Fox's Dagen McDowell, Sean Duffy and Virginia's Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears suggested that Jill Biden supports pornography in elementary school books for all children.
To get the propaganda rolling, The Bottom Line show played a clip of First Lady Jill Biden talking about how attacks on the LGBTQ community represent a threat to democracy at large. She said that democracies don't disappear overenight but bit by bit: “a book banned, a court decision, a 'Don't Say Gay' law.” Noting that Berlin was a center of LGBTQ culture before World War II, she added, “One group of people loses their rights, and then another and another. Until one morning you wake up and you no longer live in a democracy.”
Cohost Dagen McDowell twisted Biden's words to both defend book banning and smear her as some kind of pervert. “That's First Lady Jill Biden comparing states that prohibit sexually explicit books in elementary schools to Nazi Germany,” McDowell said.
“And leave it to Axios to do the Democrats' bidding and singling out Virginia as one of the top states in the nation for book bans,” cohost Sean Duffy chimed in.
Then, just to impress on viewers how righteous book bans are, McDowell added that Axios got its data from the American Library Association, “an organization led by a person, a self-described Marxist!”
Next, she welcomed Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears for what McDowell described as “a reality check.”
At no time did Sears or any of the others deny that Virginia is a top state for book banning. Instead, Winsome falsely accused Jill Biden of comparing book banning to the Holocaust. (Never mind that Donald Trump plans to put immigrants in concentration camps and Steve Bannon said that very day that Trump would imprison Democrats if he's reelected.)
“If I were a family member of someone who had died in the gas chambers, I'd be calling somebody right now and ask them have you lost your mind?” Sears said. “We are talking about sexually explicit materials, sexually explicit books, in what, kindergarten and we're seeing in Virginia parents need to be able to know that these are the books that their children are reading.”
“Have you seen some of them, Dagen? They're filth is what they are,” Sears continued. “We're not banning anything. We just want parents to be involved in their children's lives. How could that be controversial?”
If it's not controversial, why did Sears lie about what her state is up to? According to Axios, “Some of the most targeted books deal with themes of social justice, discrimination and inequality,” i.e. not sex. Furthermore, the data suggests bans “are increasingly coming in bulk from small, coordinated efforts.” Axios also reported that “Last year, Hanover County removed 19 books from school libraries without input from parents or teachers before creating a library review panel.” Axios also noted that activists are pressuring public libraries, too, per ALA, saying, “The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries rose by 92%, versus 11% at schools.
Neither McDowell nor Duffy pointed any of that out. Again, nobody disputed it, either. They were too busy attacking Jill Biden for what she didn't say. Probably because they didn't want to dispute what she did.
I've long said that Rachel Campos-Duffy is a shockingly stupid Fox News host. Her hubby Sean Duffy appears a good match for her in that regard. He followed up Sears' distortions by falsely claiming Jill Biden was “lying to the American people.” He suggested that her beef was because “we don't let Penthouse or Hustler or Playboy into - let fourth or third graders read in school.”
Actually, last I checked Penthouse, Hustler and Playboy, assuming they are still being published, are magazines, not books. I seriously doubt that any public school, no matter how liberal, subscribes to any of those publications.
Nevertheless, Sears said, “They have no place whatsoever in elementary and high school or whatever.” Then she added, “But if that's what the parents want, you know, then that's the parents and they make that decision. And that's all we're saying in Virginia. Let the parents decide what their children should be reading. I, as a parent, that would not be appropriate for my children, I would not say that. They could read that. But if somebody else wants their child to read that then okay, fine.”
Oh, come on! Are we really supposed to believe that if parents wanted a school to subscribe to Hustler that Sears would be OK with that? Or that if Joe or Jill or Hunter Biden said they wanted their grandchildren or children to learn about sex by reading Hustler that it wouldn't be a HUGE right-wing scandal? Neither McDowell or Duffy seemed to have a problem with Sears' dubious comment.
Next Sears falsely accused Jill Biden of “dividing our country even more” with her “desperation tactics” and “lies.”
As if to prove just how disingenuous the whole discussion was, a smirking McDowell closed with quite the divisive dig. She sneered that Virginia's Fairfax county was “pouring on the wokeness once again” by voting unanimously to celebrate Transgender Day of Visibility on Easter, “of all days.”
So much for letting people or their elected officials decide for themselves.
Sears is supposed to be Lt. Gov. for the entire state. But she seemed fine with divisively criticizing one of her counties. She responded by playing the persecuted Christian card. “So Christians are asked to be tolerant of so much. Is anyone tolerant of us?”
You can get a load of what passes for tolerance and business news below, from FBN's March 28, 2024 The Bottom Line.
My Macbook is supposed to be fixed and ready for me tomorrow so fingers crossed!