Last year, CJ Pearson, a conservative student at the University of Alabama, appeared on Fox & Friends where he whined about liberal policies at UC Berkeley. CJ began 2023 on Fox & Friends with another whine about how “forced fed” liberal “indoctrination” forced him to leave school. But not to worry – Pearson found a home at Prager University, definitely not “woke” and definitely not a school!
Since his days as an anti-Obama 12 year old, CJ Pearson has had a nice, safe space on Fox & Friends. Now that he’s all grown up, he has become a big Trump fan, who has spoken at Trump rallies and “peacefully” protested at the Capitol on January 6th. But sadly, according to CJ's article in the Murdoch-owned NY Post and his commentary on Fox & Friends, he was forced to leave college because liberal “indoctrination” and “woke” college policies were just too much for him. So, now he’s taking his talents to “Prager University” which isn’t a school at all, but a series of You Tube videos put out by right-wing propagandist Dennis Prager.
The opening of Fox & Friends’ visual framed the message, “Wokeness on Campus,” as Steve Doocy proclaimed, “You’ve seen it all across the country, college students exposing colleges for their woke-left agenda.” (No, Steve, I haven't seen it.)
Introducing Pearson, Doocy cited Pearson’s new “op-ed” in the New York Post, headline with the oh, so anti-woke headline, “Why I’m Leaving College and Choosing Education Over Indoctrination.”
Doocy smiled sweetly as he introduced Pearson as “an on-air personality for Prager U.” He jokingly asked why Pearson, just three semesters short of graduating, would leave school.
CJ whined about being “sick and tired of the idea of being force-fed this indoctrination that’s happening in far too many campuses across this country.” He complained that, as a young Black man, he was offended by “being told that I’m a victim and that America is irredeemably racist.” He added that he just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work at “Prager University.”
Pearson preached that the “fight” on today’s campuses is “a moral fight that we cannot afford to sit back and lose.” Echoing the words of the disgraced former president, during the January 6 Ellipse speech, Pearson said that “if we don’t fight back we will lose this country.”
Doocy called Pearson’s article “great.” He cited Pearson’s newfound revelation that “college is just a business” that young people don’t really need in order to make money. (All of Doocy’s children attended prestigious colleges. One of his daughters is a lawyer)
Pearson agreed and added that the belief that college is necessary is “a big lie.” He claimed that at Stanford University, “the word ‘American’ is harmful language.”
FACT CHECK: Pearson didn't provide correct context. He was obliquely referencing a proposed Stanford Guide to Harmful Language - a non-mandatory guide which provides reasons why certain words could be offensive. According to Stanford, “To be very clear, not only is the use of the term 'American' not banned at Stanford, it is absolutely welcomed.”
Pearson urged parents to discourage their children from attending college because college corrupts the values of young people and OMG teaches them to hate America!
Doocy provided the requisite validation: “It makes a lot of sense.” He encouraged Pearson to ask for a refund from the University of Alabama “because you signed up for an education and they tried to give you indoctrination.”
Pearson did acknowledge that his university education was “pretty good” except for those “errant professors who are focused on pushing an agenda.” (Note: in an article about Pearson’s departure from the school’s student government, nothing was said about CJ being upset with the school).
Pearson told Doocy that he’s “focused on the road ahead,” working with Prager and encouraging students who stay in school to “fight back” against “lies” that professors push. Proud patriot that he is, Pearson ended by saying, “America is not a racist nation” and “you are not a victim.”
Once again, we see how Fox audiences are misinformed. At no point in Pearson’s whine did anybody mention that Prager University is NOT an institution of higher education. But even more significant is the ongoing Fox promotion of the bogus and divisive right-wing narrative that colleges are bastions of evil liberalism. Poor CJ – he would never play a victim, would he?!
You can watch it below, from the January 4, 2023 Fox & Friends,
There is nothing new in the Right Wing’s attack on education. They’ve been at this since 1954, when they were infuriated by the unanimous Supreme Court decision in Brown v Board. Right Wingers today like to make noises that they are totally on board with that ruling, but the reality has been that they’ve been fighting it since the day it was announced. It literally took decades to get Right Wingers in Red states to stop overtly refusing to honor Brown.
When angry Right Wingers they could no longer use school districts and Boards of Education to discriminate against non-whites, they turned to the idea of pulling their kids out of the public schools and putting them in private schools. And then demanding “vouchers” to help support the tuitions. This had a twofold purpose – it was mostly to keep their kids from being put in schools that were being integrated, and it also caused many public schools to lose funding, thus setting up a downward spiral since the 1970s.
By the 1990s, angry Right Wingers had taken over many local school boards and were able to facilitate the creation of “charter schools” to further the goal of making sure that their preferred places to have their kids educated did not fall under any requirement of integration or diversity.
And in the last two decades, we’ve seen a significant movement by angry Right Wingers toward home schooling, where the parents literally remove their children from any schooling environment whatsoever and claim they are providing education themselves. We are only now seeing how devastating the effects of this have been on young people now going into their 20s after having never been exposed to anything other than the extremist views of angry and controlling parents. Frankly, the behavior of the Kyle Rittenhouses of the world would stand as an unfortunate example. (Rittenhouse dropped out of high school, saying he was an “online” student somehow…)
It should be no surprise that angry Right Wingers view any attempt to educate their kids as “indoctrination”. The only surprise now is that too many people are allowing Right Wingers to get away with this nonsense rather than calling them out for their bigotry.
