment where I was very angry. This one is going to be a little bit more lighthearted. What we’re going to do, what I wanted to do is I collected a series of political ads that have been playing on my local TV. And and we have this weird Confluence. We have a US Senate seat that’s open. Rob Portman is finally retiring. After doing nothing for his six years, doing nothing to help people of Ohio put it that way. Except for protecting Trump anyway. So Rob Portman is retiring. And then we have our congressional districts have been redistrict. And one of the districts that they messed with was the ninth district. It’s been the home longtime home of Marcy Kaptur from Toledo. Previously in after the last census census. They combined one district with the ninth and forced Dennis percentage to run against captor and he lost. And so then her district was called the snake on the lake. And it started out in Toledo and Lucas County, followed the shoreline of Lake Erie and went to Lorraine and into Cleveland. Really thin, really thin district. Well, this time, the Republicans have decided that captors got to go and they reconfigured the ninth district to include a lot of the rural areas of Northwest Ohio. Previously, we’re in the fifth district with Bob Latta. So now the district is leaning Republican. So all these Republicans are jumping into the race. So we’ve got during the news hours, from like five to seven to eight. It’s like almost wall to wall political ads. You got all the Senate candidates putting stuff out. You got some of the congressional people putting stuff up. And it’s mostly Republicans that are putting ads up. There’s been a couple like a tenant Tim Ryan one.

Doug Berger 15:40
Marcy Kaptur hasn’t done one yet. I haven’t seen it. Maybe she has, I haven’t, I haven’t seen it. She might be, you know, says she’s running on the Democrat side, she might be saving her money for the general election because she’s gonna need it. It’s this is probably going to be the tightest race for her of her career. One of the people that’s running against her is Teresa Gaborone, and we’re going to talk about her a little bit later. But she used to live in Wood County and Bowling Green. She’s a state senator. Currently, for the second district. I believe it’s the second district and includes Bowling Green. Well, in order for her to run in the ninth district, she had to move to the ninth district. And so she moved to here on changed her permanent address to here on then there’s Charles or Charlie Charles riddle. I can’t I can’t remember their names or their name. And then for the Senate, you’ve got Gibbons and Josh Mandel and Mark Dolan. Or Bob Dylan, I know that Bob Dylan, and and who else? Oh, and then you have the governor’s race. You have dewine and Jim Ron AC, who’s who’s trying to get favoritism by Trump. And, and one of the things that that that threw the stink bomb into the races is that the former President Trump endorsed a JD Vance and people were trying to figure out why he endorsed JD Vance since since Josh Mandel was a front runner Gibbons was the front runner and Jane Timken. Basically kiss Trump’s asked her for years as the chairperson of the Ohio Republican Party, and they would have bit been more getting that then JD Vance, who criticized Trump before and was known as a never Trumper Why did he get it? And I think I know why. Tech tech billionaire Peter Thiel and I think there’s another tech billionaire are bankrolling JD Vance’s campaign. You know, they gave him $10 million. So I think what it is, is money. I think he wants to get in good graces with like Peter Thiel, and some of those other tech bros. Trying to get some money. You know, because because the thing is, most people that are listening to this podcast, you know, Trump didn’t give the didn’t endorse JD Vance. Unless there was something in it for him. He doesn’t do anything unless there’s something in it for him. For whatever reason, money, notoriety, whatever, he doesn’t do anything, unless there’s something in it for him. Anyway. So what I did was I went through the six o’clock news and the 11 o’clock news the other night, and I just copied some of the political ads. And so I’m going to play them here and then we’re going to talk about a couple of them once it’s done.

TV AD 18:58
Donald Trump has officially endorsed US Senate candidate JD Vance. JD is the conservative outsider who will continue Trump’s fight to secure our borders, protect the unborn, get rid of the corrupt politicians and stop Joe Biden. JD Vance Murray and author of Hillbilly Elegy, President Trump’s endorsed America first conservative and Trump fought back and so have I. Now I’ll take our fight to the US Senate on JD Vance and I approve this message.

TV AD 19:28
Craig Riedel has Dangerous Ideas on crime. The real plan and cash bail, which could put accused dangerous criminals back on the street within 24 hours of arrest. They tried the real plan in New York City. Police say it led to an increase in robberies and violent assaults. No wonder prosecutors have called the Riedel plan dangerous. Greg Riedel, dangerously wrong on crime wrong for Congress. W F W Action Fund is responsible for the content of this advertising.

TV AD 19:58
We all see and feel Hold the effects of Joe Biden’s disastrous leadership every day. Record inflation, global chaos. That’s why I’m endorsing fellow conservative Craig Riedel for Congress. I know he’ll stand up to Biden, Pelosi and the radical left. Craig will work with me to restore fiscal responsibility in Washington and defend our traditional values. Our freedom and our country are on the line. That’s why I’m endorsing pro Trump conservative Craig Riedel for Congress. I’m Craig Riedel and I approve this message. Every day it gets worse.

TV AD 20:30
Skyrocketing inflation, destructive government mandates, and insane out of control woke canceled culture. Marcy Kaptur and the radical left are hell bent on destroying the America we love. They must be. This is the moment when we decide what kind of country we want to be. It shouldn’t be hard, folks. I stand with President Trump and against Joe Biden, and the radical left. I’m Craig Riedel and I approve this message,

TV AD 20:58
a record of conservative results, cutting taxes, protecting Ohio jobs, securing the border and funding police. That’s what matters in this campaign. Because it’s all about Ohio. My opponents are focused on name calling instead of results. They attack and insult each other even had an ear fistfight. So forget all their nonsense. This is your said See, because Ohio is what matters. I’m Matt Doland and I approve this message.

TV AD 21:28
Josh Mandel is a fraud. He’s the problem a career politician who’s been running for office for decades and while we struggle with high gas and grocery bills, Josh Mandel supported the politicians who got us here endorsing Romney and cozying up to Kasich. Mike Gibbons is a businessman, not a politician. He spent his career fixing the financial messes caused by people like Josh Mandel, and he’ll do it again. Mike Gibbons for Senate lock ons for a strong Ohio was responsible for the content of this advertising.

TV AD 21:57
Joe Biden’s inflation is crushing Americans under Biden’s supply chain suffer prices skyrocket and he wants higher taxes. But Mike DeWine is fighting back he cut income taxes for all Ohioans and he’s protecting our jobs and national security by bringing new high tech manufacturing facilities to our state. So we replace China’s supply chains with made in Ohio Governor Mike DeWine. He fights and wins for Ohio

TV AD 22:28
I’m Jim Ranacci conservative for governor. The race between Mike DeWine me isn’t personal. It’s about Ohio’s future and a clear choice that for the last four years we need a leader who put our families jobs and our freedoms first. As Governor, I’ll open Ohio for business. No lockdowns, no mas mandates. And unlike the wine, Ban critical race theory and empower parents when it comes to education, it’s time for fresh conservative leadership. And that’s what I’ll deliver.

TV AD 22:58
There’s fraud in every election and the fraud in our race for Congress. Theresa Gaborone. Gaborone is not a true conservative and authored a bill to allow online ballot requests. How convenient for liberal hackers, a liberal hack. That’s Theresa Gaborone. Gaborone even voted against a bill to protect the unborn after a heartbeat is detected. Theresa gabbro, liberal fraud and can’t be trusted. Northwest Ohio freedom fun fact is responsible for the content of this.

Doug Berger 23:29
Okay, so we just got done watching or watching, listening to the audio of several political campaign ads. And what’s funny about it is they’re all Republicans. They’re all Republican ads, there’s no Democrat ads in that. But it’s just the name calling that what comes across as the name calling. They have some of those dark money packs that are doing the name calling. And then you have just the outright lies. And that’s what gets me. You know, politicians are allowed to lie in their campaign ads. Unlike Procter and Gamble, who sells soap, they can’t lie in their ads. But politicians can lie on their ads because it’s considered free speech. And so I would, I would love to see a constitutional amendment that would prove that would say that political advertising is not protected by the First Amendment, or in the least, that as part of the FCC regulations that TV stations have to put a disclaimer when they run ads saying that the the claims made in this you know, it’s like, like what they do for the boner pills, the commercials for boner pills and in the testosterone, it says These claims have not been proven by the FDA. Buyer beware something like that they need to put a disclaimer saying these claims in These political ads. I mean, they mean to put a disclaimer, you know, most people most rational people most smart people know that these political ads is they lie by omission. They say outright lies. So I would like to see an actual disclaimer put on these ads. Anyway, that’s my rant about political ads. But I wanted to talk about the last one we just saw the last bit. Theresa Gaborone. As I said, She’s currently a state senator from Bowling Green. She lives in Iran now to run for the ninth district. She is ultra conservative. She and what I like cracked me up about the ad. First of all, they claim that she’s a liberal. She is not a liberal. Trust me, I’m a liberal. She is not a liberal. So it claims that she’s a liberal, she’s not a liberal. It claimed that she voted no on a heartbeat bill, anti abortion heartbeat bill. That is true. She did. However, both major right to life groups in Ohio endorsed her for the ninth district because she may have voted against one anti abortion bill, but she has not voted against them recently. And the one that they point out it’s House Bill 493. And I had to do some hunting. And that was from 2016. That was from when Trump first came into office. Is it before Trump poisoned the Republican Party completely. And Theresa Gaborone was an average politician. She was in the house, the Ohio House at the time. And she was concerned still conservative, still Republican, but she wasn’t. She wasn’t trying to rip off Trump like she is now. And House Bill 493. At the time, in 2016, was the heartbeat bill, they added it on to a bill about child abuse. And so trying to get the Democrats to vote for it. The Democrats didn’t, even though it was a part most of the bill was about child abuse. And the reason why Gaborone voted against the bill, and I found the article and I’ll throw it up on the show notes is it didn’t include a exemption for women who were raped or for incest. Very reasonable position to take it didn’t have it didn’t have an exception. She voted against it. She has not voted against an anti abortion bill since then. So that’s tenuous. The other claim that that ad made was that she sponsored a bill that would make it easier for liberal hacks causes voter fraud. Well, the in the in the ad, they noted Senate Bill 91. So I looked up Senate Bill 91 191. And that was from 2019. And this was back when Republicans liked absentee ballots before they were against it. And Senate Bill 191 would

Doug Berger 28:29
allow people to request absentee ballots online, you go online, fill out a form, and they would send you the ballot. Right now, people like Trump and the Magga people, they believe that that is voter fraud, or open to voter fraud. If you because you’re requesting a ballot, the thing is, a ballot still needs to be verified when it’s cast. And if you’ve ever done an absentee ballot, at least here in Ohio, you have to sign it. You have to include your last four digits, your of your social security number, and you put it in an envelope, put it inside another envelope and you and you mail it in or drop it off. Then when they open the ballot, they verify the name the signatures the same, and then the numbers match up, and then they cast the ballot. That’s how it works. You know, you could have 50,000 people requesting absentee ballots, but that doesn’t equal 50,000 votes. That’s 50,000 potential votes, but they still have to be verified the old fashioned way. And so that’s why I thought that that Gaborone had was so comical. The other one that I wanted to talk about briefly, was the anti riddle riddle. I don’t know how pronounce his name. It talked about supporting no cash bail, and how they did that in New York and it caused a rise in violent crime because it let dangerous criminals out on the street after only 24 hours. Here’s the thing, okay. And it really breaks, it breaks my heart. It really breaks my heart that bail reform, cash bail reform has been dragged in the mud and politicized like this. Because it’s very simple. Okay, cash bail, when it’s used to, it’s used to punish poor people, okay? Because most of the time people who have low incomes or no income, when they get in trouble with the law, they can’t afford a cash bail of any amount really. Usually a cash cash bail is 10% or property. Most of these people don’t own property, they rent. Maybe they have a car, maybe they don’t. You know, why? Why are we supposed to put a shoplifter in jail until his court hearing? What purposes that serve that doesn’t make the community any safer to have a shoplifter who has committed a felony and get a you know, 2020 $500 bail and can’t afford it. So they have to stay in jail until their quarter parents. The the these claims that these dangerous criminals are led out of jail is preposterous. You know, it’s it’s the the bail the cash bail, the monetary bail part is just one aspect of letting somebody out of jail before their court appearance, okay. And if you look, they flashed the text of this bill that that this guy supposedly supported, and his name was on it. And if you read the text, all it says is that the cash, the financial burden cannot be one of the parts that you use to determine if somebody is going to appear in court. Because there’s other ways you can do that. Okay, ankle monitoring house arrest.

Doug Berger 32:36
You could do a nominal bail, like 50 bucks or whatever, whatever. But there’s other other things that you can do to make sure somebody appears okay. And it’s always based on one the, the crime itself what you know, it’s not, you know, somebody that moves down a family of four isn’t going to get a cash bail. You know, and they’re gonna get out, no, they’re not going to get out. They’re going to deny bail. See, judges can deny bail, if they think that the safety of the community is it makes sense for the safety of the community. You know, some guy who’s arrested for jaywalking, he’s not a threat to the community. So why hold him in jail? Until his court appearance? What’s the point? You know, and that’s what that’s what this whole reform bail movement is about. It’s reforming it. It’s not doing away with cash bail. It’s not eliminating it. It’s just reforming how it’s used. It shouldn’t be used to punish poor people. You know, it should be used in concert with the other means to make sure that you protect the community and still treat the person that is in trouble with at least a modicum of human decency. Because like I said, being stuck in jail for 60 to 90 days until your court appearance sucks. That’s what I wanted to say about that. I thought that that was pretty ridiculous at that ad for against that guy because it would help the community if we reformed cash bail. So the takeaway from all this the reason why i i played these ads was just to remind people that even even if it’s a democratic ad, don’t automatically believe everything it’s telling you, you know, do like I did, I went you know, said Gaborone did this. I went and chat, you know, because, well, I knew she wasn’t a liberal that that was in the other one. And there was another one I think by that same guy that got chastised for the doing away with bail, so called doing away with bail. He had hit on his ad. He called Marcy Kaptur, a liberal extremists. Marcy Kaptur is not a liberal extremist. I Marcy Kaptur is my congressperson and she is not a liberal extremists trust me. She She, she is anti abortion. She’s just not she’s just not a butthead about it like, like people down in Columbus. You know, she won’t support abortion, but she won’t force people to have children against their will see, there’s a difference. She won’t have one. And she’ll encourage people not to have them. But she won’t force everyone not to have one. That’s the difference. Okay. That’s what makes her a more of a Democrat than a liberal extremist. The other thing too is she’s very Catholic. And there was a church, St. Anthony’s church that was slated to be closed and torn down. And she marshaled a private and public group together to save the church. Why did she do that? Because when she was a girl, she used to go there with her family. Because she used to live in the neighborhood. Me. I don’t care. It should. It was an old church. It was built in the 1890s. It should have been torn down. But they’re going to turn into some kind of community center. But that’s the Ask the person Marcy Kaptur is, and it’s somebody I can talk to, okay. She listened. She has townhall meetings, unlike Bob Ladd in the fifth district, who’s never had a town hall meeting for the people. So to say that Marcy Kaptur is a liberal extremist, just cracks me up anyway. So that’s the thing. When you’ve got these these political ads, just do your homework, please. What I’ve been doing is I’ve just been muting them, you know, they happen so often, it’s just easy just to mute them. We have Alexa on our on our TV. So we just say Alexa mute. And then we say Alexa, unmute. Anyway, the May 3 primary is coming up real soon for

Doug Berger 37:22
some people, and then we’ll probably have another one in August. And I’ll be glad when a lot of these ads go away.

Doug Berger 37:29
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Doug Berger 37:44
The other bit of political theater that I kind of want to touch on today is in relation to what I talked about previously about House Bill 616. And there’s a branch of that. And what it is it’s there’s been a lot of angry parents foaming at the mouth at school board meetings and and to politicians and wanting books banned from libraries and, and all kinds of books because it’s pornography or grooming children. You know, if it just has even even a slightly skewed idea about friendship, they want it polled. And and it’s all part of that critical race theory stuff. You know, it’s just, it’s just feeding on this system. This faux outrage about our children are in danger in public schools, because these books will expose them and turn them gay. And the you know, like I told, like I said before, that’s the that’s the biggest fear of these Christian nationalists that their children are going to read a book that says being gay is okay, and they’re going to turn gay. And we know that stupid. That’s a ridiculous argument. Because that’s not how it happens. And so this, this, wanting to ban books and protect children, even touches, books that have nothing to do with LGBT issues. It has nothing to do with it. Recently, there was a author, Jason Thorpe. He wrote a book. He grew up in Ohio, he lives near Columbus, I think he lives in Powell. And he wrote a book he’s a children’s author, he wrote a book about kids that felt invisible he because he felt weird he felt out of place. But he wrote a book to battle him you know, to help kids battle their their feeling of loneliness. And so In night in 2017, he developed a character to remind his readers that it’s okay to be different. And he says in this Washington Post article, I sat down and tried to figure out what kind of character would be non threatening that they will be instantly lovable, and I will be able to get B to kind of get them to be invested in the story. Tharp said in an interview to the Washington Post. I was like kids like unicorns. So he wrote this book, about a blue and purple unicorn. And it’s the title of the book is it’s okay to be a unicorn. And he was going to give a presentation and read from the book, and an elementary school in the Buckeye Valley School District, north of Columbus. And he got a call about a day before he was supposed to attend from the principal, saying that higher ups didn’t want him reading the book. So he just straight up and ask them to somebody think I made a gay book. And the principal said, yes, the concern is that you’re coming with an agenda to recruit kids to become gay. You know, if I heard a parent telling me that I would have to marshal all of my personal strength in order not to throat punch them and call them a moron and kick them out of my office. But this principal, or it was probably the principal or the superintendent or somebody said, you know, hey, you know, there’s a concern, so we’re not going to have you talk about this book. So in an interview with WBNS 10. TV, Jeremy Froelich, the interim superintendent said that one parent visited his office on April the sixth expressing expressing concern about the book. One parent,

Doug Berger 41:57
forced that author to not talk about that book he did, he did go to that school and talk about his other books, but not that one. And there was another one about, it’s okay to smell. He wasn’t allowed to talk about that one. But they didn’t give many reasons why. You know, so Christian nationalists that are concerned about being there’s gay stuff, and all these books, you’re just, you’re just a frickin moron. If you believe that. Man, when I saw that is one parent, you know, and then and then when people in the free thought movement, atheists and humanists, like myself, complain about prayer in the school or prayer at a public function. You know, they’re, they’re more than happy to say only one person complained, and totally dismiss our concern. But yet one parent concerned is complaining about a book they probably didn’t even read. Because it has nothing to do with LGBT stuff. They probably saw the rainbow say, oh, it’s got to be about gay people. And they had to book banned. So I’m gonna throw up some details about the book and a link to it. If you want to check it out in the show notes. Go ahead. But yeah, that’s, that’s what this country looks like today. In this, this post Trump era. That doesn’t seem to it just seems to be clinging on with, with the its fingernails digging into our flesh. We get this bullshit. Banning a book because as a rainbow on it. I think I think the COVID did more than just kill hundreds of 1000s of people. I think it did something that altered the brain chemistry and some of these religious people, and they just turned really, really moronic. I think they might want to get checked out.

Doug Berger 44:06
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