How’s everyone’s weekend going? Thanks for spending a portion of it with the Six.
What a week. We had the run up to Tuesday’s elections, an historic indictment of a former president, crazy weather Friday night (for those of us not on spring break) and a school shooting.
I linked out to a comprehensive piece about the April 4 school board elections in the first Six article. Nothing here to add on Trump. But I’m going to write something about the school shooting in Nashville.
The first responders who shot down the killer are worthy of our praise. They did their jobs, a dangerous mission, with courage, bravery and honor. All Americans should salute those police officers (one whom is a Chicago native).
We know the killer left behind, in some form, a manifesto. It’s time to release it, and it release it now.
Not because we need to glorify the maniacal sociopath that murdered six people Monday at a Christian school just outside Nashville.
But we need motive. We need to know why this person did what they did.
The shooter was taken down by police officers. She can’t explain herself.
So let her words––however incoherent and irrational they might be––help provide some clarity in the wake of the inexplicable tragedy.
Because in the absence of motive, we have chaos.
We have the trans community (the shooter, a biological female, reportedly identified herself as a man) blaming what they call “anti-trans propaganda” for the murders.
We have members on the left blaming guns. It’s always the guns, they say, as if a rife can shoot itself.
We have members on the right saying it’s an attack on Christianity fueled by trans activists encouraged to incite violence for their cause.
The answer is never that binary but a combination of all of the above along with other factors we don’t know and may never know.
I tend to think in the year 2023, mass shootings in this country are unavoidable. We are likely going to continue to see these as a semi-regular occurrence. The person most to blame are the shooters, and in the case of the one in Nashville, the killer was a fully-formed 28-year-old adult. She knew the difference between right and wrong and chose evil. She’s dead so we can only guess what compelled her to murder six innocent people, three of them children.
But the killer left a note behind.
The contents of the note will give her more fame in the short term––an unfortunate outcome––but maybe it will help us understand better how we can treat the symptoms (a federal ban on all assault rifles isn’t the answer). I’m not optimistic on absolute preventative measures as the problems in this country run too deep.
But we have to try.
Release the manifesto.
Let’s proceed with the Six.
1. Suburban School Board Races Become Ideological Battlegrounds.
As most everyone returns from spring break, there’s an election on Tuesday. Most of the interest in the city of Chicago falls around the mayoral race while in the suburbs, school district board of educations hold elections. For numerous reasons (Covid Hysteria, culture wars, social media, Trump, etc.) school board races are under more scrutiny than I can ever recall. Those challenging incumbents are making the same sell to voters, “wasteful spending, plus lower test scores caused by distracting ideological lessons on sex, gender, mental health and diversity” said this article via WBEZ. Both conservative and progressive candidates are leveraging well-funded PAC’s to form coalitions and boost messaging. Times are a-changin’ indeed.
2. COVID’s Education Crisis: A Lost Generation?
For the school district where I have a vote, the candidate evaluation process is pretty simple: did you or did you not vote to open schools during Covid Hysteria? And did you or did you not vote for forced masking? Any candidate on record for keeping schools closed and agreeing with forced masking is not fit to serve any public office. More data is now coming out on the destructive impact of school closures due to fear-based Covid response by school administrators across the country. From this piece via CBS News: “This is not just poor kids who are living in the urban centers. It's all over America. There's been a dramatic drop in ELA and in math scores. This goes along with the loss of students in school, with the increased violence that's happening, and the behavioral problems that kids are facing. In my career of more than 45 years, I've never seen anything like this." Much more to come in the months and years ahead but all studies lead to one outcome––kids were screwed and screwed royally.
3. March Madness 2023: Big Money Payouts For Conferences.
Who’s watching the Final Four this weekend? College presidents and athletic directors certainly are. The NCAA divvies up the large financial payout pot from each men’s basketball tournament to the schools by just distributing money to the schools’ conferences, which then distribute it as they see fit. A team gets one “unit” for every game it plays before the final, which means that there are 132 units that go around each tournament. Based on current NCAA revenue and expectations for the next few years, each game played this year for a team is going to be worth an estimated $2,001,400 paid out to their conference. This lucrative payout structure means that the SEC, which has no teams in the Final Four, will still walk away with a high of $34 million. That’s my kind of participation trophy.
4. Gwyneth Paltrow Trial: Loser Compares Actress to Jeffrey Epstein.
It may not have been Amber vs Johnny or the Murdauch murder trial, but Gwyneth vs Random Utah Citizen held our nation’s attention for more than a minute this week. The actress–– and Goop brand impresario––got sued by a Utah man who claimed Paltrow ran into him while on a ski slope a few years ago. Paltrow went all Taylor Swift on the guy and refused to cow tow to the shakedown. A trial happened this week and Paltrow won, earning back a cool $1. Honestly, I didn’t follow all of the testimony but what likely swung the jury towards Paltrow is the wacky testimony given by the plaintiff, a 76-year-old man named Terry Sanderson. Sanderson compared Paltrow to Jeffery Epstein, saying: “This is obviously an issue that someone needs to be accountable for, and if they're never accountable, what are they gonna do? They're gonna do it again…now we have the molesting of young children on an island.” Yeah, beam me up Scotty. What a waste of resources in our judicial system but thanks for the diversionary entertainment this week, pal.
5. Three Children And A Mystery.
This article is long but worth it. A masterpiece of storytelling: three small children are abandoned at a Barcelona railway station in 1984. Fortune smiles on them. They are adopted and raised in a happy Spanish family. Still, they have faint memories of their earliest years, living in Paris, their parents had money, fast cars and guns. Were their parents gangsters? Why the abandonment? They begin looking for answers and The Guardian has the compelling story.
6. Bus Driver Loses It, Cusses Out Students.
An Ohio school district needs a new bus driver after one of its drivers turned into a viral sensation for a profanity-fueled rant on junior high-aged students (which explains a lot). The driver was forced to resign after the video leaked to social media but after watching, one could argue she deserved a raise and promotion over a firing. Reached by a reporter, the driver said: “I’m normally as calm as a cucumber. It just got to the point where I snapped.” Oh, those crazy kids.
Thanks for reading everybody and enjoy the rest of your weekend. The Six will take Easter Sunday off and be back right here on April 16.
Have a suggestion for The Sunday Six? Send email to jonjkerr@gmail.com
Thanks for your efforts for us! I would never get a chance to read these articles you collect, as they are from such varied sources.
To your discussion of the school shooting, I listened to an interview where the guest listed stats of mass shootings worldwide. The US of A trails behind other countries (even though our population is so large). We are led to believe that we lead in the numbers because that's what they want us to think.