MSNBC guest calls Florida’s standards on teaching African-American history ‘akin’ to defending the Holocaust
After the Florida Department of Education (DOE) updated its standards for teaching African-American studies, Vanderbilt Prof. Michael Eric Dyson compared the changes to teaching “good things” about the Holocaust.
“This would be akin to saying that Native American people when we teach their history, we should not only talk about the smallpox blankets that were distributed by the pilgrims but the attempt of Native Americans to defend themselves–that was equally violent,” Dyson said Thursday on MSNSC’s Ana Cabrera Reports. “This would be like teaching the Holocaust saying that there were some good things that Jewish brothers and sisters picked up in those death camps that should they survive it would be helpful for them to make their way in life.”
“This is ludicrous. This was an institution of enslavement,” he added.
This came after Florida DOE’s new standards received backlash for what critics said teaches that slaves “benefited” from slavery.
After the standards were made public, major groups such as the NAACP and Florida Education Association (FEA) took aim at Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The FEA claimed that the new standards “are a disservice to Florida’s students and are a big step backward for a state that has required teaching African American history since 1994.”
Among the FEA’s “concerns,” they took issue with middle school students being required to be taught that the experience of slavery was “beneficial to African Americans because it helped them acquire skills.”
Following the Florida Board of Education approving the updated standards, the NAACP President & CEO Derrick Johnson on Wednesday released a statement calling the new standards “an attempt to bring our country back to a 19th century America where Black life was not valued, nor our rights protected.”
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“It is imperative that we understand that the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow were a violation of human rights and represent the darkest period in American history. We refuse to go back,” Johnson wrote.
The Florida DOE pushed back on the criticisms, telling Fox News Digital that the new standards will address the “good, the bad and the ugly.”
“There have been questions raised about language within a benchmark clarification of standard SS.68.AA.2.3, which says ‘Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” the department said in a statement.
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“The intent of this particular benchmark clarification is to show that some slaves developed highly specialized trades from which they benefited. This is factual and well documented. Some examples include: blacksmiths like Ned Cobb, Henry Blair, Lewis Latimer and John Henry; shoemakers like James Forten, Paul Cuffe and Betty Washington Lewis; fishing and shipping industry workers like Jupiter Hammon, John Chavis, William Whipper and Crispus Attucks; tailors like Elizabeth Keckley, James Thomas and Marietta Carter; and teachers like Betsey Stockton and Booker T. Washington,” the statement continued. “Any attempt to reduce slaves to just victims of oppression fails to recognize their strength, courage and resiliency during a difficult time in American history. Florida students deserve to learn how slaves took advantage of whatever circumstances they were in to benefit themselves and the community of African descendants.”
The statement accused critics of taking “isolated expressions” out of context.
IRS whistleblowers reveal who’s really to blame for shocking Biden corruption
In Wednesday’s marathon House hearing, Oversight Committee Democrats ran into a buzzsawtwo IRS whistleblower agents – Gary Shapley, the supervisor on the investigation who went public a few weeks ago, and Joseph Ziegler, the lead investigator on the case, who was publicly identified for the first time at the hearing.
In gory detail, the agents outlined how President Joe Biden’s Justice Department quashed the Biden corruption investigation from within while publicly pretending that it was being conducted with independence and integrity.
When Committee Democrats tried to poke holes in the testimony, they ended up on the receiving end of what they hadn’t bargained for: fusillades of fact – damning data about the millions raked in by the president’s son and family members from apparatchiks of corrupt and anti-American regimes.
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The agents’ stellar performance did not surprise anyone who has ever participated in a criminal tax investigation. In nearly 20 years as a prosecutor, I was – as the lawyer on my cases – better versed in the criminal law applicable to, say, racketeering, international terrorism, money-laundering, admissibility of evidence, and standards of proof, than the agents from the FBI and other agencies with whom I worked, a sizable majority of whom were non-lawyers. Tax enforcement was an exception.
The tax code is an esoteric area of the law. Experienced investigators know a lot more about it than most prosecutors – I learned a lot more from my IRS agents than they learned from me. In fact, tax enforcement is sufficiently abstruse that prosecutors from around the country need approval from the Justice Department’s Tax Division in Washington to file charges. In almost all other cases, they may indict without main Justice’s supervision.
In this very specialized area, it turns out that the very best tax-enforcement agents were assigned to the Biden case. Shapley and Ziegler have combined decades of education and experience in tax law and financial bookkeeping practices.
They have been involved in some of the most significant tax investigations, including international schemes, ever conducted in the United States. They held critical positions and were trusted to run big cases because they knew their stuff.
And because they’ve been investigators for such a long time, they know how to testify – how not to get intimidated (especially when you know much more than the people asking the questions do) and how not to accept the premise of questions loaded with inaccuracies and misimpressions.
It showed. The ranking Democrat on the panel, and thus the first in the minority to ask questions was Jamie Raskin, of Maryland, a tireless progressive partisan and former law professor who never tires of posing as a legal titan. But his questions were rife with disinformation and the witnesses called him on it.
He began, for example, trying to make the point that prosecutors and agents often disagree on whether felony charges ought to be brought. Rather than simply accept that proposition, which is true, Shapley explained why it is irrelevant – in this instance, the case agents and line prosecutors agreed that felony charges were appropriate; it was higher-ups in the Justice Department who slammed the brakes on the case.
On this point, it is vital that Committee Republicans keep their eye on the ball.
Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, who besides being on yesterday’s panel is chairman of the Judiciary Committee with oversight over DOJ, took pains at the hearing to point out that, while the whistleblowers have been completely consistent, Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss has repeatedly changed his story.
The agents stress that they were being ordered by prosecutors not to follow leads that could have garnered evidence against Joe Biden. Despite all the obstacles, they managed to make a strong case against Hunter Biden, but they couldn’t get it charged because Weiss told them he was not the ultimate decisionmaker – he was being stymied by the Biden Justice Department.
But Attorney General Merrick Garland has publicly claimed that Weiss was in charge and was assured that he would have all the authority he needed to bring any charges in any jurisdiction – all he needed to do was ask.
Initially, Weiss backed that story. But then, when Shapley became the first of the whistleblowers to go public, Weiss changed his tune, struggling to back Garland while not contradicting Shapley, whose account is richly corroborated.
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First Weiss said he had the authority. Then he conceded that he lacked authority to file charges outside of his district of Delaware (i.e., in districts where Hunter had allegedy committed tax crimes), but vaporously added that he had consulted with the Justice Department about that problem. Then he claimed that he had not asked to be designated a special counsel, which would have given him authority to file charges anywhere.
Meantime, Shapley’s account was never shaken: Weiss had told a room full of agents that the Justice Department had refused to grant him special counsel authority, and that he was being blocked from filing felony tax charges against Hunter by Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys in Washington, D.C., and California.
Jordan is right that Weiss is a weasel. But Weiss is the wrong target here. He is just the fall-guy for Garland. Contrary to what the attorney general would have the country to believe, it was not Weiss’s job to ask for special counsel authority. It was Garland’s duty to appoint a special counsel the moment he realized there was a conflict of interest that prevented DOJ from investigating in the normal course.
There could be no more profound conflict than the Biden Justice Department’s being in the position of investigating the President Biden’s son and other family members in an international corruption probe in which the president himself is deeply implicated.
Biden’s attorney general did not appoint a special counsel because he made protecting his boss, the president, his highest priority. That is why the case the whistleblowers so compellingly described at the hearing was sabotaged. The culprit here is not Weiss. It’s Garland.
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‘Barbie’ controversy: Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling film’s rocky road to theaters
The highly anticipated “Barbie” movie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, is in theaters now, but there have been multiple controversies leading up to the film’s release.
After years in development, with different writers and stars attached, including comedian Amy Schumer and Oscar-winner Diablo Cody, the film went into production with Robbie starring as the iconic doll.
But as soon as the first full trailer for the movie arrived, controversies began to stir.
Some fans complained about Ryan Gosling’s casting as Ken, and as the marketing blitz for the film began, several international issues arose, from a raunchy translation on the French poster to the film being banned in Vietnam.
“Barbie” has also faced claims that it is an overly woke story about the children’s doll, with one site writing, “Warning: Don’t take your daughter to Barbie.”
Here are some of the controversies “Barbie” faced during its journey to the big screen.
When the first full trailer for the movie was released in April, some fans criticized Gosling as being too old to play Ken, opposite Robbie’s Barbie.
“Ryan Gosling is too ugly and too old to be playing ken, they should’ve casted Henry Cavill or Chris Evans bye,” declared one person on Twitter at the time.
Others came to his defense. “I just cannot believe that we live in a world where people think Ryan Gosling is either ‘too ugly’ or ‘too old’ to be playing a live action Ken doll. Y’all can’t be serious. So incredibly mean & untrue & he will truly be the clear standout in that film,” one person wrote.
Before “Barbie’s” release, Gosling addressed some of the controversy surrounding his casting.
“I would say, you know, if people don’t want to play with my Ken, there are many other Kens to play with,” he told GQ in May.
“It is funny, this kind of clutching-your-pearls idea of, like, #notmyken,” he continued. “Like you ever thought about Ken before this?”
The 42-year-old also spoke about some people’s reactions to Ken being a sort of secondary figure to Barbie in the movie.
Gosling explained that Ken’s “job has been beach” since the doll’s introduction in 1961, two years after the original Barbie doll.
“And everyone was fine with that, for him to have a job that is nothing. But suddenly, it’s like, ‘No, we’ve cared about Ken this whole time.’ No, you didn’t,” the “La La Land” star said. “You never did. You never cared. Barbie never f—– with Ken. That’s the point.”
“If you ever really cared about Ken, you would know that nobody cared about Ken. So your hypocrisy is exposed,” Gosling added.
The tagline for the poster does indicate that Ken doesn’t have as much going on as Barbie. It reads, “She’s everything. He’s just Ken.”
The film’s tagline caused a stir when it was translated for the French poster, going viral for a dirtier meaning that may or may not have been intended.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the tagline in French reads, “Elle peut tout faire. Lui, c’est juste Ken” – meaning “She can do everything. He’s just Ken,” a fairly close match to the original English.
However, “Ken” has a double meaning in French slang, meaning the f-word, making the tagline “She can do everything. He just knows how to f—.”
Whether or not the double entendre was intentional is up for debate, but, according to a French marketing executive from a different studio who spoke with THR, there was no other way for it to be taken.
“It’s definitely deliberate; there’s no way a French speaker wouldn’t have noticed the dirty pun,” they said. “It’s sort of genius, really, that they slipped that in.”
In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. Discovery said, “The speculation around the Barbie marketing campaign shows that there is a high level of awareness and major excitement from the public surrounding the upcoming release of our film in France. We can’t wait for audiences around the world to see the film upon its release next month.”
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Earlier this month, “Barbie” was banned in Vietnam due to a scene featuring a map that shows China’s unilaterally claimed territory in the South China Sea, which the country said violates their sovereignty.
According to Variety, the director general of the Vietnam Cinema Department told the state-run newspaper Tuoi Tre, “We do not grant license for the movie ‘Barbie’ to release in Vietnam because it contains the offending image of the nine-dash line.”
The controversial “nine dash line” is used on maps to illustrate China’s claims over areas of the South China Sea, including portions Vietnam considers its own. In 2016, The Hague ruled the line invalid, and, according to Variety, while the resolution is binding, China has said it does not recognize the decision.
A Warner Bros. Film Group spokesperson told Variety, “The map in Barbie Land is a child-like crayon drawing. The doodles depict Barbie’s make-believe journey from Barbie Land to the ‘real world.’ It was not intended to make any type of statement.”
The government in the Philippines also considered banning the film over the drawing but decided against it.
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According to THR, the country’s Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTPCB) said in a letter released to the public that the board found there was “no basis to ban the film.”
It did request the image be blurred to ensure audiences wouldn’t “misinterpret” the scene.
The overall plot of “Barbie” will follow Robbie’s main Barbie character as she experiences an existential crisis and visits the real world in a journey of self-discovery, accompanied by Gosling’s Ken.
The world of “Barbie” is populated with an all-star cast playing a wide variety of Barbies and Kens, including “Insecure” star Issa Rae, “SNL’s” Kate McKinnon, and Marvel star Simu Liu.
Liu spoke about the diverse array of dolls come to life in an interview with Screenrant’s Joe Deckelmeier in July, highlighting how the movie challenges “heteronormative” ideas about gender.
“You know, colors became gendered, toys became gendered, there were all these rules that were imposed on us,” he said. “So, Barbie was always like, ‘Oh that’s not my toy. That’s on the other toy’. And I’m so glad that this movie exists because I think it puts the final nail in the coffin of that very heteronormative idea of what gender is, and what is or is not gendered. How can you make a color gendered, you know?”
“That’s, I think, what’s really struck me about being in this movie, what’s evolved in my understanding of Barbie and what it is, and what I hope that an audience will get from it when they watch the movie,” he added.
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“Barbie” also features transgender actress Hari Nef, who told Out Magazine the movie has an empowering message about being transgender.
“As much as there’s a celebration of femininity and being a girl in this [movie], I think there’s also an encouragement of letting go of the checklist we ascribe to living and living your life and being in your body your way, on your own terms,” Nef said.
The faith-based film review site, Movieguide, took issue with what they consider an abandonment of the core audience for a Barbie doll movie, families and young girls, in favor of LGBTQ stories.
“The new BARBIE movie forgets its core audience of families and children while catering to nostalgic adults and pushing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender character stories. Furthermore, the movie was poorly made with multiple premises, losing even the most die-hard fans,” a review written by the site’s staff said.
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It continued, “They had a built-in market and audience for this franchise that they completely ignored. Millions of families would have turned out to the theaters and purchased tickets, but instead, Mattel chose to cater to a small percentage of the population who has proven over and over to abandon the box office.”
Robbie did not address that specific review, but said in a recent interview with ABC News Australia that the movie is meant for all audiences.
She was asked if the movie was for kids, and Robbie answered, “This is such a thing people say when they do press for a movie. They’re like, ‘It’s for everyone.’ But it was literally crafted to be for everyone.”
The film’s co-writer and director, Greta Gerwig, described the film to the outlet as “feminist,” but in a broader definition.
“It’s feminist in a way that includes everyone. It’s a rising tide lifts all boats version of it,” Gerwig said.
Fox News Digital’s Kristine Parks and Gabriel Hays contributed to this report.
Dear Abby: Aging mother refuses to discuss the inevitable
DEAR ABBY: My mom turns 85 this year. When my father died of congestive heart failure 10 years ago, our family had a clear understanding of Dad’s wishes about the end-of-life care he wanted. We knew he didn’t want “heroic measures,” like a feeding tube or to be on a ventilator. Since Dad had been sick for a few years and he was open to these discussions, Mom felt confident making choices for his care when he could no longer communicate his wishes.
With Mom, it is a completely different story. She refuses to have conversations about this with my siblings and me, and accuses us of being “morbid.” Although she has a will, she has made no decisions about a proxy or for her care. Do you have any suggestions for how we can help Mom feel more comfortable having these conversations and documenting her wishes? — LOVING, NOT MORBID, DAUGHTER
Joe Biden tasks a new team with trying to stop a debt-ceiling standoff ever happening again
The president and Kevin McCarthy reached an 11th-hour deal to prevent a catastrophic default in late May.
Joe Biden tasks a new team with trying to stop a debt-ceiling standoff ever happening again
The president and Kevin McCarthy reached an 11th-hour deal to prevent a catastrophic default in late May.
Joe Biden tasks a new team with trying to stop a debt-ceiling standoff ever happening again
The president and Kevin McCarthy reached an 11th-hour deal to prevent a catastrophic default in late May.
Joe Biden tasks a new team with trying to stop a debt-ceiling standoff ever happening again
The president and Kevin McCarthy reached an 11th-hour deal to prevent a catastrophic default in late May.
Joe Biden tasks a new team with trying to stop a debt-ceiling standoff ever happening again
The president and Kevin McCarthy reached an 11th-hour deal to prevent a catastrophic default in late May.
Joe Biden tasks a new team with trying to stop a debt-ceiling standoff ever happening again
The president and Kevin McCarthy reached an 11th-hour deal to prevent a catastrophic default in late May.