Via America’s Lawyer: As school curriculums become a hot-button issue among Republicans, TX governor Greg Abbott is taking aim at books that cover gender identity and sexuality – calling them “pornographic” – and insisting they be pulled from classrooms. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Texas governor Greg Abbott wants schools in his state investigated for carrying books that, that he considers to be pornographic. You know, here’s, this story, what caught me is it’s another one of those things like it or not, that Republicans grab ahold of and like they did in West Virginia with the whole parents are messing with my child’s education. And I don’t like it. This is a continuation. They figured out this works. So now, you have this, this thing that’s going to work for them.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I mean.
Farron Cousins: Well, well and it’s very scary because obviously the governor comes out and says, listen, we have a problem. We have found pornography in high school libraries. Well, that’s attention grabbing. Oh my God. You know, we, you know, you don’t want porn in a high school library. You got to get, but people assume when you say that, okay, well, somebody snuck in some Playboys in there, there’s some Hustlers hidden. No, what they’re talking about are books that might be considered probably beyond a high school student to a degree, depending on, you know, the maturity level of them. But they deal with issues of, of abuse. They deal with rape.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: And.
Mike Papantonio: Well, to me, Farron, I mean, all a parent has to see is one of the books is called, it’s called, Gender: A Memoir. Regardless of the merits of the book, my point is that you have Abbott taking that and the other, the other one is called, In The Dream House. And so he takes these books, he takes excerpts of it, I can’t think of anything that is going to inflame Texas voters anymore than this. And then you got Beto O’Rourke now jumping into it. He is just such a lightweight, I mean, just a terrible lightweight. Has, I don’t know what he’s done in his life. He has no life experience for God’s sakes. So now this is, they’re going to beat him to death with this, man.
Farron Cousins: And Matthew McConaughey may be the only hope for Texas if he jumps in.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, yeah. McConaughey could.
Farron Cousins: But I’m not, you know, I’m not too thrilled with him either. But either way, they, they jump on these social issues. And that’s what these books are, you know, at the heart of it, they don’t have a problem with the books, but they understand Abbott’s got a problem in the polls. His policies, even among Texas voters are not popular. And so what can I do? Oh, well look, what just happened in Virginia, they ran on the school issues. There’s a problem with the schools and parents need to be involved. And that in, in, in two short weeks, he has jumped on that and is running ahead with it.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. It’s not just him. Florida, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Ohio. I mean, it, you can’t take a book called, Gender: A Memoir, and tell a parent that this is what your child’s reading in school and that be okay with the parent. I don’t, you know, there’s, it’s just not going to happen. But you can take that title and you can take in dream, In The Dream House, and you can beat the Democrats to death with it. It’s going to spread and it goes back to this whole issue of what’s happening to the polls. It’s this counter-culture kind of notion that’s, that’s, it’s complicated because it does have to do with cancel culture. It does have to do with don’t mess with, with, with rights, parents rights. It has to do with political correctness, it’s this move towards political correctness. It all, it all fits in there with inflation, right? And it fits in there with some policies that the, that they see this, this president executing on, and this is just another one of the, the problems.
Farron Cousins: Right, and this is what they’re going to do. They’re going to use issues like this, just like they uses the critical race theory, just like they use cancel culture, even though, you know, they’re the ones who are canceling far more things. But they’re going to run on those for about 11 months. When we get into that home stretch after they’ve already baited everybody along with these, you know, social issues and the culture wars, that’s when you then hit them with, are you better off than you were two years ago?
Mike Papantonio: Yes.
Farron Cousins: Look at the inflation, look at the prices. Look at, it’s the death blow and that’s why they don’t want to do it yet.
Mike Papantonio: It’s what you do in trial.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: It’s what you do in trial is you, you, you, you go in with that issue that just enrages everybody, and then you come back and you come in with a second, you know, the second phase of that. It’s, it’s brilliant. I mean, I hate to say it, but it’s brilliant and it’s a big problem for the Democrats.
Farron Cousins: Well, Republican strategists and again, I don’t like to give them credit for anything, they are good at what they do. And the Democratic strategists are just so God awful. It’s amazing they ever win.
Mike Papantonio: I know.
