Week in Review: Remember the Redskins

August 5, 2023

Week in Review

Camden-Frontier Redskins School Board Recall, or, the Assembly of Therapists

The heat has been turned up on leftist Camden-Frontier Schools board members Emily Morrison, MA, LCP, IMH-E (II)¹ (a “professional counselor”) and Jesse Crow, who face a potential recall election after both led the charge to ditch the longtime “Redskins” mascot, the embattled Corey Murray of the Hillsdale Daily News reported.

Unfortunately for recall leader Sarah Wilcox (and for Redskins fans), the Dane-Kast red-tape brain trust that lurks within the bowels of the County Courthouse foiled Wilcox’s first effort. While she obtained 403 signatures to recall Morrison, and another 398 to recall Crow—far exceeding the 348 needed to trigger the vote—she reportedly failed to fill out the paperwork correctly. A mere ten signature forms were filed with the appropriate information.² As a result, Morrison and Crow will remain safe at least until May, which is the next available recall date.

By way of some background: in the wake of the school board’s May decision, Camden-Frontier Schools Superintendent Chris Adams penned a press release celebrating the board’s decision to follow the lead of America’s model of virtue and justice: the NCAA, which recently barred participants from “displaying hostile and abusive racial/ethnic/national origin mascots, nicknames or imagery” at its events. “We will be preserving the history of the Camden Frontier School District,” Adams lied, proceeding to cite the Washington Redskins’ name change as yet another model worthy of emulation. “The retirement of the mascot is about looking to the future, not erasing the past,” he added.³

The argument in favor of retiring (sometimes called “canceling”) the mascot has, of course, been solemnized by the local and state media for some time, both of which feel compelled to hone and shape the backwards people of Hillsdale County. In his incisive 2022 article, WILX’s Cody Butler, for instance, celebrated the final push in the “effort to eliminate offensive Native American mascots from Michigan high schools,” debunking the nickname by appealing to the authoritative Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, according to which “Redskin” is “an insulting term for an American Indian.”

Butler also interviewed a certain Joei Rox, who may or may not live in Camden, but in any case feels that she is “a member of the Saginaw-Chippewa nation.” Rox complained that not enough people are willing to overturn their traditions for the sake of her newfound feelings. In her view, they are literally (or maybe spiritually?) willing to kill her: “The fact that so many people just don’t care, it kills me. It literally breaks my spirit,” she said, hysterically parroting left-wing academic jargon. “It is disrespectful. It’s very harmful. And it is just a reminder that the people I belong to were not considered human.”

The Social District Opening Approaches

The City of Hillsdale is installing “Social District” signs as we write; it appears that our rulers expect the district to open soon. Mayor Stockford called the Social District “a real win for our downtown.”⁴ See this map to get a look at the boundaries of the district, which is rather larger than we anticipated.

Below are the establishments that have been granted, or are seeking approval (others are reportedly on the way):

• Hillsdale Brewing Company - Approved

• Here’s To You Pub - Pending Approval

• Dawn Theater - Pending Approval

Don’t forget: you must drink your beverage from a Social District safety vessel, or perhaps—if the city can be talked into signing up for yet another grift—a Hillsdale County Review mug. Coming soon!⁵

Upcoming Events

• Monday, August 7, 7:00 PM: City Council Meeting. Agenda items of note:

  • Jansen Letter: The relentless Uncle Ted has penned yet another letter, this time about the “unsubstantiated allegations” concerning sexually explicit books in the children’s section of the library. (We wonder what Mr. Jansen means when he writes those words, considering the publicly named books that have been called into question on numerous occasions.) Imagining himself to be a vigilante fighting for the First Amendment, Jansen also asks the City Council to “admonish” the board of trustees to follow the U.S. Constitution, citing a recent district course case from Texas that he allegedly studied in detail. If this legal decision held any sway in Michigan, we would read it; but alas, it is irrelevant. See packet page 101 and following.⁶

  • NEZ Application—Commonwealth Developments: While this will call for more historical explanation during the meeting, since it appears to have been on the table since 2019, we gather that Commonwealth Developments wants to build condominiums at Auseon Court, behind the Secretary of State, and also pay less in property tax by using its “Neighborhood Enterprise Zone” status to secure a “new facility exemption.”

  • City of Hillsdale Section 3 Policy: The City of Hillsdale was awarded a grant from Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) for a water valve and sanitary improvement project. But now, to get the money that Mr. Mackie has dangled in front of us, the city must update the policy “to align with revisions made by the MEDC in 2022 prior to the release of the grant funds.” This includes much fun, including a partnership with YouthBuild!

  • Special Assessment Hearing: As the city hands out tax breaks to large development corporations, more neighborhoods are on the chopping block to receive their “special assessment,” i.e., high interest loans to pay for their streets to be fixed. This time it will be the St. Joe/Griswold neighborhood.

• Tuesday, August 8, 9:00 AM: Hillsdale County Board of Commissioners Meeting.

• Tuesday, August 8: Reading Schools Operating Millage Proposal

  (This section is directly relevant only for residents of the following jurisdictions: Allen Township; Cambria Township; Camden Township; Reading City; Reading Township; Woodbridge Township. Still, one can see clearly here the ways in which the “objective” Hillsdale County Board of Elections allows certain prestige groups—public schools, namely—to slip campaign propaganda onto the ballot.)

  See the millage text below:

  Shall the limitation on the amount of taxes which may be assessed against all property, except principal residence and other property exempted by law, in Reading Community Schools, Hillsdale and Branch Counties, Michigan, be increased by 1.5 mills ($1.50 on each $1,000 of taxable valuation) for a period of 8 years, 2023 to 2030, inclusive, to provide funds for operating purposes; the estimate of the revenue the school district will collect if the millage is approved and levied in 2023 is approximately $30,400 (this millage is to restore millage lost as a result of the reduction required by the Michigan Constitution of 1963 and will be levied only to the extent necessary to restore that reduction)?

  Straightforward enough, as far as these things go: the owner of a $200,000 property will pay an additional $300 per year in property taxes in order to cover Reading Schools’ increased operating costs. But let us look more closely at the parenthetical section they inserted at the end:

  (this millage is to restore millage lost as a result of the reduction required by the Michigan Constitution of 1963 and will be levied only to the extent necessary to restore that reduction)

  There are at least two problems with the inclusion of the above clause:

  1. The county has alluded to an obscure cause on the ballot itself for why the school needs more money —without any elaboration. No explanation is offered of the “reduction required by the Michigan Constitution of 1963” (a disreputable document); one must simply accept the vague allusion to an event from 60 years ago, assuming that it suffices as evidence for the school’s need. It’s only reasonable to give them more money to make up for what was taken from them, so we are instructed to believe. This either needs to be made evident beforehand, or not stated at all. As things stand, the default is always to give the schools more money, and never to ask them to tighten their belts, lest one be considered a despiser of both education and children.

  2. County residents can rest easy knowing that the school will only levy taxes “to the extent necessary to restore that reduction.” We have never encountered a tax raise that contains such inexplicable (and unenforceable) contingencies. Just trust the experts to not spend excessively!

  Perhaps the county should also allow the millage’s opponents to explain on the ballot why the Reading Schools Operating Millage Proposal, or any other millage, ought to be rejected by voters? Maybe the county can include a list of the school’s other funding sources, or its teacher’s union connections? Or perhaps we should drop the sham democracy altogether? Maybe the school needs more money—or maybe not—but this is no way to decide.

• Thursday, August 10, 5:00 PM: Library Board Meeting.

External Links

• “I have kind of expected something like this based on the political beliefs of the people who have been appointed to the board.” Library director Terri Lesley comments after being fired by the Campbell County (Wyo.) Public Library Board for failing to implement a curation policy prohibiting “sexually explicit” material.

• “I could have played politics here, but I won’t.” Michael Fulbright, chair of the Maury County Public Schools Board of Education, had the opportunity to engage in some “bureaucratic realpolitik” on behalf of school choice, but refused. As a result, a Hillsdale College-affiliated American Classical Education charter school was rejected in Maury County, and awaits an appeal to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission.

• “While I’m not qualified to comment on the doctrine of universal reconciliation, I can for sure say one thing — when making gospel tunes, ‘I don’t think Hank done it this way.’” Sam Lair takes country singer Tyler Childers to task for betraying his muse. We started listening to Childers, Sturgill Simpson, and Jason Isbell on the strength of Greg McBrayer and Scott Yenor’s February 2021 article in The Bulwark (forgive us), and we don’t think we’ve heard much in the last decade better than Isbell’s “Vandal smile and baseball in his right hand,” but Lair hits all the right notes in his piece.⁷

• “Members of our class are always publicly speaking out for the marginalized, but somehow we always end up building systems that serve ourselves.” If David Brooks had written this twenty years ago, it might have been useful.⁸

• “So Harvey has to sit there with a pencil and copy out the graph where Barack writes to Alex about how he repeatedly fantasizes about making love to men.” In an interview with the Tablet’s David Samuels, respectable Obama biographer David Garrow wonders why the media has allowed the 44th president to replace his actual past with fiction.

• “Their defense of economic freedom, religious liberty, and limited government is sure to make Boomers giddy and put to sleep any right-winger under the age of 40 who doesn’t wear bowties.” David Azzerad responds to Jonah Goldberg’s most recent attack on the New Right.

• “The progressive deformation of our constitutional system is not the reason we are divided. But it does explain why we think our Constitution can’t help us address our divisions. In reality, the Constitution was designed with just that purpose in mind, and it could make a real difference if we let it.” Yuval Levin, writing at Law & Liberty.

• “We should have our military recruiters sign up new troops for 11 months out of the year, and then have the Selective Service draft the delta between the military’s needs and the total number recruited.” Merry Christmas! from Military.com.

• “I affirm that a Christian may belong simultaneously and harmoniously to two species of Christian nation: the universal, catholic church, which is fundamentally an eschatological nation or kingdom, though manifesting visibly on earth; and a particular, earthly Christian nation, which arises from natural principles and the application of grace.” Stephen Wolfe, author of The Case for Christian Nationalism, writing at American Reformer.

• “So one problem with religion & the most urgent one we face today is that it encourages mediocrities like [Colin Redemer] to poeticize, to hold themselves judges of the great scholars like Leo Strauss.” One can see why Titus Techera has so few followers on Twitter, but we have always found his sometimes-pugnacious style (both online and in the flesh) clarifying and backed by substance, as we find it here. “What would you die for?” a sanctimonious Susannah Black Roberts demands to know, before mike-dropping her own poem—as gnostic a smirk as we’ve ever seen. Come on, Titus, believe! Just believe!⁹

Farewell

If you are among that handful of devoted readers who comment on our Facebook page, be warned that we have noticed that it is all the rage in town to take one’s page and its collection of facts private. If you haven’t yet complained about our lack of experience in local politics, now’s your chance!¹⁰

1. Hillsdale County’s institutions are largely ruled by a cabal of late-middle aged therapist-women, most of whom want to “give back to the community” via their nonprofits—many of them publicly funded—so that everyone has the opportunity to be as em-pathetic as they. They mostly seem to know each other, they appear to have lots of good meetings, and they serve on each other’s boards.

2. Certainly these things are tedious and mind-numbing, and are made especially difficult when the powers-that-be have their own favorites, but at some point it will be necessary to exercise what our own Anatolio once called “bureaucratic realpolitik,” or at least basic paperwork competence.

3. Yet Adams and the school board appeared to be quite interested in “erasing the past” without anybody noticing when they covertly removed all mention of the nickname from the school’s logos and decals before the board decision was made. “I’ve noticed how it’s been removed from part of the school,” Austin Watters, a Camden-Frontier parent, told WILX in May of 2022.

4. Congratulations to the Mayor and his wife on the birth of their child, Mara Mitchell Stockford.

5. Penny Swan will be the first to receive a mug—it’s on the house.

6. Okay, we admit that we read a bit of the court case. But we stopped once we saw that one of the disputed book trilogies goes by the following three titles: My Butt is So Noisy!, I Broke My Butt!, and I Need a New Butt!, by Dawn McMillan. Another is titled Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen, by Jazz Jennings. Behold! The fruit of intellectual “freedom.”

7. See also Carmel Richardson’s Feb. 2023 article in The American Conservative praising Childers for “singing about coal.”

8. It was all the way back in 2005 that Brooks fell under the sway of Senator Barack Obama’s “perfectly creased pant,” the moment for which his entire “one of us” education had prepared him. How could he have given that up in exchange for mere self-awareness?

9. “Notice that Christians in fact still get themselves in a world of trouble.” Where are the snarky responses to that one?

10. And if you’re eager to add to Miss Penny Swan’s “Men of HCR Fall Calendar,” we have been given inside information that Clovis himself—the Clovis!—will be running the Baw Beese Trail at 6:00 AM every day this coming week, and he may be shirtless!