What in the hell is wrong with you people?

When is art not art at all? When it's in Texas, baby...when it's in Texas.

This story in the New York Times, of "one of them there wacky, liberal hippie art teachers" thrown out of her job because a local conservative nut job parent found some offense in the fact that her child was exposed to nudity in a tour of the Dallas Museum of Art, just boggles the mind.

What in the name of David's doodle has happened to my America? Has this "conservative movement" of the last quarter century really taken such a deep hold that a loved and respected teacher of 28 years can actually lose her job for taking students on a field trip to an art museum?! Please say it ain't so, Michelangelo.

I know, I know...it's Texas. What in the hell do we really expect from the state that gave us the last six years of savage stupidity that is the Bush presidency? But, is this is just the latest indicator that Texas really is like a whole other country as they so often proudly declare, or is it just the latest sign of the coming apocalypse and the fall of Western civilization?

Let me see if I have the facts of America circa 2006 right. It's okay for parents to expose their children to countless hours of violence via the electric babysitter, the almighty television. Oh, and "family safe" PG-13 films like 2002's 'The Ring' where death and dismemberment is the norm are perfectly acceptable. For the record, I enjoyed the American re-make of 'The Ring'. But, there's simply NO WAY IN HELL that my son would be allowed to watch that at the ripe old age of 13. Come on, I would've wet myself if I had...I still nearly did at age 32.

But just so I understand the way things work in George W. Bush's America...so long as no 'F Bombs' are unleashed or no boob is unfurled, we're just hunky dory? What would Jesus watch, right? And as long as we've got companies like Clear Play out there who are more than willing to feed into this little Orwellian fest our Great Leader has built by comprising artistic vision, parents can completely disengage from their kids and allow them to purchase any movie they want without all that needless worrying about horrible language, filthy images of the human body, or actually raising their children.

Is this the way we are to bring up the next generation of Americans? With the ever growing epidemic of poorly raised little adults running around capping their classmates in a "safer America", is it really a good idea to push out those who seek to open our offsprings minds to the beauty of the free world and all the ideas it holds? In looking at ourselves as parents and as the stewards of this nation, I often find myself asking the same question again and again...what is to come from this?

"Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it… All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors,saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children." -—pg 24
1984
George Orwell

don't mess with texas.