David,
I could not agree with you more.
See the following letter below (which was dated the week before the general
election last Tuesday), from a friend's sister at the University of Toledo
in Ohio, regarding Mrs. Lynne Cheney, the wife of the Republican vice
presidential candidate.
May justice and reason prevail.
Richard
-----
"As the presidential election approaches, we need to take a look also at
Bush's vice presidential running mate, Dick Cheney...well not Dick, but
his wife, Lynne. It has been strongly rumored that Lynne Cheney will get
the spot of Secretary of Education in a Bush administration. Although she
has been very low key during this campaign, this woman is anything but low
key.
In 1986, Reagan appointed her to head the National Endowment for the
Humanities (NEH).
While at the NEH, she campaigned against anything she considered to be
"liberal". One of her first campaigns was aimed at the PBS series called
"The Africans", because she said the program was "propaganda" in that it
described Africa's historic problems as a result of European exploitation.
She insisted on having the NEH's name removed in the credits and refused
funding for publicity of the series. At the NEH, she criticized colleges
and universities for moving away from traditional Western Civilization
courses toward global history and culture. She argued that the American
experience is the high point of world history. She also attempted to stack
the NEH's advisory panel with right wingers, including Carol Iannone, a
woman who had written an article in the conservative Commentary that stated
that giving National Book Awards and Pulitzer Prizes to African American
women writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker sacrificed "the demands
of excellence to the democratic dictatorship of mediocrity." Fortunately,
the Congress was not predominately Republican at the time, and despite a
major lobbying effort on the part of Lynne Cheney, the appointment of
Iannone was killed.
After she left the NEH, she joined the conservative American Enterprise
Institute, as well as became a board member of the defense contractor
Lockheed Martin. She set out on campaign to get rid of the NEH, and
successfully got rid of the National History Standards, published after
she left the NEH with NEH funding. She maintained the standards were
too much about women and minorities and not enough about white men. She
said that Harriet Tubman was "mentioned six times" in the standards,
while George Washington "makes only a fleeting appearance" and Thomas
Edison gets no mention at all. In fact, the standards were the product of
more than two years of meetings involving over 6,000 teachers,
administrators, scholars, and parents, along with thirty-five
organizations, ranging from the American Association of School Librarians
to the National Council for the Social Studies. In truth, white males are
mentioned on every page of the standards.
This is just the tip of the iceberg about this woman. She has openly
spoken out against gays and lesbians, and against equal protection of the
laws for hem. Yet, her own daughter is openly living a lesbian lifestyle.
{I don't know what that says about her relationship with her daughter,
perhaps that she holds her personal philosophy about gays more dearly than
her child}.
I say this woman is dangerous, and if our knowledge of Bush and Cheney
isn't enough to make us understand that we must get out the vote for Al
Gore and Joe Lieberman, then let's do it to stop this woman from impacting
further on the political scene!"
Christine Fox, Ph.D.
Educational Research and Measurement
College of Education
The University of Toledo
-----------------------------------------------------------------
office hours for Fall Semester:
M: 4-5:30
W: 10-12, 4-5:30
phone: 419-530-2473, 4302
=============
>Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 14:01:59 -0800 (PST)
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David Marine)
>Subject: Re: Craziness, the Election
>
>Hey List --
>
>As Seal says, "we're never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy."
>I think it's telling that the last time we had such a close race was
>'60, just before a profound shift in our nation's consciousness. I
>believe that within the present turmoil are the seeds of a new America,
>though I don't pretend to know what it will look like.
>
>On another note, Carlton posted about the Reagan era and AIDS, and as
>someone who lived through that initial crisis on the front lines in NYC,
>I can tell you that the threat we felt was very real. C. Everett Koop
>has stated that the reason Reagan failed to respond to the crisis was
>not homophobia, but "a hatred of gay people at the highest level" (i.e.
>Reagan & co.). It's important to realize that for many who vote, the
>question of who is in office may literally be a life or death issue.
>Personally, I feel that Gore and his camp should fight Bush with every
>legal means at their disposal.
>
>David
