Scrapbook
Scrapbook Hurricane Hysteria There was a time in America when the weather was merely the topic of idle conversation. Now, it's big news, the subject of all-hands-on-deck media coverage, and the...
...O'Mal-ley will almost certainly win November's general election, too...
...They shouldn't say someone is a "quadriplegic," for example...
...Adhere to the goal of serving the people and socialism, to the policy of letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend, and promote socialist science, literature and art...
...Now, it's big news, the subject of all-hands-on-deck media coverage, and the results are appalling...
...Nor can the actual campaign O'Mal-ley and his competitors had run...
...Shame on both papers...
...That phrase "minimizes the unique history and culture of each cultural group...
...Garrison Keillor, call your office...
...Be confident and bold in exploring and experimenting to create a new situation for State-owned enterprises' reform and development...
...Baltimore being Baltimore, Mr...
...Ninety "cultural dynamics trainers" bearing its wisdom are poised to fan out across the entire state...
...The implicit assumption of the Post and Times headlines was that it should have: that voters in a majority-black city should be expected to choose a black mayor, and that it is automatically "news" when they do not...
...All of which is rather odd...
...But he is also something else, as the next day's New York Times and Washington Post were quick to point out...
...Baltimore is a majority black jurisdiction...
...Land O'Loons In 1990, the Minnesota legislature passed a law requiring something called "cultural dynamics training" for anyone licensed to provide child care around the state...
...And now, after $700,000 i in public expenditures, "Building Cultural Connections" is finally ready to go...
...He is, you see, a Democrat...
...No, make that simply shame on the i Times...
...In fact, Vice President Gore boasted that it was the biggest peacetime evacuation in history...
...O'Malley, in other words, made no appeal based on skin color...
...And here you thought all Minnesota children were above average...
...And though the weather wasn't twice as bad in 1998, the number of stories more than doubled...
...The Weather Channel set records for viewership...
...According to Katherine Kersten of the Center of the American Experiment, the excellent Minneapolis think tank, here are just few of the cultural connections these trainers will be building should the curriculum be approved by the state Department of Children, Families, and Learning: Day-care providers are urged to beware the "assumption that English is the most important language...
...Small wonder that officials, who follow the cameras, step forward with emergency measures that more often than not are premature, ill-advised, and draconian...
...True, distant third-place finisher Lawrence A. Bell 3rd had urged black voters to support him because "I look like you...
...Ditto for second-place finisher Carl Stokes's complaints about the likely effects of O'Malley's crime proposals on minority residents...
...And non-disabled white kids...
...Within 24 hours, the Washington Post repudiated its "White Man" headline...
...Government workers were instructed to stay home...
...White Men Can't Write Headlines Turnout was heavy last Tuesday in Baltimore's mayoral primary election...
...In 1996, bad weather rose to number eight, then to five in 1997...
...THE SCRAPBOOK hereby invites readers to submit four slogans in honor of the fourth anniversary of the founding of The Scrapbook...
...Those residents themselves were not impressed...
...Let a hundred songbirds take flight and soar overhead...
...It is an artifact of "non-disabled European American" hegemonism, and the earlier children in day care are exposed to such acid, "the more likely they are to reject their home culture" and its sustaining "group identity...
...In fact, until outgoing Mayor Kurt Schmoke was elected a few years ago, Baltimore had never had any other kind...
...New Slogans from the New China The General Office of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party has coined 50 new slogans for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, which takes place October 1. Here are a few of The Scrapbook's favorites...
...The Post was even more succinct and obvious, right there on the front page: "White Man Gets Mayoral Nomination in Baltimore...
...Biracial or disabled kids "being raised by non-disabled European American parents" have been "separated" from their true identities and must live "without mentors or positive role models...
...So a "startle" factor can't explain these headlines...
...Be confident and bold...
...Mandatory evacuations were then ordered, and three million people hit the road...
...No, no, no—a person "has quadriplegia," an altogether more sensitive formulation...
...An organization called the Cultural Dynamics Education Project then spent nine years designing and pilot-testing a curriculum ; for the effort...
...Yikes...
...This year, the weather—not impeachment or Kosovo or Littleton—may well end up as the most heavily covered news topic of the year...
...Babysitters shouldn't any longer say "people of color," either...
...All this was played out as Hurricane Floyd approached the East Coast last week...
...Ugly...
...The networks and cable news went wild...
...Did the fact that almost all of this turned out to be unnecessary cause any chagrin...
...Above all, day-care providers should be alert to the torture of modern childhood in all its forms...
...O'Malley beat Stokes by nearly two-to-one, with considerable support from black voters and a good number of prominent black elected officials throughout the state of Maryland...
...They have "identities built on confusion" and must struggle to overcome "psychological problems of moral hypocrisy...
...But Bell's naked racial appeal, by universal agreement, had badly backfired...
...And when the counting was done, 36-year-old city councilman Martin O'Malley emerged as the big winner...
...It was not as if some woman had given birth to a zebra or France had won a war...
...But it was not the storm of the century...
...Yes, Floyd brought heavy rain and high winds along the coast, which caused flooding and power outages...
...The New York Times, by stark and smelly contrast, has so far chosen not to apologize for or even acknowledge its own bad judgment...
...President Clinton rushed back early from a trip to New Zealand, then preemptively declared a disaster area in Florida and Georgia before the hurricane had even arrived...
...Meanwhile, the House of Representatives shut down, and the New York Stock Exchange closed early...
...Day-care providers should watch what they say, even in European American...
...Minority and disabled kids being raised by their own kind are no better off: They inevitably "internalize" European America's "unjust and cruel oppression," come to "believe its lies," and grow up shackled in "shame, hopelessness," and "chronic depression...
...Dan Rather deployed himself in the storm's path...
...A pattern has set in: The press hypes the peril supposedly posed by a hurricane or heat wave or blizzard, politicians overreact, and the public suffers...
...That headline, read a clarification in the next day's editions, "distorted the role of race in the election and violated Washington Post policy about reporting racial identifications only in proper context...
...Don't even ask...
...It is not...
...So maybe we should all calm down, starting with the media...
...And be sure to wear a hat when they do...
...Hardly...
...Baltimore Democrats Pick White Councilman in Mayoral Primary," the Times announced...
...Improve socialist culture and ethics...
...Before 1996, storms never made the top ten list of stories on the network evening news shows...
...Rely on the working class wholeheartedly...
...Schools took a holiday...
...Baltimore has had white mayors before...
...race did not in fact play much of a role in this campaign...
Vol. 5 • September 1999 • No. 2
