Stephen Schwartz: Let’s Hear It for Tex Avery
[Stephen Schwartz is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard.]
The nationwide uproar over the Texas State Board of Education’s (SBOE) decision to reform the history curriculum began with the release, last July, of proposed new standards for the writing and production of textbooks, and for student understanding. With a school enrollment closing in on five million, Texas practices “statewide adoption” of textbooks, which makes it a leading force in educational publishing. And the state board of education, which has a conservative majority, had chosen a new direction, emphasizing pro-capitalist values and the role of Christian principles in the foundation of the American republic.
Predictably, liberal-left political interests, and the mainstream media, in Texas and across the country, went berserk. The board was accused of removing Thomas Jefferson from the curriculum, of promoting the Confederacy (to which Texas belonged), and of justifying McCarthyism. All such claims were wrong—as anybody who consulted the online draft of the standards could discern. Jefferson had not been removed from consideration as a major participant in the creation of the republic; the Confederacy had not been favored over the Union.
The critical howls over the treatment of McCarthyism were particularly interesting. The board’s new language called on students to be able to explain how the activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy, as well as those of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the arms race, and the space race, “increased Cold War tensions.” But the board of education further mandated for study “how the later release of the Venona Papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.”...
Critics were even more exercised by the proposed inclusion of previously unmentioned people and institutions. These include “the causes, key organizations, and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association.” The Houston Chronicle editorialized against “too much mention of figures such as former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and conservative organizations such as the Moral Majority and none (or not nearly enough) of influential individuals and groups on the political left.” In fact, Newt Gingrich was never mentioned in any draft of the standards....
Later Paul Henley of the Texas State Teachers Association, a powerful public employee union, assailed the board, blasting the replacement of a reference to Santa Barraza—a Texas woman of Hispanic origin, alive and well, who paints folkloric representations of the U.S.-Mexico borderland—with the late cartoon animator Tex Avery (1908-80) on a list of Texas-born contributors to the arts. Most of them, like Barraza, are obscure; Avery is not. According to the intense, rancorous Henley, Tex Avery was “the cartoonist behind racist characters like the Indian Princess, Uncle Tom, and Speedy Gonzales.” He declared that Texas’s inclusion of Avery in its curriculum represented “either a lack of research or
racial prejudice.”...
Henley railed against Tex Avery, progenitor of Elmer Fudd, whom Henley sought to imitate, as well as Bugs, Daffy, and a very politically incorrect Porky (especially because he was fat). I was naturally reminded of other cartoon controversies, including the recent specimens portraying the Prophet Muhammad. Henley seemed determined to demonstrate that the mentality of the Texas left and its functionaries is little different from that of Islamist fanatics who try to kill cartoonists. Ideological rigidity and humor—especially anarchic amusement of the kind found in Warners cartoons—are natural enemies.
The board voted, 9-5, to adopt the new standards.
Read entire article at Weekly Standard
The nationwide uproar over the Texas State Board of Education’s (SBOE) decision to reform the history curriculum began with the release, last July, of proposed new standards for the writing and production of textbooks, and for student understanding. With a school enrollment closing in on five million, Texas practices “statewide adoption” of textbooks, which makes it a leading force in educational publishing. And the state board of education, which has a conservative majority, had chosen a new direction, emphasizing pro-capitalist values and the role of Christian principles in the foundation of the American republic.
Predictably, liberal-left political interests, and the mainstream media, in Texas and across the country, went berserk. The board was accused of removing Thomas Jefferson from the curriculum, of promoting the Confederacy (to which Texas belonged), and of justifying McCarthyism. All such claims were wrong—as anybody who consulted the online draft of the standards could discern. Jefferson had not been removed from consideration as a major participant in the creation of the republic; the Confederacy had not been favored over the Union.
The critical howls over the treatment of McCarthyism were particularly interesting. The board’s new language called on students to be able to explain how the activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy, as well as those of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the arms race, and the space race, “increased Cold War tensions.” But the board of education further mandated for study “how the later release of the Venona Papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.”...
Critics were even more exercised by the proposed inclusion of previously unmentioned people and institutions. These include “the causes, key organizations, and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association.” The Houston Chronicle editorialized against “too much mention of figures such as former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and conservative organizations such as the Moral Majority and none (or not nearly enough) of influential individuals and groups on the political left.” In fact, Newt Gingrich was never mentioned in any draft of the standards....
Later Paul Henley of the Texas State Teachers Association, a powerful public employee union, assailed the board, blasting the replacement of a reference to Santa Barraza—a Texas woman of Hispanic origin, alive and well, who paints folkloric representations of the U.S.-Mexico borderland—with the late cartoon animator Tex Avery (1908-80) on a list of Texas-born contributors to the arts. Most of them, like Barraza, are obscure; Avery is not. According to the intense, rancorous Henley, Tex Avery was “the cartoonist behind racist characters like the Indian Princess, Uncle Tom, and Speedy Gonzales.” He declared that Texas’s inclusion of Avery in its curriculum represented “either a lack of research or
racial prejudice.”...
Henley railed against Tex Avery, progenitor of Elmer Fudd, whom Henley sought to imitate, as well as Bugs, Daffy, and a very politically incorrect Porky (especially because he was fat). I was naturally reminded of other cartoon controversies, including the recent specimens portraying the Prophet Muhammad. Henley seemed determined to demonstrate that the mentality of the Texas left and its functionaries is little different from that of Islamist fanatics who try to kill cartoonists. Ideological rigidity and humor—especially anarchic amusement of the kind found in Warners cartoons—are natural enemies.
The board voted, 9-5, to adopt the new standards.