It was just another outrageous Saturday Night Live skit, but last weekend’s fictional Lucerne County school board spoof seemed sadly, hilariously familiar to me, and probably to a lot of people around the country, because it’s happening everywhere.
School boards across the nation are besieged by soundalike protestors. It happened again in Knoxville on Wednesday (10/6).
Knox County has been rocked by contention, first over mask-wearing requirements and now over vaccine “mandates.” Occasionally some will tie in other hot button topics – like fear of 5G cell phone towers or promotion of questionable health practices and bizarre remedies. The speakers all seem strangely similar, no matter where the meetings are happening.
Is this nationalized anger spontaneous, or is it orchestrated? The notion that Russian troll farms are back messing with our algorithms makes me think of the World War II-era Gremlins from the Kremlin. Only then, the Russians were on our side and their antics were funny. Now, we got real-live Looney Tunes making doctors, nurses and schoolteachers the bad guys.
A few weeks ago, an angry meeting of the Williamson County school board made national headlines when anti-mask protesters followed pro-mask mandate healthcare workers into the parking lot and offered “We know who you are and where you live” threats. The school board approved a mask mandate despite the noise.
More recently, Superintendent Bob Thomas called off classes the Monday after an anti-mask speaker at a quasi-religious “anti-mandate” Sunday rally in deep west Knox County urged attendees to “shut down” Knox County Schools rather than comply with a federal judge’s order that students wear masks to class to protect their medically fragile school mates. Although Thomas claimed that he was doing it for administrative purposes, and not out of fear of the explicit threats, the timing was suspect.
There are too many of these incidents, and the rhetoric and behavior of the participants are too similar to be coincidental.
If you’ve got a minute, check out the videos here and here.
Note: For years, Charles E. Williams Jr. drew cartoons for our publications. Most were unsigned. His last contribution before his death on September 3, 2021, were the Russian trolls pictured here. Thanks, Charles.
Meanwhile, in the city elections, sources say the Fraternal Order of Police is preparing to endorse all of the conservative, Republican-sponsored candidates for Knoxville City Council. (City council races are non-partisan.) The FOP traditionally interviews the field of candidates before issuing endorsements, but this year, they did not invite the incumbents to participate, and even scheduled candidate interviews at the same time as a League of Women Voters forum. Only one of the right-wing challengers, District 3 contender Nick Ciparro, participated in the League forum. He was hammered in the primary by incumbent Seema Singh but was guaranteed to make the run-off, since there were no other names on the August ballot.
While these expected endorsements conform to the national trend of police unions galvanizing around conservative candidates, it doesn’t appear to be the smartest long-range political move the Knoxville cops could make, since none of the conservative candidates finished first in their primaries. While they scratched up enough votes to finish second and thus qualified to get their names on the November ballot, they are unlikely to get the sweep that Republicans promised. And the FOP guys evidently missed an old adage:
If you come for the king, you’d best not miss.
Betty Bean writes a Thursday opinion column for KnoxTNToday.com.