Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Q Toon: Rick Perry


I'm catching up on a little news item that came across the wires during my vacation earlier this month. Speaking of the decision due this Thursday from the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), Texas Governor Rick Perry compared rejecting LGBT youth to not seceding from the Union during an appearance on the American Family Association program "Stand With Scouts Sunday" on May 4.

(Most reports have Perry likening support of the BSA's current antigay policy to fighting slavery, when in fact he is only citing Governor Sam Houston's declaration that slavery was not worth leaving the Union over. As Rev. Ellen Cooper-Davis noted in the Houston Chronicle, Houston himself owned slaves. Houston favored neither abolitionists nor secessionists, foreseeing that his beloved South would end up losing the Civil War.)

What caught my ear were Perry's comments on what he called "pop culture":
“[The BSA] values and principles have worked for a century now. And for pop culture to come in and try to tear that up, which happens to be the flavor of the month so to speak, and to tear apart one of the great organizations that has served millions of young men, helped them become men and become great fathers, that is just not appropriate and frankly I hope the American people will stand up and say, ‘Not on my watch.’ ...
“And if we change and become more like pop culture, young men will be not as well served. America will not be as well served, and Boy Scouts will start on a decline that I don’t think will serve this country well as we go into the future.”
It would be easy to dig up examples of politicians from the Houston's day who publicly proclaimed that America would not be well served and would start on a decline were slavery to be abolished. And while Houston's contemporaries were not familiar with the phrases "pop culture" and "flavor of the month," some would have happily dismissed slavery's opponents in similar terms.

Editorial cartoonists and Governor Perry have been at odds lately over his attack on Sacramento Bee cartoonist Jack Ohman, so I'll confess that I welcomed the opportunity to lampoon the Texas governor. But I'm not a totally unfair person. I resisted the temptation to have Perry struggle to remember that third "really."

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