I get periodic emails from Scholastic, since I order our book club items online. Well, lo and behold, I got this tonight:



Okay, so the education system is not what we'd like for it to be, but Scholastic makes millions (if not billions) each year off teachers, students, and parents...not to mention book fairs sponsored by these "mediocre" schools! I felt insulted. So I hit "reply" and sent some snark their way, explaining basically what I said above, plus informing them that I will not be placing an order with them this school year, unless an apology is issued...And I thought some of my fellow teachers here might want to do the same.

Full email is here.

Contact form here.

Other contact information:

Worldwide Headquarters and Editorial Office
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New York, New York 10012

General Information
212-343-6100
www.scholastic.com

Investor Relations
212-343-6741 investor_relations@scholastic.com

Media Inquiries
Corporate Communications
212-343-4563
news@scholastic.com

I'm a Hellenic polytheist, but can think of a range of quotes that speak to my beliefs.

"Nothing to excess." ... "Know thyself." - Mottoes carved at the entrance of the Temple of Apollon at Delphi

***

"...Those whom your smile and grace illumine: their fields flourish with corn-ears, their livestock and wealth multiply, only the very old go to the grave, and strife, which wastes even well-established houses, avoids the family: wives of brothers and husband's sisters sit around one table.

Lady, may my true friends and I be among those, Queen, and may I always care about song..."
- Hymn to Artemis, Callimachus

***

"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life."
- Prayer of St Francis of Assisi

***

"Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh."
- Jesus, The Beatitudes (New Revised Standard Version)

With these comments, Gibson makes not only the child-free (of which I am one), but also the single-child families of this country out to be selfish, elitist WASPS who have nothing better to do than to worry about the state of their Beemer's leather of their white pile carpet. Give me a freaking break. How about those of us who are responsible enough to realize that we could not raise a child in a fair, responsible manner, or at the level of comfort that a child would deserve? How about those who choose not to have children because they simply don't want them (and thus would be poor parents)? Or those who recognize that they don't want to inflict genetically-carried problems of their own (such as alcoholism or mental illness) on their offspring? Or those who choose to have one child and raise it well and comfortably, rather than raise a brood of hungry, neglected cretins?

In the full article (link through Media Matters from the priginal post), he continues: "Forget about that zero population growth stuff that my poor generation was misled on... Make babies, or put another way -- a slogan for our times: 'procreation not recreation.' That's 'My Word.'"

His poor generation? Poor, deluded boomers?!? Good Gods, those selfish, materialistic, hypocrites now want my sympathy for being "misled" into not breeding themselves into eternal power? Oh, wait a minute!...

First, claiming "delusion" allows folks like Gibson to sit pretty in their comfy cars and small families while peering down their noses at the rest of us.

Second, Gibson's entire commentary ultimately betrays his true feelings and agenda, which revolve not around a fear of declining sustainable birthrate (though he claimed that in a later backpedal), but rather around a fear of miscegenation, so-called "race-mixing." It's not acceptable in modern, civilized society to admit that one feels that persons of a different pigmentation are a different "race," so the racists cloak their bluster in terms like "declning white population," rather than "increased ethnic mixing." The truth? WASP racists -- for so long the power elite in the U.S. -- are seeing their power shrink as we undergo another immigration wave. It's happened before, with similar crowing and yowling: in the mid-nineteenth century, the wave of Irish immigrants incited a backlash of segregation and abuses...until they internarried into mainstream America. Same with the Italian influx of the 1920s, which brought my own family to America. Hell, for that matter, Benjamin Franklin bemoaned the wave of poor German immigrants in the late eighteenth century! It's not that Gibson and those like him are worried about losing some obscure breeding race, but rather that they know from their own history that every time this happens, the white elite (a) are knocked from some significant position of power previously reserved just for them, and (b) lose their current scapegoat ethnic/immigrant group, previouly relied on for cheap labor because they are seen as somehow "less than human."

Furthermore, we can infer from Gibson's rant, as well as his admonition to "procreate, not recreate," that this racist elitism also underlies the drive by the religious bigots of this country to outlaw not only abortion, but also any form of birth control. Just as the elites need an unadulterated underclass to do their dirty work, the religious "leaders" of this country -- those hucksters, those con-men, those control freaks -- need an uncurtailed supply of "sheep" to blindly follow, an underclass who will turn over their ten percent without question, in exchange for a measure of hope in a hopeless world.

Take the red pill, America, and break out of the delusion. Racism is a lie, a shackle meant to provide a means to power for an elite who needs us poor, multitudinous, and compliant...who want us to hate the "other" (color, faith, orientation, party) rather than them...who want us to believe in them rather than in the power of us all working together and loving together and breeding us back into one solid, beautifully tan HUMAN race.