Shaneen Barron is the woman’s name. The news video is from the Denver, CO ABC affiliate and was picked up and broadcast by CNN. Don’t say the CNN news producers cannot judge a priceless film clip when they see one. The clip is probably up on YouTube or many more video servers by now and is sure to go viral, but you can watch the original here:
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/video/20704892/index.html
A search for Shaneen Barron turns up about 35,000 hits on Google. Here is a rant posted on Craigslist for Denver.
Keep your kids out of school and let them watch FOX all day like you do.
. Are you scared? You should be since George Bush made made enemies of this country faster than he could kill them. You are nothing more than a racist and a sore loser. You pass an opportunity for your childeren to listen to encouragement from the President of the United States of America to attempt to stimulate insill the desire within them to stay in school and make something of themselves. It then gives you the opportunity to talk to them about it and create an open channel of discussion between you and your childeren – God forbid!!
I am glad your dirtbag kisds won’t be in school. .
. I am a die hard card carrying member of the GOP and I am disgusted by you. .
. Your kids will have no more contact with mine – and you know who this is.
. If you are afraid, then move to Europe or better yet the Middle East where they do shove religion down kids throats – ever heard of separation of Church and State – maybe your mom took you out of school that day…
. Just remember how many African American childeren were 14 years of age on last election day – they will all be voting in 2012 – so get used to having a black president. .
Obviously the lack of oxygen affect some of us more than others.
Do you sense the author of this post was in a hurry to express his thoughts? And here is a blog post by a Republican who is distressed at losing his party to right wing Christians.
America’s Most Stupid Person?
I know we’re not supposed to call these people stupid, but Shaneen Barron of Highlands Ranch, CO may be the most stupid person in the country. She’s on film crying because the President of the United States is going to give an address to tell school kids to work hard and take responsibility for their educations. And hand-washing. He’s also going to tell kids to wash their hands.
And that’s reason to go on TV and cry? Because her kids will have to listen to “that?”
Being a conservative does not make someone stupid. Crying on TV because President Obama wants to give a fluffy speech to kids about working hard and taking responsibility for yourself makes you a complete moron.
I can’t get the video to embed, so click here to see the face of hysterical idiocy.
The link doesn’t function when pasted into Amazon’s software. Here is a link to Huffington Post article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/03/obama-schoolchildren-spee_n_276544.html?page=21&show_comment_id=30330877#comment_30330877
Here is a comment that I thought was germane:
This right wing politics is getting pretty crazy. But what do you expect when so many right wing religious believers have rejected a scientific worldview and believe in a Flintstones history. This sector has always been pretty adept at adopting technology to get their message out, however irrational it may be. They appropriated radio after the Scopes trial and built an alternative cultural infrastructure and continued to use TV in the same way, and finally decided to use the city machine model, (perfected and formerly used by the democrats) to build political power in the last 30 years. We are witnessing the results of years even decades of the acceptance of modern technology built on a Flintstones worldview (it wasn’t the Flintstones fault). It’s enough to make you crazy–well not you.
On Wednesday, September 16th and again yesterday, Friday, September 25th, on the Rachel Maddow Show, Rachel interviewed a self-described former Republican, former evangelical, former rightwingnut person, Frank Schaeffer, author of the book Crazy for God, who made the interesting and profound remark that those “crazy” people who are sitting by their television sets watching and believing Glen Beck and waiting for the Apocalypse and Armageddon, for whom bad news is good news of the coming debacle, for whom facts are unpleasant diversions created by the Anti-Christ and his minions to deceive us and make us unsure of the coming End Times, are in fact living their own morbid and insane prophecy—they are truly the “Left Behind.”
They are left behind by science, which they were taught was difficult (for their teachers) and that science, like in the middle ages, conflicts with gospel they have been force-fed since childhood. They are left behind by technology, which is basically indistinguishable from magic for them, yet they employ it on a daily basis. They are left behind by the evolving culture, which now includes persons from places on this planet about which they have no idea. They are left behind in every way important to the growth and good mental health of human beings and they are frightened and resigned to a fate they cannot escape. They hope that their bodies and souls will be taken up in a Rapture of the Righteous, even while they thieve and scheme against every tenet and principle of their so-called Christian faith. They are so left behind the logic of their situation they cannot see the ugly irony of their existence … and there is a feeling among most of the rest of us that these people are lost forever, better left to themselves to fester into seething hatreds and to consume their own kind in pitches of religiously tainted political fury.
There are those who are preying on these people, of course. There have been snake-oil salesmen and Elmer Gantrys since the beginning of the republic and on back into the recesses of time. Humans do prey on weaker, more frightened humans, and their methods have become quite refined over the years and centuries.
James Brett, OPED News
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Left-Behind-by-James-Brett-090926-83.html
atheism.about.com/b/2009/09/02/faith-religion-make-conservative-republicans-impervious-to-facts-reality.htm
… increasingly frenzied claims have become so detached from reality that they often seem like black comedy. The right-wing magazine US Investors’ Daily claimed that if Stephen Hawking had been British, he would have been allowed to die at birth by its “socialist” healthcare system. Hawking responded with a polite cough that he is British, and “I wouldn’t be here without the NHS”.
This tendency to simply deny inconvenient facts and invent a fantasy world isn’t new; it’s only becoming more heightened. It ran through the Bush years like a dash of bourbon in water. When it became clear that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, the US right simply claimed they had been shipped to Syria. When the scientific evidence for man-made global warming became unanswerable, they claimed – as one Republican congressman put it – that it was “the greatest hoax in human history”, and that all the world’s climatologists were “liars”. The American media then presents itself as an umpire between “the rival sides”, as if they both had evidence behind them. …
How do they train themselves to be so impervious to reality? It begins, I suspect, with religion. They are taught from a young age that it is good to have “faith” – which is, by definition, a belief without any evidence to back it up. You don’t have “faith” that Australia exists, or that fire burns: you have evidence. You only need “faith” to believe the untrue or unprovable. Indeed, they are taught that faith is the highest aspiration and most noble cause. Is it any surprise this then percolates into their political views? Faith-based thinking spreads and contaminates the rational.
Johann Hari, The Independent
If children are taught to not only believe things on faith, but to also reject claims that are supported by evidence and reason when those claims contradict faith, then it shouldn’t be surprising that we get beliefs like those listed above. This sort of attitude is a great benefit to authority figures since they are, of course, the ultimate arbiters of which beliefs should be taken on faith and which shouldn’t.
What would happen if American schools instituted not just classes on critical thinking and skepticism, but actually inserted lessons on critical thinking throughout the curriculum? What would happen if students in public schools were consistently taught the importance of believing things based on evidence and reasoned arguments, not faith or slavish adherence to tradition or authorities? Who would be able to object without looking completely foolish? — Austin Cline, About.com
Religion Makes Conservative Republicans Impervious to Facts