Photo via Miley Cyrus - Instagram
Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus
Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus
Do you know what appeared to be the biggest news story in America before Donald Trump made history as the first U.S. president to be criminally indicted?
Brace yourself. It was “Waukesha School Bans Children from Singing ‘Rainbowland.’” When I Googled the Waukesha story, I received the first flood of 74 news stories published throughout the country and was asked if I wanted to see more. I’d seen enough.
Both stories demonstrate the continuing damage to our daily lives from Trump’s hateful, corrupt presidency three years after he was defeated by the most votes ever cast by the American people.
The most nonsensical media argument leading up to Trump’s indictment by a New York prosecutor for fraudulently covering up hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels was whether it was the right crime to charge an ex-president with committing.
Crimes Large and Small
When the U.S. has a corrupt mob boss as president for four years constantly committing crimes, large and small, if we’re a democracy in which no one is above the law it’s the job of prosecutors to prosecute the crimes he commits.
Most Americans are aware of the priority of all the criminal investigations by federal and state prosecutors closing in on Trump. His worst crime was organizing the armed insurrection to overthrow democracy to remain as president after he was defeated. That’s closely followed by Trump trying to browbeat Georgia Republicans into “finding” fraudulent votes to reverse his loss in that state and creating “fake electors” in other states he lost to cast fraudulent Trump electoral votes.
New York district attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Trump for a far lesser crime attracted outsized media attention because it was the first, but it won’t be the last. After Trump’s attorney general Bill Barr granted amnesty to Trump and his friends for committing crimes, this is the year Trump will receive multiple indictments just like any other criminal.
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There’s another obvious reason Trump’s indictment for paying off Stormy Daniels attracted so much attention. Stories involving sexy celebrities are media catnip.
Banning Dolly Parton
That brings us back to the other big national story—Waukesha’s Heyer Elementary School forbidding a concert by first graders from performing a children’s song written by Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus, two celebrity sexual icons from different generations.
Waukesha school superintendent Jim Sebert refused to explain what was controversial about an upbeat children’s song about living in a better world. He didn’t have to. Republicans nationwide have introduced nearly 500 bills to ban discussion of the nation’s racial history and LGBTQ issues in our schools.
“Rainbowland” contains such shocking lyrics as “Oh, I’d be lying if I said this was fine, all the hurt and hate going on here. We are rainbows, me and you. Every color, every hue. Let’s shine on through.”
Dolly Parton left behind all the media jokes about the size of her breasts long ago to win admiration as a brilliant songwriter. Here’s her description of “Rainbowland”: “If we could love one another a little better or be a little kinder, be a little sweeter, we could live in rainbow land.”
Narrow Beliefs
No wonder Republicans hate it. Parton’s Christian religion bears little resemblance to that of evangelical Christians who are among Trump’s strongest supporters. That’s primarily because he’s eager to destroy religious freedom in our democracy to impose their narrow religious beliefs and prejudices upon everyone else by law.
The other reason Republicans object to letting the terrifying songs of Dolly Parton into our schools is the strong support she has in the LGBTQ community. “I have a huge gay following, and I’m proud of them,” Parton’s said. “Sometimes some of them look more like me than I do.” She joked on Good Morning America she entered a Dolly Parton look-alike drag contest and “I didn’t even come close.”
Republicans want to protect schoolchildren from knowing that such people exist for as long as possible. It’s too late. Many children already know because they love family members including parents who are gay.
Once again, Trumped-up Republicans are on the wrong side of the majority of Americans. One of quickest reversals of U.S. public opinion in history has been support for marriage equality. According to a Pew Research poll, same-sex marriage is supported by 61% of Americans and only 37% have a negative view.
Last year when a radical rightwing Trump supermajority on the Supreme Court overturned constitutional protection for women’s reproductive rights and threatened to destroy many other constitutional rights, Wisconsin Sen. Tammy’s Baldwin’s bill protecting same-sex and interracial marriage won bipartisan support in both houses of Congress and was signed by President Biden.
Republicans have put themselves in an absurd political position by advocating for a return to mass incarceration for everyone who commits crimes except for Donald Trump. Not all Republican voters are as stupid as they think.