It's interesting how the psychology of the left is that they're still the ones who are rebelling against older conservative parents. They're still the ones who are in the position of rebellion. There's still the ones who are the put upon little guy, and they continue to carry this attitude into times when they are in fact the ones in charge, when they are the ones culturally dominant, and then when someone criticizes them.
When they get into the position of cultural dominance, they don't see their own youthful rebellions in the people who oppose them. They want to crush any resistance with as much authoritarianism as their parents tried to crush their authoritarianism. A lot of liberalism can be explained as continual continuing the rebellion against your conservatives parents. There's this piece in GV wire that is somewhat infuriating in that light. The problem is not stuff anyone in public schools is doing.
It's the fact that you noticed conflict over race LGBTQ issues cost schools more than three billion dollars last year. Conflicts between parents, teachers, and school leaders over parental rights policies focusing on LGBTQ plus students. I notice the identity.
This is a this is a big thing. Hey, for all you young parents out there, little childhood psychology tip, stop assigning static labels to the human beings who, more than any other group of human beings, are in a state of wild change, development and fluctuation aka children whose brains are exploding at a rate far surpassing anything that you're going to achieve when you're an adult LGBTQ plus students,
we're talking about twelve year olds. You don't think some stuff might shift around in there so that that label might not necessarily be helpful to give a child a static identity that this is no, this is the kind of.
Person you are.
By the way, you can you can apply this to far less critical questions, things that are far more innocuous, like you're when you're eleven year old says to you, I'm just not good at math. I'm just not someone who's good at math. Don't know, don't put that identity on yourself. You're having a hard time with math right now. Let's fix it. Let's work on it. You're not bad at math. You're struggling a little bit right now. Let's work on it. Get those times tables out, let's go
work the problem anyway. Conflicts between parents, teachers, and school leaders over parental rights policies focusing on LGBTQ plus students, limitations on teaching about race and racism.
They're what limitations.
And book bans.
Book bands.
When liberals say book bans, what they mean are parents complaining about books that are obviously inappropriate for children, asking that they be banned, asking that they not be shelved in a public schools library. That's what we're talking about, or utilized as part of the public school curriculum, have come with a cost, both socially and financially. So this is written by this woman, Diana Lambert, for some publication called ed Source, which is obviously the whole tone of
it is obviously showing her. The whole framing of this issue is obviously showing a huge bias. This is a huge bias in favor of lgbt stuff, in favor of the party line among.
The NIA teachers' unions, et.
Cetera, that we want to teach super left wing ideology when it comes to race, We want to teach super left wing ideology when it comes to sex and sexuality. We want to be able to keep from parents a child's gender transition if they don't want the parent to know about it, and we want you not to complain about it. That's the real tone, that's the real message of this piece.
Let's keep going.
The conflicts i e. Parents getting mad about this stuff are disrupting school districts, negatively impacting schools and classrooms, and costing district's money that could be used to better pay off teachers, i mean better serve students. According to quote the Costs of Conflict, the fiscal impact of culturally divisive conflicts on public schools in the United States are report released last month put together by researchers from UCLA, University
of Texas at Austin American University, and UC Riverside. These universities conducted a national survey of k through twelve public school superintendents from forty six states, four hundred and sixty seven superintendents in all, and found that these conflicts are prevalent since the twenty twenty twenty twenty one school year.
Uncivil discourse parents being upset and getting a little over the top of a school board meeting, and hostile political rhetoric OOH at school board meetings and on school campuses has been an ongoing problem. Hostile political rhetoric at school board meetings. Forgive me, how are most school board members picked in this country?
Oh, they're elected, so ergo.
The power they wield is a kind of political power.
Oh okay, Yeah.
So when people are talking to them at a school board meeting, they are talking to a politician.
So the kind of.
Rhetoric they use could very well be political rhetoric.
Hmm.
Two thirds of the school superintendent surveyed for the studies said they have experienced moderate to high levels of culturally divisive conflict in their district. Well, once it goes from moderate to high, they.
How are we measuring this?
Superintendent surveyed for the studies said they have experienced moderate to high levels of culturally divisive conflict in their districts, including misinformation campaigns. Who is defining this as a misinformation campaign? Does this mean a campaign that is accurate but that you don't like, Because that's very often what liberals mean when they say misinformation. They mean information that may very well be true. Misinformation campaigns, violent rhetoric, okay, and threats.
Cultural conflicts cost us school districts. About three point two billion dollars last school year, according to the study. Now you may be thinking, wait a minute, Okay, I can understand superintendents having, you know, a burr in their butt about parents complaining about stuff. Okay, I get that. I understand that they'll be upset. How is it costing school district money? Also, three point two billion dollars spread over how many school districts are there in America? Okay, there's Gazille,
all right. How many school districts are there all over America? And for context, let's remember Fresnoe Unified just this year is getting a five hundred million dollar bond. Okay that we just voted on Measure H to get Fresne Unified a five hundred million dollar bond just for Fresno Unified
School district located in Fresno, California. So forgive me for noticing that three point two billion dollars spread across every school district in the United States of America is kind of a drop in the bucket relatively speaking, But it sounds like, obviously it's more money than I'm ever going to see. People are supposed to read this and think that's impressive. But how are they even calculating that parents being angry over LGBT stuff, or parents being angry over
critical race theory stuff. How are we calculating that that has a cost?
You may ask, let us continue.
Researchers estimate that districts with high levels of conflict spent about eighty dollars per student. Okay, well, they're already spending like twenty thousand dollars per student in California, so I can't say that I'm crying over eighty dollars per student. Districts with modern moderate levels of conflict spend fifty dollars per student, with districts with low conflict spend twenty five dollars per student. Which, again, how we're coming up with
these numbers. We'll see this is first we just take that as a given. This is costing US general fund dollars set a superintendent from a mid size school district in a western state in the twenty twenty three twenty twenty four school year, the district spent an additional one hundred thousand dollars on security, hiring armed playing clothes off duty officers because people coming to the board meetings are unpredictable. And sometimes violent, such a grotti.
Assari tour gratti snigatu or moment.
Okay, gratis assi to a grotti snigata is this fun little Latin phrase. If you're just asserting something freely with no evidence, I can deny it freely with no evidence. What school district was having, like police arrestable violent threats being made, we probably would have heard of it. That just wasn't happening, that police were arresting people who were making threats in school board meetings. Look, I remember at the Bakersfield City Counts there was a protester who made
an actual threat. She didn't realize just how serious her conduct was. She made an actual threat. She was arrested right there. If that was actually happening in school board meetings, I don't know. Okay, so you need more security at school board meetings because you have a ton of parents who are all really upset. Okay, I'm very sorry that you had to spend a little more on that. Maybe parents should be more polite. But allow me to retort.
If someone on a street corner showed my kid a picture from one of the books that these public schools liked to use for like to stock in their libraries for sex related stuff, sex ed related stuff, et cetera. Some of these books that are by that, you know what, we dealt with this issue here in Fresno, with the whole Presne County Libraries controversy. Steve Brandau's I think heroic efforts to do something about it. Some of the books that are in the Presne County libraries that are clearly
designed to be for public school districts. If some random guy on a street corners tried to show a picture of that to my kid, I would knock that guy's lights out, Like, yeah, you need to physically restrain me. Maybe it's because what public educators think is good is so radically out of step with people, and so radically out of step in leading their children whom they love
astray that it makes people pretty darn angry. So yeah, maybe if you need that much security, maybe it's a reflection of you on what you are teaching and doing, rather than some rising of parents being awful. So they're saying it's because of security, but what they really say
it's because of superintendent turnover. That's really what it. Finally, when you boil it down, what they're saying is superintendents are quitting and other school personnel are quitting because parents are so upset all the time, and it's stressing these people out and they say, I want another job. That's actually what's happening here. Which if that's the case, good good. I hope people feel uncomfortable when they propose, like pornographic material to be shown to twelve year olds in a
seventh grade health sex ed class. I want people to feel uncomfortable if they allow that, I want them to quit. I want them to be afraid of not physical violence, but be afraid stressed out about parents being really freaking furious. They should be that way, because it's horrible. It's evil. It is diabolical. And I'm using that not in the I mean it is involving the diaboloose, involving the devil that I literally mean. It is diabolical to show kids
this kind of stuff. I think it is diabolical for a kid confused about his gender to keep that issue from parents, to play this elaborate shell game in which three thousand people at Clovis High School are going to call this biological boy. She call Michelle instead of Michael. This student will come out to three thousand people at clubs high school, but we don't tell the parents about it. I want superintendents to feel really stressed out about that.
I want them to be subject to extreme anger from parents at school board meetings. I'm not saying anyone should burn anyone's house down. I'm not saying anyone should beat anyone up, but this woe is me act from school officials like you're especially from school board members. You're elected by the people. Deal with it like that. It comes with the territory. People are gonna disagree with you really strongly. If that's too much heat for you, get out of
the kitchen. We'll talk about this more after the break. This is the John Girardi Show here on Power Talk. Reading this piece in GV Wire, originally published by It's called ed Source kind of an education based publication written by Diana Lambert about the costs of culturally divisive issues within public school districts LGBT stuff, racial stuff, et cetera. That the idea, the whole tone of it being pretty straightforward. It's bad that parents are angry and objecting to the
extreme liberal ideology that public schools are promoting. It's the parent's fault for being upset. Parents should shut up and let school districts teach what they want to teach. That's it.
Like.
And the study they put together to show this is the biggest shambolic nonsense ever saying, oh, culturally divisive issues are costing three point two billion dollars to public universities. Okay, three point two billion dollars spread over every k through twelve school district in America. It's not a lot of money, all right, in the grand scheme of things, It's really not a lot of money. Secondly, the biggest costs they
identify is turnover. That superintendents are upset and that there's turnover, and the costs associated with people quitting, which good. I hope people quit. I hope people feel uncomfortable when they try to show pornography to twelve year olds and call it sex. I hope they feel uncomfortable. I hope they want to quit because parents are so flipp and outraged. And this piece starts bellyaching and whining about the mental
health status of school superintendents. The relentless demands of leading a school district can easily overshadow their own well being, which, if neglected, not only affects their personal health, but also the health and stability of students, educators, and the families they served, said Rachel S. White of the University of
Texas at Austin in a statement. Reducing the extent to which superintendents experience warranted divisiveness is an important step to change the trajectory of increasing superintendent sure by the way, the increase over the last four years, which, by the way, do you think there was something other than culturally divisive issues that may be caused more stress for superintendents over
the last four years? Obviously COVID the increase was two point nine percent fourteen point two percent turnover to seventeen point one percent turnover for K through twelve public school district superintendents. That's not that big of an increase. The probably margin of error there is such that it's not even I don't know, the turnover doesn't seem that much higher. And also, let me, you're the superintendent of a school district. You're getting paid a lot of money, you have a
big job. Yeah, you're gonna be stressed out. Put your big point, put your big boy pants on, put your big girl pants on and do the freaking job. Don't belly ach to me about oh my mental health state. Then quit, Then quit, get a different job. Sorry. When you're managing an entity with a budget of at least tens of millions of dollars, I guess I'm not sure. I'm not sure what the what framework I'm looking at here for a mid size school districts annual budget, I'd
have to look up, like what's Resident Unified's budget? I know they got five hundred million dollars in one shot from a school bond measure. You're managing hundreds of millions of dollars. You're managing dreds and hundreds and hundreds of personnel. You're you're managing multiple schools. Yeah, you're going to be stressed out. That's what the money is for. Okay, you
get paid a lot to be overseeing all this stuff. Sorry, you're appointed by politically accountable, a politically accountable board of directors whom they need to hear it from voters. So, yeah, you're going to be stressed out. Superintendents who were surveyed expressed concern that the time they spend managing cultural conflict include and this is all this is a great line including responding to Freedom of Information Act requests and unsubstantiated
rumors and misinformation is keeping them from focusing on improving instruction. Oh, those damn pesky freedom of information requests. So what this is for those who are maybe scratching their heads here? Foyer the Freedom of Information Act was this piece of federal legislation that basically says, hey, government should be transparent if something isn't like classified or sensitive material, the public
has a right to know. Public has the right to know about communications between federal employees.
It has a right to know.
About blah blah blah blah. And so people can file a Freedom of Information Act request, a Foyer request for information about Hey, we're personnel within the Department of Transportation discussing blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. So if you're a federal employee, you need to, you know, send your emails carefully because they could be the subject of a Foyer request. Similarly, state governments have mandated similar things for state institutions, patterned off of the federal FOYA law.
So school districts are subject to this. I've done this with President Unified globes unified, and I've said, hey, can you show me I'd like to submit a public records request for I want to see what information you have about bump up Bah bah bah.
They give it to me.
I've done this with the City of Fresno. I said, hey, I'd like information about this grant, this pass through grant that the city is giving to Planned parenthood, got information about it, talked about it on the radio, so that they're bellyaching about the fact that they have to be transparent to the public. You're a public official, and this is the.
This is the longest short of it.
Your whole job is spending the public's money, and you complain about the public. Your whole job is receiving the public's money, and you complain about being accountable to the public. Just this culture.
Attitude among educators.
That they are that they should just be immune to criticism from parents who don't like them, that they are experts, and therefore, how dare you criticize their curriculum decisions, their pedagogy decisions. How dare you criticize what they think about race, what they think the highly disputed philosophical ideas they have about human nature, as if because they got to teaching credential that they're somehow an expert on whether a boy can become a girl or a girl can become a boy.
You need to shut up. And the fact that you make me stressed out about it. It's actually you're You're the one at fault here, not me, for trying to show your kid pornography and calling it sex head. That's the attitude of so much of the education establishment in this country. And at the very least the federal government needs to cut off money. State at least red state governments need to cut off money. They got to resort
the whole thing. And God help us in California when we return the news about jay Z and how me too missed some obvious targets. Next on The John Gardy Show, I remember when the story about p Diddy came out. For those who don't by the way, for I want any of you boomers listening to this to hang in there with me, all right, Just hang in there with me. I'm gonna be mentioning a story involving rappers whom you
probably don't care about. Those of you who don't care about rap also will probably not care about these people. They have stupid stage names. I'm going to talk about them, but it's gonna be interesting, Okay, So hang in there with me. I'll bring it around, Okay, I gotta explain it first, all right. A couple of months ago, Sean Combs, who has gone by various rap stage names over the years, Puff Daddy p Diddy, was arrested in connection to sex trafficking,
being charged of sex trafficking. Word came out about these notorious parties that Shawn Combs would host at his home in I think it was in New York, which were just basically orgies. I think that's a fair characterization of them. Of what these parties were. They were orgies, and that basically there were the women were being trafficked for these parties.
Also that he was engaged in all kinds of same.
Sex sexual activity. He turns out he was an enormous deviant. When the Feds went into his home to arrest him, they found like thousands of bottles of baby oil. Not sure what all that's about. Sounds pretty gross whatever it is. Now for context, Sean Combs is like a gazillionaire and was a titan of the hip hop music industry. Especially sort of the New York based sort of region of hip hop, if you will, has been for decades, for about thirty years. I'd say he was a big time producer.
He did a bunch of songs himself. He dated Jennifer Lopez, he was hosting these huge parties at all these celebrities would go to. Another person in the New York hip hop scene is Sean Carter, who goes by the stage name jay Z. You may have heard of jay Z because of his coziness with the Obamas. Jay Z is married to Beyonce Knowles, who's a very popular R and B singer, pop singer, and jay Z was himself a
very popular rapper. There's now been accusations that jay Z and p Diddy, that Sean Carter and Sean Combs raped a thirteen year old girl in the year two thousand. Now Jay Z has released a public statement about this. It looks as though he was denying this charge. I want to talk about this though in light of.
The Me too movement.
Now, the idea behind the Me Too movement was that there are a lot more women who have suffered some form of sexual harassment or sexual assault than we would imagine and the idea of being me too.
I also was a.
Victim of an act of sexual assault, and whether that's an actual act of rape to some slightly lesser form of sexual assault to just sexual harassment. I think one of the criticisms people have made about the me too movement is sort of this conflating of you know, what Harvey Weinstein was doing on the one hand, which was like actually.
Raping people.
All the way to on the other end of the spectrum, you know, making a you know, slightly over the line comment to someone. Obviously, making an over the line sexually laced comment to someone is inappropriate and bad. I'm not defending it, but it's you know, ten miles different from raping someone. And the thing that I was always so you know, surprised about is the the only kind of ethic that liberals have when it comes to sexuality is consent. If someone consents to it, it's okay. If they don't
consent to it, not okay. Now I am not saying consent is not important when we're talking about the ethical calculus of sexual activity. Obviously it's quite important, but I don't think it's sufficient. Furthermore, I think just focusing on consent leads to a blurring of lines very easily. What
constitutes meaningful consent? And should we care? Some people pointed out, and some people on the left sort of started to figure this out and made them re look at certain kinds of historical things that liberals completely defended at the time, and now they're like, hey, you know, now we feel
a little icky about it, okay. For example, Monica Lewinsky, Monica Lewinsky was a twenty year old college student, twenty one year old college student intern at the White House and Bill Clinton comes on to her where, you know, he's the most powerful man in the world. There's this enormous power imbalance, power dynamic imbalance, where you know, what do you get out of a White House internship? A wreck letter from the President looks pretty damn impressive on
anyone's application for anything. So what am I going to get fired if I don't, you know, accede to this guy's demands. I'll use some FCC compliant language here, am I gonna? Am I gonna get fired if I don't
sexually pleasure this man? What are we doing here? And people have you know, thirty years too late, twenty something years too late, I've started to say, hey, you know what, that was really messed up what Bill Clinton did, and it kind of raises some questions about just how meaningful the consent Monica Lewinsky could have possibly given in.
That context was.
I think that's a real thing. I think. I think that's a really important thing to think about. Like, I don't think consent is the end all be all, because I think consent is very flimsy. This is why you have these liberals and libertarian types are like, oh, we could legalize prostitution, and that's fine. Legalized prostitution. Really, someone who's in such a desperate situation that they resort to selling the only thing they have left to them, their body,
You think that's free and meaningful consent. Then liberals will try it, Well, this person's a sex worker and that's dignified work and we should really respect. No, no, we shouldn't sex work. In one nanosecond, can go from oh, i'm then you know, fully consensually engaging in an act of prostitution too, Oh my gosh, I'm being raped in one nanosecond. So the idea of consent being the end all be all of sexual ethics. Obviously it is a necessary element of sexual ethics, but I do not think
it is a sufficient element. I think the only way to look at sex in a way that is sexually ethical is to look at it for what it ought to be, a free exchange of life giving love that has long term consequences to it. Then long term consequences that should be good and should be appreciated and should be positive, and can only meaningfully be a good thing in a context of a probably ideally lifelong, committed relationship
i e. Marriage. The contraceptization of marriage and sexuality that our culture's experience, the contraceptionization of sex that our culture has experienced, has led us to forget. No. Sex is supposed to be something that has lifelong consequences. It's supposed to be something that inherently requires commitment, and commitment of a lifelong nature, you know, because a new human being
can be produced by it. I think contraception is completely, in an unhealthy way, warped our whole perception of sex. And for the left, because they assume they think of sex as a consequence three free activity, the only thing they care about is consent. But if consense your only thing.
It provides such a weak defense against non consensual activity. Anyway, So the me too movement wound up taking down some richly deserving targets, the Harvey Weinstein's of the world, the Bill Cosby's of the world, but it seems like it missed a whole category of other people, rappers and rock and roll guys, probably a lot of athletes too. Basically, I would always laugh at how like liberal like pop culture journalists would like glowingly talk about, Oh man, what
a cool ladies man. You know, either Wilt Chamberlain was, or you know, these guys from this rock and roll band who are doing tons of drugs and sleeping with all kinds of ladies and having you know, twelve girls come backstage after every show on the tour bus. And you know, rappers celebrate this kind of thing constantly all the time in every single hip hop song, especially as gangster rap has kind of receded a bit since the nineties. Well,
what are rapper's going to talk about that? Well, we'll talk about money and girls, and we celebrate these people for their women. But we just think, yep, this guy's a cool guy. He's having tons of six and doing lots of drugs, and every time he has sex, he receives clear, meaningful consent from a sober woman that she's willingly and meaningfully having consensual sex and that she's definitely
not seventeen because he checked her ID beforehand. No, obviously, any guy who's living that kind of lifestyle probably had non consensual sex with somebody. So the fact that jay Z and Sean Combs are being at least acute of Seawan Colmbs pretty credibly. Jay Z seems to be one accusation.
Whatever.
The fact that people are finally being accused of these things is like the least surprising thing in the world. Probably a reckoning on this should have come a long time ago. When we return prizingly great movie A Muppet Christmas Carol. My review. Next on The John Girardi Show. Well, this weekend my house was a house of sickness. Four of my five children threw up, so Holly and I were up late taking care of all these people. We felt completely fine. I still feel completely fine. Maybe that's
my that's the death sentence right there. So everyone was just a bunch of sickies. Was no good and this is why we don't let them watch a lot of TV. We sort of reserve it for weekends like this when everyone is sick and we turned on a Muppet Christmas Carol. Okay, was not expecting it to be that good. Was phenomenal, was very funny. And Michael Caine, who plays Ebenezer Scrooge, plays it one serious, gives it everything. Michael Caine's got.
It's the performance of a lifetime. Do yourself a favor. Go watch them up at Christmas Carol. You will laugh, you will cry. Holy cow, what a great movie. Thirty you know, forty years too late here, but what a great movie. That'll do it. John Girardi show, see you next time on Power Talk