Republican Foot-in-Mouth Disease Provokes Tasty Toes Democratic Response

In the past few days Republican back-benchers have been inserting their feet in their mouths with unusual alacrity.

In a House debate over legislation shielding gun manufacturers from lawsuits over the criminal use of their products, Rep. Barbara Cubin (R, Wyo.) ignited a small firestorm when she criticized an ultimately unsuccessful Democratic amendment that would have banned gun sales to drug addicts or people in drug treatment. According to an article in today’s Washington Post:

After noting that her sons, ages 25 and 30, “are blond-haired and blue-eyed,” she said: “One amendment today said we could not sell guns to anybody under drug treatment. So does that mean that if you go into a black community you can’t sell any guns to any black person?”

Rep. Mel Watts (D, NC) quite reasonably took offense, and demanded that she apologize and that her comment be stricken from the record. Cubin said she did not mean to offend her “neighbors” on the Democratic side, and the House voted 227 to 195, largely on party lines, that her comment was within the rules.

Disgusting. Cubin and her Republican colleagues are hereby awarded the Trent Lott prize for morally uplifting commentary.

And then there’s Rod Paige, the Secretary of Education. As Joanne Jacobs points out, Paige gave an interview to the Baptist Press endorsing the virtue of values in education that seemed to endorse sectarian education in public schools. He now claims not to have meant to do that, and indeed an article in today’s Washinton Post that compares a transcript of his remarks with what the Baptist Press printed suggests that his actual comments were arguably innocuous.

First, as the transcript makes clear, Paige was speaking of higher education, not K-12, something his critics missed. And then the question to which he was responding was unusually opaque:

Given the choice between private and Christian, uh, or private and public universities, who do you think has the best deal?

Huh? Anyway, Paige responded:

That’s a judgment, too, that would vary because each of them have real strong points and some of them have vulnerabilities, but you know, all things being equal, I’d prefer to have a child in a school where there’s a strong appreciation for values, the kind of values that I think are associated with the Christian communities.

But what appeared in the Baptist Press article was:

All things equal, I would prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community, where a child is taught to have a strong faith.

So, Paige got a little bit of a bum rap, but only a little bit. He should know better than to talk about Christian values and public schools at the same time. And speaking of raps by bums, I find the following response to Paige by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D, NY) to be much more offensive than what Paige said, or even what he was alleged to have said. From the Post article:

“We believe that you owe a sincere and unambiguous apology to the many American families whose faiths and educational choices your remarks have denigrated,” said a letter to Paige being circulated among members of Congress by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.). “If you are unprepared to make clear that this sort of religious bigotry has no place in the Department of Education, then we would urge you to resign.”

Christianity should not be inculcated in the public schools. All references to Christian values should be appropriately camouflaged as “Judeo-Christian values,” or now I suppose “Judeo-Christian-Muslim values.” But not following this required, and desirable, linguistic protocol hardly qualifies as “religious bigotry.”

(Lest I be accused of the pc-crime of insensitivity, perhaps I should add that I was the only Jewish student in school in a small Southern town filled with Southern Baptists — and Methodists and quite a wide sprinkling of other denominations — in a time before God had been expelled from the schools. I’m sure my Jewish friends find me horribly scarred by the experience, and maybe I was, but it didn’t seem so at the time, and for better or worse Paige-like comments have never bothered me as much as they do people who’ve probably never been in the same room with Southern Baptists.)

Say What? (3)

  1. Laura April 10, 2003 at 3:11 pm | | Reply

    I guess when you are secretary of education you give up the right to have opinions. Given the context of the question Paige was asked, I think he was saying he might prefer a private Christian school to a public school. I don’t see where he says he wants public schools to push Christianity.

    Barbara Cubin’s remark, however, was ugly and inexcusable. I am horrified.

  2. Linda April 10, 2003 at 7:09 pm | | Reply

    John wrote:

    > I was the only Jewish student in school in a small Southern town filled with Southern Baptists — and Methodists and quite a wide sprinkling of other denominations — in a time before God had been expelled from the schools.

    This reminds me of my unpleasant Grade 6 experience in Canada in the early 1970s with a public school teacher who constantly talked about Jesus and religion. I live (much better, thank you) in the US now and from what I have seen, Americans – when they think about Canada at all – think it is some sort of liberal nirvana. Not true! Among its many problems, Canada has teachers unions that are so powerful that teachers can break virtually any rule and still hold their jobs.

  3. Someone over 30 December 1, 2003 at 3:33 pm | | Reply

    I remember growing up around my neighborhood and being pulled over by many cops since the age of 16 to the age of 27. What was funny to me was that they were the same cops over and over. Why is it that they take advantage of people and we can’t do anything about it? I paid over $8000.00 in tickets, after that the DMV would give me my lic. back and all of the sudden I had more tickets and not knowing where they came from.

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