Friday morning roundup

S.E. Cupp gives a very effective refutation of Michelle Obama's identity-politics bluster about how any woman who didn't vote for Madame BleachBit last November was "ignoring her own voice."

It may sound like the stuff of tinfoil hat potboilers to say that it looks like Russia has been stoking divisions between Americans on social media, but that's what CNN is reporting.

An absolute must-read by Randoph Parrish at The American Thinker entitled "How to Destroy a Nation." He understands that it is very, very late in the day.

If you want to destroy a nation, you find a way to denigrate its belief in itself. Smear its founders. Belittle its accomplishments. Pillory it for failing to live up to its ideals. Mock its most sacred traditions. Deride its heroes.

In the end, you will no longer have a nation, but only a collection of tribes, who occupy the same space but share no common concepts. There is nothing to unify them. In other words, you will be able to pinpoint that country with geographical data, but you will not find a national people.

David French at NRO on the legacy of Hugh Hefner.

How snot-nosed is the Left in post-America? Well,, consider the response of a Massachusetts librarian to Melania Trump's gift of some children's books to the school where she works:

My students were interested in reading your enclosed letter and impressed with the beautiful bookplates with your name and the indelible White House stamp, however, we will not be keeping the titles for our collection. I’d like to respectfully offer my explanation…

Yearly per-pupil spending in Cambridge is well over $20,000; our city’s values are such that given a HUGE range in the socioeconomic status of our residents, we believe that each and every child deserves the best free education possible and are working hard to make that a reality (most classrooms maintain a 60/40 split between free/reduced lunch and paid lunch). This offers our Title I school and the district a lot of privilege and room for programming and pedagogy to foster “high standards of excellence.” Even so, we still struggle to close the achievement gap, retain teachers of color, and dismantle the systemic white supremacy in our institution. But hell, we test well! And in the end, it appears that data — and not children — are what matters…

Another fact that many people are unaware of is that Dr. Seuss’s illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes. Open one of his books (If I Ran a Zoo or And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, for example), and you’ll see the racist mockery in his art. Grace Hwang Lynch’s School Library Journal article, “Is the Cat in the Hat Racist? Read Across America Shifts Away from Dr. Seuss and Toward Diverse Books,” reports on Katie Ishizuka’s work analyzing the minstrel characteristics and trope nature of Seuss’s characters. Scholar Philip Nel’s new book, Was the Cat in the Hat Black? The Hidden Racism of Children’s Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books, further explores and shines a spotlight on the systemic racism and oppression in education and literature.

I am honored that you recognized my students and our school. I can think of no better gift for children than books; it was a wonderful gesture, if one that could have been better thought out. Books can be a powerful way to learn about and experience the world around us; they help build empathy and understanding. In return, I’m attaching a list of ten books (it’s the librarian in me) that I hope will offer you a window into the lives of the many children affected by the policies of your husband’s administration.

It's, um . . . persons like that who make it really hard to refrain from vitriolic lashing out, ad hominem attacks and mockery. But here at LITD we keep things on the level of ideas and principles, so we'll just let the above dog vomit speak for itself.

An out lesbian Methodist bishop calls Jesus a bigot.