Apparently I was peripherally involved in a twitter spat earlier today. Anti-CRT laws: Who's the blame? Is the Harper's Letter crowd responsible? Etc. etc. Scintillating stuff! This is the sort of high stakes cultural frisson I miss for shabbat.
But without tooting my own horn *too* much, I actually do think I have a better read on this than most. I've kind of been on all sides of the debate, and having spent the last year reading every one of these bills, I think I have a good sense of where they're coming from.
But it's such an impossible discussion to have without coming across totally obnoxious. Is it even worth writing about?
The very obvious-but-boring truth is that non-rightwing but anti-woke journalism DID play a very significant role. Its rhetorical hysteria DID matter - how could it not? But the energy behind these bills is due much more to internal dynamics in RW politics than anything else.
The media imbalance is real. I've written about it before. But if you think Yglesias or Friedersdorf comes anywhere close in influence to, say, Dan Bongino on this stuff, you're beyond all hope.
Which again, isn't to say that better mainstream center-left coverage of these bills and related acts wouldn't help, so we SHOULD criticize biased and sloppy journalism. But let's keep things in perspective.
Ok, that's already more than I planned to say. I kind of hate these debates!
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