When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball is a book about the childhood of Wilma Rudolph, a legendary sprinter who won three gold medals at the 1960 Olympic games in Rome. The book, which is 32 pages long, is geared toward readers in elementary school.
At what point do the rest of the people get to push back against this nonsense? I find it hard to believe that this woman represents even a significant minority of the parents in the district, let alone in the state? Is it that librarians and school boards have been intimidated by implied or explicit threats? Is it because that radicals have taken over the school board? Or is it that people are just too tired to fight off every one of these attacks on critical thinking? Frankly it seems to me that she needs to be challenged to prove her allegations before any book is removed from the shelf. Claim that Wilma Rudolph leads to white shaming? Prove it. Document the cases. Then maybe we'll talk.
The problem is that nutcases like her--and that's exactly what she is--long ago realized that the way to power was through local elections and actions like this, long before the silent (and regrettably passive) majority did. Exhibit "A" is the Escambia County School Board which, as Judd noted, seems to be sympathetic to her reactionary viewpoint.
Seems then that the solution is in our hands, staring us in the face. We need to elect normal people, not religious zealots, to school boards and local administration. And while working on that, start showing up at those meetings at make is clear that catering to the minority will not be good for their long term political prospects. And be ready to take the shit from the nutcases that we know we are going to have to take until they are driven back under the stones from which they slithered.
It can be difficult to figure out who's who for school board races. Luckily my local board is run by a normal person with a doctorate from USC, but most people don't have that luxury.
The last time I wanted to research local school board candidates, it took me at least 30 minutes with Google to find anything at all. Unless I wanted to watch an unedited two hour video of the only public interviews with the candidates, it was nearly impossible to find any information at all. And what you could find required a high degree of familiarity with MAGA terminology to decode from mealy mouthed equivocation to an actual statement. I THINK I voted for people who's positions I agree with, no real way to tell because coverage of local school board meetings is almost nonexistent (and they always happen when I'm at work).
It takes far too much time and energy to stay on top of local politics and this is entirely by design.
It's apparent that Gandy Baggett is a DANDY BIGOT!! How the H*** does one pathetic confederate worshiping cracker get to make the rules for Florida libraries??? This has got to stop. A minority fringe is vomiting all over the rights of the rest of us! Florida and DeSantis are poster children for book burning, bigotry, racism, and all the other evils that X45 hatched, and they're all thriving in the SOUTH. SHAME ON ALL OF THEM!
I tend to dismiss folks that bring up "Black friends" as a means of humble-bragging that they aren't prejudiced. That very act reveals them in my opinion. They "don't see color" until they need a "Black friend." Then they see color just fine. Intercourse them!
I've known far too many people with similar dysfunctions who seem to believe that after they spout their embarrassing ignorance in a room full of people none of whom want to argue with such a belligerent loud mouth and so keep silent, will thereafter make the claim that everyone in that room agreed with them completely and vehemently when in fact, no one agreed and they were just waiting for her to finish spouting off and leave.
I worked with a woman like that once. She was white and thought it was OK to use the phrase "norma paul" around the office as a substitute for the phrase "n-word please!" Ha ha ha right? She loved to say it and when I called her on it, she went around to every Black person in the company and asked if they minded. They all demured because as you say, they just didn't want to deal with it or her. When she triumphantly came back to announce to me that the ONLY one who minded was me, I countered with a challenge for her to accompany me to the VP of Operations office and explain to him how her bullying made the office more welcoming and conducive to work. That was that for that issue. She found another soon enough. Horrid woman. Left to become a cop.
Welcome to my and my kids, oppressed driven life only I'm just somewhat so imagine being a woman and black! Florida has gone full fascist & my neighborhood app is the scariest place ever. Uneducated hate fueled ignorance speaking on issues they see on Facebook or tik tok claiming their freedom of speech but they stan losers who owned humans, so that's the ultimate thought so I don't go insane daily
This is horrible Sarah. There is nothing to say other than this behavior is pure evil and stupidity. I intend to keep fighting back am not going to stop.
Me too Lynn! I was a registered and active Republican until Jan 6th and I learned so much and I can't stop now. It is like my whole life really was a lie but I belong here & refuse to leave. I spread awareness for now but more will come as my kids grow up.
Sarah, my Next Door app is full of DeSantis-loving right-wing loons too! I’d say we must live in the same neighborhood but I’m afraid this stupidity is rampant in our home of Florida. I applaud you for taking January 6th so seriously. My then 88-year-old father had Fox News on at 1000 decibels on January 6th, 2021, and I couldn’t avoid their coverage even as I was working from home in noise-canceling headphones at the time. As horrified as I was about the insurrection, it was stunning to hear the news coverage from Fox during the riots describing the same horror I felt. I know that sense of horror from Fox didn’t last long. Fortunately, Dad goes to bed before Tucker Carlson comes on, so I didn’t have to listen to his take on the subject. At any rate, Sarah (and Lynn), you give me hope.
Has this anti-book person gotten around to putting the Bible on her pornography list? It has quite a lot of narratives and poetry that would not pass her test.
If the bible was a movie, it would be rated for: Violence. Sexual violence. Adultry. More violence. Divine decrees. Indiscriminate killings. Betrayal. Extrajudicial violence. More violence. Generational violence. Morality enforced by, you guessed it... violence, on and on, ad infinitum.
I’d love to hear from the poor HS students who have her for a teacher. How could such an ignorant person possibly understand how to teach English with any kind of critical thought?
I grew up I post WWII Germany and reading this is truly shocking. By the standards of this law and this so called teacher no book about the holocaust would be deemed to be ok for use in schools … yet even after more or less sitting through three years on history classes about the third reich in high school I think more was needed. Kids can be pretty resilient and can and need to learn the truth about the past. What shocks me most here is the silence of the various Jewish groups in the US. What stops anyone from adding any books about the holocaust to these lists … and even if no one will do that book banning was one of the early acts by the Nazis and it creates a very slippery slope to banning more than books.
This woman and others like her are suffering from a form of mental illness that arises from being in a cult. There is no other conclusion I can draw. She should have her teaching license pulled. She isn't fit to be a teacher.
None of these mentally ill book banners, harping on parental rights, seem ever to think that OTHER parents have rights, too: to allow and encourage THEIR kids to think, explore, and see the world through other people's eyes.
One wonders how she has time to put food on the table and make her kids lunches when she's apparently devoting every waking hour to pouring over every sentence in hundreds of books, looking for "issues". Have all the floods in Florida from the hurricanes contaminated the drinking water to the point the state is becoming full of, well, loony tunes? (Apologies to sane Floridians.)
The only trouble is, as I understand it, teachers are fleeing Florida for more survivable teaching jobs in almost any other place in the country. It probably won't be long before teachers such as Vicki are all they can hire.
Gandy Baggett is a Confederate ready to fight the Civil War again. She is another example of a bigot who needs attention, a cause, and a platform to scream on. She is disgraceful. As a former English teacher, I am grateful that I never had to work with an ignorant teacher like her.
Just read an article from 2000 where this same teacher (who was teaching JOURNALISM 🤦🏼) was busted for “selling grades” by requiring her students to sell meat products made by her own family business as a “fundraiser” — sell more meat, get a better grade. 😒
This is just too much! Yes thanks for this coverage. But I have to start reading these articles later in the day. This is a difficult way to start thinking about our year end. But thank you nonetheless.
All I could think while reading this was, what a prude!! But for a prude, she sure has her mind in the gutter! Everywhere she looks, she sees, what to her, is smut. To everyone else these are some really good reads! It's a shame anyone gives her the time of day.
I hate to tell Vicki this, but she's not exactly Scarlett O'Hara. Besides the South LOST the war to protect slavery and they SHOULD feel deeply ashamed they ever started that war in the first place. The old South really is "Gone with the Wind," except in the tortured souls and psyches of those who cling to their Taliban-like honor society and can't bear to admit that the entire effort was a debacle as embarrassing as it was deadly. Vicki (and a lot of other Southern folk) needs to put on her "big girl pants" and face the truth.
I could feel sorry for this deluded and controlling woman but I don't. Instead of wallowing in her own unhappiness, she wants to drag the whole world down with her. Unfortunately, she and those like her seem to have an outsized influence these days and that should not be!!!
That people like this still exist is unbelievable, but that they are teachers? It’s galling. That book about Wilma Rudolph, is exactly the type of book kids should be reading. She had bravery and perseverance. She was an inspiration to all, but especially women and girls, and this woman gets absolutely none of this out of Wilma’s story? How is she a teacher, and why in the name of all that is holy do some white women act like this?
At what point do the rest of the people get to push back against this nonsense? I find it hard to believe that this woman represents even a significant minority of the parents in the district, let alone in the state? Is it that librarians and school boards have been intimidated by implied or explicit threats? Is it because that radicals have taken over the school board? Or is it that people are just too tired to fight off every one of these attacks on critical thinking? Frankly it seems to me that she needs to be challenged to prove her allegations before any book is removed from the shelf. Claim that Wilma Rudolph leads to white shaming? Prove it. Document the cases. Then maybe we'll talk.
The problem is that nutcases like her--and that's exactly what she is--long ago realized that the way to power was through local elections and actions like this, long before the silent (and regrettably passive) majority did. Exhibit "A" is the Escambia County School Board which, as Judd noted, seems to be sympathetic to her reactionary viewpoint.
Seems then that the solution is in our hands, staring us in the face. We need to elect normal people, not religious zealots, to school boards and local administration. And while working on that, start showing up at those meetings at make is clear that catering to the minority will not be good for their long term political prospects. And be ready to take the shit from the nutcases that we know we are going to have to take until they are driven back under the stones from which they slithered.
It can be difficult to figure out who's who for school board races. Luckily my local board is run by a normal person with a doctorate from USC, but most people don't have that luxury.
The last time I wanted to research local school board candidates, it took me at least 30 minutes with Google to find anything at all. Unless I wanted to watch an unedited two hour video of the only public interviews with the candidates, it was nearly impossible to find any information at all. And what you could find required a high degree of familiarity with MAGA terminology to decode from mealy mouthed equivocation to an actual statement. I THINK I voted for people who's positions I agree with, no real way to tell because coverage of local school board meetings is almost nonexistent (and they always happen when I'm at work).
It takes far too much time and energy to stay on top of local politics and this is entirely by design.
Part of our job is to identify the RWNJs and call them out publicly during the campaign.
I agree completely.
It's apparent that Gandy Baggett is a DANDY BIGOT!! How the H*** does one pathetic confederate worshiping cracker get to make the rules for Florida libraries??? This has got to stop. A minority fringe is vomiting all over the rights of the rest of us! Florida and DeSantis are poster children for book burning, bigotry, racism, and all the other evils that X45 hatched, and they're all thriving in the SOUTH. SHAME ON ALL OF THEM!
But, but, ... her best friend is Black! 🙄
I tend to dismiss folks that bring up "Black friends" as a means of humble-bragging that they aren't prejudiced. That very act reveals them in my opinion. They "don't see color" until they need a "Black friend." Then they see color just fine. Intercourse them!
I have follow up questions for this friend. 😒
I've known far too many people with similar dysfunctions who seem to believe that after they spout their embarrassing ignorance in a room full of people none of whom want to argue with such a belligerent loud mouth and so keep silent, will thereafter make the claim that everyone in that room agreed with them completely and vehemently when in fact, no one agreed and they were just waiting for her to finish spouting off and leave.
I worked with a woman like that once. She was white and thought it was OK to use the phrase "norma paul" around the office as a substitute for the phrase "n-word please!" Ha ha ha right? She loved to say it and when I called her on it, she went around to every Black person in the company and asked if they minded. They all demured because as you say, they just didn't want to deal with it or her. When she triumphantly came back to announce to me that the ONLY one who minded was me, I countered with a challenge for her to accompany me to the VP of Operations office and explain to him how her bullying made the office more welcoming and conducive to work. That was that for that issue. She found another soon enough. Horrid woman. Left to become a cop.
Welcome to my and my kids, oppressed driven life only I'm just somewhat so imagine being a woman and black! Florida has gone full fascist & my neighborhood app is the scariest place ever. Uneducated hate fueled ignorance speaking on issues they see on Facebook or tik tok claiming their freedom of speech but they stan losers who owned humans, so that's the ultimate thought so I don't go insane daily
This is horrible Sarah. There is nothing to say other than this behavior is pure evil and stupidity. I intend to keep fighting back am not going to stop.
Me too Lynn! I was a registered and active Republican until Jan 6th and I learned so much and I can't stop now. It is like my whole life really was a lie but I belong here & refuse to leave. I spread awareness for now but more will come as my kids grow up.
Sarah, my Next Door app is full of DeSantis-loving right-wing loons too! I’d say we must live in the same neighborhood but I’m afraid this stupidity is rampant in our home of Florida. I applaud you for taking January 6th so seriously. My then 88-year-old father had Fox News on at 1000 decibels on January 6th, 2021, and I couldn’t avoid their coverage even as I was working from home in noise-canceling headphones at the time. As horrified as I was about the insurrection, it was stunning to hear the news coverage from Fox during the riots describing the same horror I felt. I know that sense of horror from Fox didn’t last long. Fortunately, Dad goes to bed before Tucker Carlson comes on, so I didn’t have to listen to his take on the subject. At any rate, Sarah (and Lynn), you give me hope.
YES!!! This is a nightmare!! Dandy Bigot...😂😂😂
That would be a great band name. "The Dandy Bigots!"
The best way to get kids to want to read a book is to ban it.
Exactly my thought
Has this anti-book person gotten around to putting the Bible on her pornography list? It has quite a lot of narratives and poetry that would not pass her test.
If the bible was a movie, it would be rated for: Violence. Sexual violence. Adultry. More violence. Divine decrees. Indiscriminate killings. Betrayal. Extrajudicial violence. More violence. Generational violence. Morality enforced by, you guessed it... violence, on and on, ad infinitum.
I’d love to hear from the poor HS students who have her for a teacher. How could such an ignorant person possibly understand how to teach English with any kind of critical thought?
Oh lol let me help you out, critical thoughts are banned here just like gay and liberals
I grew up I post WWII Germany and reading this is truly shocking. By the standards of this law and this so called teacher no book about the holocaust would be deemed to be ok for use in schools … yet even after more or less sitting through three years on history classes about the third reich in high school I think more was needed. Kids can be pretty resilient and can and need to learn the truth about the past. What shocks me most here is the silence of the various Jewish groups in the US. What stops anyone from adding any books about the holocaust to these lists … and even if no one will do that book banning was one of the early acts by the Nazis and it creates a very slippery slope to banning more than books.
A couple misspellings to point out Bigot is not spelled Bagget and clan for her is actually Klan. Thank you Judd and team Popular! Happy Holidays 😁
Happy holidays Judd! Thanks for all the work you do. Ugh to this trend.
This woman and others like her are suffering from a form of mental illness that arises from being in a cult. There is no other conclusion I can draw. She should have her teaching license pulled. She isn't fit to be a teacher.
None of these mentally ill book banners, harping on parental rights, seem ever to think that OTHER parents have rights, too: to allow and encourage THEIR kids to think, explore, and see the world through other people's eyes.
One wonders how she has time to put food on the table and make her kids lunches when she's apparently devoting every waking hour to pouring over every sentence in hundreds of books, looking for "issues". Have all the floods in Florida from the hurricanes contaminated the drinking water to the point the state is becoming full of, well, loony tunes? (Apologies to sane Floridians.)
The only trouble is, as I understand it, teachers are fleeing Florida for more survivable teaching jobs in almost any other place in the country. It probably won't be long before teachers such as Vicki are all they can hire.
Gandy Baggett is a Confederate ready to fight the Civil War again. She is another example of a bigot who needs attention, a cause, and a platform to scream on. She is disgraceful. As a former English teacher, I am grateful that I never had to work with an ignorant teacher like her.
Just read an article from 2000 where this same teacher (who was teaching JOURNALISM 🤦🏼) was busted for “selling grades” by requiring her students to sell meat products made by her own family business as a “fundraiser” — sell more meat, get a better grade. 😒
I thought this was too absurd to be true, but....
https://www.theledger.com/story/news/2000/11/17/school-stops-having-students-sell-meat-for-grades/26536167007/
Sales counted for 10% of their grade.
I guess this was decent preparation for a career in corporate journalism, but still....
This is just too much! Yes thanks for this coverage. But I have to start reading these articles later in the day. This is a difficult way to start thinking about our year end. But thank you nonetheless.
This is sick. How does anyone have these views and work this hard to make them a reality? I feel so sorry for her. She lives a sad and miserable life.
All I could think while reading this was, what a prude!! But for a prude, she sure has her mind in the gutter! Everywhere she looks, she sees, what to her, is smut. To everyone else these are some really good reads! It's a shame anyone gives her the time of day.
The English teacher pines for a romanticized confederate past that gave her and her family a status that she cannot afford today.
Florida kids pay the price.
I hate to tell Vicki this, but she's not exactly Scarlett O'Hara. Besides the South LOST the war to protect slavery and they SHOULD feel deeply ashamed they ever started that war in the first place. The old South really is "Gone with the Wind," except in the tortured souls and psyches of those who cling to their Taliban-like honor society and can't bear to admit that the entire effort was a debacle as embarrassing as it was deadly. Vicki (and a lot of other Southern folk) needs to put on her "big girl pants" and face the truth.
I could feel sorry for this deluded and controlling woman but I don't. Instead of wallowing in her own unhappiness, she wants to drag the whole world down with her. Unfortunately, she and those like her seem to have an outsized influence these days and that should not be!!!
That people like this still exist is unbelievable, but that they are teachers? It’s galling. That book about Wilma Rudolph, is exactly the type of book kids should be reading. She had bravery and perseverance. She was an inspiration to all, but especially women and girls, and this woman gets absolutely none of this out of Wilma’s story? How is she a teacher, and why in the name of all that is holy do some white women act like this?
All she saw was color and what do you want to bet that she thinks she isn't racist because she "doesn't see color?"
Sounds about right.