Working class heroes

GOP candidate for the Michigan governorship Tudor Dixon is in the news for complaining that kids whose parents aren’t currently going through a divorce can have access to books about divorce through their school libraries, since that could be upsetting.

Also upsetting: books that discuss the historical effects of slavery — 66% of Republican voters think such books should not be available in public schools — and books that mention the existence of trans people — 91% of GOP voters are opposed to making such texts available to our children who are the future. (As usual, when it comes to right wing claims that public schools are indoctrinating children, EAIAC).

I was glancing at Dixon’s biography, and it’s real inspiring: her first job was working in a foundry. It would be churlish to point out that the foundry was owned by her father, and that she was an “executive” at it. She then appeared in some cheap horror films/tv shows for awhile, before becoming a “conservative media commenter.” In other words, she’s another totally unqualified joke candidate who among other things has never worked a day in her life.

On a somewhat related note, this is a perceptive and in some ways empathetic profile of J.D. Vance, that concludes that the key to understanding him is his traumatic childhood, which featured among other things a pretty terrible divorce. So I suppose one of the book’s that the Dixon regime would ban from Michigan school libraries would be Hillbilly Elegy.