When is enough, enough? Some thoughts on the recent racism at the health department meeting.

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It should have been a long time ago.

If you haven’t heard something really horrible happened around here earlier this week:

Not sure who is reacting with the shocked face, because anyone who knows even a quarter of the history of this country should not be shocked. Even sadness is not appropriate, it should only be anger. Anger and some kind resolution to help repair our sick culture is all that is needed right now.

Let’s first focus on the subject of that aforementioned meeting. It also should not come as a shock that black mothers face more difficulties during pregnancy, more still births, and more birth complications than white women. If this subject is somehow new to you, there’s a documentary called Aftershock that can help you get up to speed. The reasons for this are rooted in racism, and the subject that some people don’t even want to teach their kids about, slavery.

The whole debate about CRT and teaching kids accurate history emboldens ignorant folk, like the ones that thought it was A-OK to come into a public health meeting and spew their vitriol all over everyone else. When we allow people to ban courses on African American history, when we refuse to acknowledge the actual history of our country, and when we sit back and feign surprise this incident occurred; we allow these bad actors a stage. And we are all to blame for it.

There is no debate to be had about whether or not to teach the truth about slavery or the struggle for equal rights in this country. For hundreds of years we have allowed people to put forth a mythology and hero worship version of American history that has not served any of us well. We need to frame ourselves around what Thomas Jefferson first wrote, and later what Elizabeth Cady Stanton fixed for him 72 years later:

We hold these truths to be self – evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. 

That’s it, that’s our common denominator as Americans. We strive to fulfill the promise of this nation that has not yet been realized. All of us, which means we don’t hide history, we don’t discriminate and say terrible things about people different from us, AND we find self-worth outside the race you happened to have been born into (that’s for you white people).

The health department is going to reschedule that meeting and we will be sure to post the new date on our social media. We need to show up en masse, and we need to demand that our county not become a hellscape like the one DeSantis is trying to create.

Local Yokel Legislating Time! Time to Fight Back Against the Pearl Clutchers!

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And it can hurt everyone else around them.

There’s a whole potpourri of dumb shittery going on in this country. Most of it in Florida, because durh. If you haven’t heard about the firing of a principal because some ignoramus didn’t want their child to look at art, take a look here.

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/29/1166735136/visitors-flock-to-see-michelangelos-david-sculpture-after-school-uproar-in-flori

Besides the appalling amount of time someone must have on their hands to complain about a naked statue from the Renaissance, it’s embarrassing to the rest of us. According the above referenced article the statue is getting a lot of visitors lately. And we don’t have to stretch our imaginations too far to imagine many of those visitors are snickering at us prudish Americans. Even though, in reality, a vast majority of us are not bothered by stone figures of men. This Lady Yokel remembers taking my children to the Walters Art gallery to look at art. There were many naked statues and my then preschool-aged daughter asked why one of the boy statues had a tail. Not only did she get a lesson in anatomy, we have a fun family memory that we will never forget! No way I was pulling a John Ashcroft and asking the museum to cover up the stone genitalia.

Florida once again came into the news this week when one parent’s complaint caused a documentary about Ruby Bridges to be removed from a school district while the district reviewed the film. To spread the love around it’s not just Florida, though they do seem to be very special down there. We also have one person (cough, cough Cindy Rose), who has complained about some books we know she hasn’t read. As a result of her complaint a whole bunch of people are on a committee, and do you know what they have to do that Cindy didn’t? READ THE BOOKS!

Reading isn’t boring, people who don’t read are boring.

Dr. Jason Johnson and Randi Weingarten spoke on MSNBC’s Deadline White House yesterday about this very issue. Dr. Johnson made the point that local districts need to pass laws that prevent one person, who may not even live in the district where they are making the complaint, from removing books, movies, or art from schools and libraries. That statement got the old Yokel noggin thinking!

It’s time for some new legislation!

We propose that Frederick County Public Schools and Frederick County Public Libraries adopt the following policies:

  1. In order for a book, film, lesson, or art to come under review 10 community members need to make a complaint.
  2. That complaint should include the following:
  • A written synopsis of the media or lesson to prove the complainant is familiar with what they are complaining about.
  • A thorough analysis of the harm found in said media.
  • Peer reviewed research that backs up the harm claim.
  • Proof that the person making a complaint is from the local community AND is personally affected (parent, guardian, staff member, student, etc.) by the so called harmful media.

3. If you can’t do what is listed under #2, rethink your life choices. Because maybe you are the fucking problem.

We admit that the local authorities may have to clean the language a bit, but hey it’s a start! We need to fight back against the nutbaggery, because we don’t know about you, but we are tired of their shit.

Don’t let this be our future.

Vote for your new Frederick County Flag: Yokel style!

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In case you haven’t heard, there is a contest to redesign Frederick County’s flag. If you are a serious artist, please click here for more details. We are going to have our own Yokel brand of fun with this! Vote for your favorite flag at the bottom of this post!

Choice A: The Black Book. Remember way back yonder when we had the Black Book scandal here in Fredericktowne? Here’s a design to commemorate that period in Frederick’s history.

Choice B: Y’all remember back when Billy Shreve told us that any waterway in Frederick County was safe to drink from? He never took up our challenge to drink from them all, but here’s a design to show the world how safe and pollution free all of our waterways are around here!

Choice C: This comes from a post that Blaine Young was tagged in.(Actual post was deleted, so we found a similar pic for this flag) Yes, the same Blaine Young rumored to be in the Black Book, and the same one in fact arrested for soliciting a prostitute from a website. Such class some of our former politicians have displayed!

Choice D: There was a lot of bellyaching from Billy and Kirby when they had to park in a garage directly across the street from Winchester Hall, and then Billy had the indignity of losing his keys. Let’s take a moment to consider a flag to honor this dark period in Frederick County history.

Choice E: Who could forget our own Frederick County pioneers who braved the overflowing Monocacy River after Hurricane Sandy, armed with a thermos of Whiskey Sours, in order to go shopping at Wal Mart? Let’s salute their bravery and superior common sensical skills with this flag:

Choice F: Oh the time we made national news because of our very own Kirby Delauter. This story was spurred by Kirby telling a reporter that if she ever used his name again, he would sue her! Whew!

Choice G: Kirby made the best flowchart in the history of the world, so why shouldn’t we display that on our flag? I guess he was right about Jessica getting all the money since she was able to run a successful campaign to be County Executive!

Choice H: Of course we are going to self promote and ask for your vote for our logo as the new symbol for our county flag!

Now, it’s time to vote for your favorite!

We can’t wait to see the winning design, though we know some will be very upset over the change! But folks just look at our flag:

We deserve better than that!

Let’s take a glimpse at a world in which the book banners win!

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A dream world for those who want Idiocracy to become reality.

You’ve probably heard that the Reconsideration Meeting to explore the books that Cindy Rose claims are very harmful to our youth has been postponed. The Frederick News Post filed a complaint against FCPS claiming that the closed meetings violated the law. So, while we wait for a judge to sort all that out, let’s take a peek into a future in which books have to pass the political sniff test.

NPR sponsors a podcast called Planet Money. Last week, this podcast did a story on how picture books can teach young children about a variety of economic concepts. Before this podcast, a list of books was sent to the school district and it was agreed that the books were appropriate for 3rd graders. Well, at least until those 3rd graders had the nerve to connect one story to historical events.

We present the transcript of the incident below:

If we know our readers, and we think we do, most of you are probably crying over your computer or clenching your fists in rage. (Unless you are Cindy Rose who is probably rejoicing at this interaction). What really gets us is even the 9 year olds know what happened is bullshit. How in the world is it appropriate to first, cut off a Dr. Seuss story the kids were enjoying, and secondly make the kids who were making connections to history and the story feel as though they did something wrong? It’s the direct opposite of what should occur in a school. The lesson is that we need to protect our schools and their libraries from this kind of nonsense. For ignorance has no placed in our schools.

We don’t need this movie to become our reality.

Your Yokel Top 10 2022 Countdown!

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What a year it has been!

Let’s be realistic folks!

Per tradition we bring to you our top 10 most popular posts of the year! Let’s jump right in!

#10- Breaking down Cindy Rose’s “pornography” claims!

We are going to have to deal with this issue for quite some time since FCPS had to form a committee over her nonsense. Let’s hope that she and her ilk can learn the meaning of the word pornography. We won’t hold our breaths.

She sure doesn’t!

#9-Let’s make sure we get some good candidates on the BOE!

3 out of 4 isn’t bad! However, we are going to have to teach some folks in our community that we don’t just vote for the first name on the ballot just because we chose to remain uninformed about the election!

#8-Sound the alarm: be sure *independent & unaffiliated* voters know to vote in the primary July 19, 2022 (early voting the 7th – 14th)

Our post reminding independent and unaffiliated voters made the number 8 spot on our list. We always need to remind our unaffiliated friends that they can vote in the BOE primary election, and it’s important that they do so!

#7- Alright people, Hough says this is very serious business!

Except it absolutely was not! Thank goodness we don’t have to deal with him in our fine county.

Move along!

#6-There’s quite a few of you who should be ashamed of yourselves!

This post concerned the absolutely appalling behavior that some of our community members (You know Cindy was involved) showed at a Family Life Advisory meeting. We always need to be careful of people who can’t comprehend what they read, or worse yet, don’t read and then make things up to purposefully enflame people.

#5-Chmelik wants to be on our council again? BAHAHA..NO!

Tony Chmelik, one of your LadyYokel’s least favorite council members, tried to run for at at-large seat and failed. Hopefully this blast from the past reminded a few folks why we didn’t want him the last time around and prevented him from getting back on this time!

#4-Cindy Rose’s Facebook posts…a response in memes!

Our readers really seemed to enjoy our meme responses to some very questionable posts Cindy made this year. Some people should stay off social media.

For us the answer is always yes!

#3-Your Yokel pals watched the public comment (again-it’s what we do) so you don’t have to!

This was truly one of the worst public meetings we have ever had the displeasure of watching. And this is coming from a group of ladies that watched every single county council meeting for the long 4 years that Billy Shreve, Kirby Delauter, and Tony Chmelik were on that board. Cindy really can bring out the worst in people.

#2-Click, Clack, No!

One of our older posts got resurrected this year because people just could not believe that Cindy would complain about Click, Clack, Moo! Sometimes we can’t believe what we see either.

It was ridiculous.

Now for our most popular post of the year:

#1-Who NOT to put on the school board. Your Yokel voter primer!

Thank goodness we kept Cindy and two of her minions off the board, plus the entire 2nd rate hate slate! We are sure we will see some of them back again, but at least we have the next two years to take a nice deep breath!

We wish all of our Local Yokel fans a wonderful holiday season and a peaceful 2023!

Yokel thoughts on the election and a primer for some!

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Before we get into the final results we need to address some cray cray we’ve seen regarding the election count. After deliberating at Yokel headquarters for a bit, we are convinced that the main problem is a good portion of Americans don’t understand how elections work. One of our favorite/crazy comments came from someone who stated that she couldn’t understand how Dan Cox won the 1st election and then lost the 2nd. Must be fraud! Not the fact that primary elections are party centered and who wins the primary does not have the assurance of winning the general election! If that were true we would have two winners in the governor race!

The Frederick News Post comments on Facebook are also a real treat. We have some folks positing that since the count is still going on then it must be all the Democrats just harvesting all those fake ballots!

Looks like a good crop this year!

Just because your orange menace ruined mail in voting for you doesn’t mean the rest of us bought into it. Republicans just hate when people are allowed convenient ways to vote, because they know that the more people allowed to vote the harder it is for them to win. NOT FRAUD. This Lady Yokel just got her notification that her mail in ballot was just counted and if these people had their way they would just be fine and dandy with disenfranchising me- Especially Cindy!

Now for the final election results!

Drum Roll please!!!!!

Jessica will be the next County Executive and Renee Knapp and Brad Young will be our At-Large representatives on the next council!

So thankful that we don’t have to worry about Hough and Chemlik, who recently posted conspiracy thoughts about Nancy Pelosi’s husband on his campaign Facebook page, destroying our county!

Mostly good news for our council races.Hopefully Mason will behave himself and grow.

And for the race we’ve been paying the most attention to, the Board of Ed race:

Let’s see if Cindy really means it about this 4th run being her last.

We would have really liked to have seen Ysela make it, and it seems like we’ll have to do another primer about not clicking on the first name if you don’t know who to vote for. But alas, this is what we have to live with for now. At least the January 6th insurrectionist and Cindy didn’t make it!

It’s time for your Lady Yokels to take a bit of a rest. Thank you to all who voted and have been paying attention!

Let’s have a little chat about the At-Large race!

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Why do we have to keep talking about this guy?

If you’ve followed us for awhile, you know we’ve said a lot about Tony and his style of governing. We can’t fathom why he’s trying again, but here we are. Let us remind everyone that he lost his last primary as an incumbent to Steve McKay. And instead of accepting the results of that election (sound familiar?), he embarked upon a write in campaign that was very, very unsuccessful. We could go on and on about what a bad choice he would be, but instead we’ll link to our most recent article about him in which we revisit his political past as proof as to why he should not have a political future:

Chmelik wants to be on our council again? BAHAHA..NO!

Now let’s move on to Phil Dacey. Remember him, the guy from Picturegate?

Phil wasn’t there, so they just photoshopped him in!

Phil not showing up to meetings is kind of his thing. He missed a lot of meetings when he was on the Board of Alderman and now he’s been missing council meetings. Here at the Yokel we get lots and lots of tips. People send us stuff all the time, and we welcome it. But we only really share things that we verify elsewhere or that people we know for sure are trustworthy tell us. So, Phil got divorced this year. No judgement, we have plenty of divorced friends; this isn’t the 1950s and we aren’t going to shame anyone for a divorce. But there is a part that applies to his duties here. Our source revealed, that Phil has a new squeeze who lives fairly far away (in Canada! How rich is that? A girlfriend in Canada! It almost sounds like we made it up, but we promise you we didn’t), and because of this new relationship he’s frequently out of town and has been zooming into meetings. (Edit: UH-OH we have a contradictory account confirming that he has been present for everything important)

We do sincerely apologize for this misunderstanding. A concern that past behaviors would repeat given current realities was miscommunicated. While that concern is completely understandable, we do not want to be adding to the world’s problems with false information.

Brad Young, on the other hand, is everywhere. Always on a fire truck at a impromptu covid grad party, or wherever he can show up and be seen supporting our community, annnnd He! Shows! Up!

See for yourself:

Candidate Renee Knapp is our other endorsement. She is a special-needs parent originally from Middletown, now living in Adamstown (which is not Canada!). She has a lengthy history of volunteerism with the school system and for the PTA. She has neither a track record of chronic absenteeism, nor a predilection for birth-your-own-militia posturing. If you would like to learn more about a one hundred percent bona fide sane and responsible human being concerned with education, internet expansion (which is truly a critical issue for much of the rural county, especially those who engage in small business endeavors and need reliable online communication) and our local environment, here is a link to the issues page on Ms. Knapp’s candidate website. Click around to explore more!

Breaking down Cindy Rose’s “pornography” claims!

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Hey y’all. We are as sick of writing about Cindy as many of you are of hearing about her. However, we would be remiss if we didn’t pay a little more attention to her pornography charges regarding the books she’s demanding be removed from FCPS libraries.

First of all, it’s important to point out that none of these books are part of the curriculum. They are in the library for students who are interested in expanding their knowledge or vocabulary. Two things that this Education Not Indoctrination slate finds very offensive.

Let’s begin by defining pornography by way of the good old Webster’s dictionary:

Definition of pornography

1: the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement

2: material (such as books or a photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement

Cindy has a lot of trouble with words and their meanings.

ICYMI, click here to read and watch the “performance art” Cindy put on at last week’s meeting. What we are going to do next is delve a little deeper into the two books she claims are pornographic and sexualizing our children. Please keep the above definition in mind.

1st book: Push by Sapphire. (Which was made into the movie Precious). Here’s a review by the Literary Phoenix:

Precious Jones, an illiterate sixteen-year-old, has up until now been invisible: invisible to the father who rapes her and the mother who batters her and to the authorities who dismiss her as just one more of Harlem’s casualties. But when Precious, pregnant with a second child by her father, meets a determined and highly radical teacher, we follow her on a journey of education and enlightenment as Precious learns not only how to write about her life, but how to make it her own for the first time.

What Cindy misconstrues (misconstruing things is her favorite) as pornography is a tragic rape, meant to show the reader real trauma the author endured. It is a terrible experience that she is eventually able to overcome through the help of a teacher. (Maybe this is the part that bothers Cindy? Never mind, she didn’t read it…). It is not, as the definition of pornography above shows, meant to sexually excite, nor is the intent to sexualize children.

2nd Book- Sold by Patricia McCormick. Here’s a summary from the website SparksNotes:

Sold is a contemporary YA novel by American writer Patricia McCormick, published in 2006. Written in short vignettes, Sold tells the story of thirteen-year-old Lakshmi, a poor but happy girl living with her family in a mountain hut in Nepal. When a Himalayan monsoon washes away her family’s crops, Lakshmi must find a job to support her family. On the advice of a stranger, she goes to India to stay at a ‘Happiness House’, but once there finds she has been tricked, and sold into prostitution. Mumtaz, the cruel woman who runs the brothel, tells Lakshmi she is now trapped until she can pay off her family’s debts. Mumtaz finds a way to cheat Lakshmi of even her small earnings, ensuring Lakshmi will be in her service for a long time. Despite the horrors of her life, Lakshmi finds a way to survive through friendships with other girls in the house and the hope that one day she will be able to escape. Sold was a National Book Award Finalist for Young People’s Literature in 2006.

This book is a fictionalized account, based on real stories, of what happens to many girls who are sold into sex slavery in Asia. It also tells the story of a young woman who is able to overcome absolute terror and reclaim her life. Again, this is not the definition of pornography.

So, those of you so shocked by her reading out of context vignettes of these books in an incredibly poor attempt to prove that the school system is offering pornography to kids need to wake up. These books, while graphic, are not pornographic. They are dealing with the very real issues of incest and human trafficking. (Side note: the only time Cindy was inspired to speak out against human trafficking is when it was a part of the Q conspiracies). These are stories of redemption and hope. If you don’t want your high schooler exposed to these books, then pay attention to what they are reading and what they bring home from school. We definitely do not need someone who hasn’t read any of these books AND previously demanded Click Clack Moo not be used in elementary school anywhere near our children.

Book banners suck…always.