District 12 Texas State Board of Education candidate Gail Spurlock is building a reputation for extremism that might well win her fans (and votes) among far-right conservatives. But to a large swath of mainstream Texans, her latest comments are downright insulting.
Spurlock, who has gone on record with her belief that the Pilgrims were communists and her opposition to comprehensive sex education because kids are “gonna figure it out” on their own, dropped another whopper at a candidate forum last week when she blamed women — specifically professional women — for the decline in public education.
Speaking at an Allen Area Patriots candidate forum (along with Geraldine “Tincy” Miller, Spurlock’s primary opponent in Tuesday’s Republican runoff) Spurlock used her opening statement to say the following (video below):
“I’m running because our school system has really let us down. For the past 26 years we’ve seen a steady deterioration in our academic achievement of our students — that also parallels, interestingly, about from the early 70s when women decided it’s time to go back to work, and, you know, being someone’s employee is so much more of an identity than being someone’s wife and mother. That parental involvement with our school systems also parallels the deterioration.”
First of all, 26 years ago was not the early 70s. By my calculation, 26 years ago would have been 1986. (But then, I took math classes after the “steady deterioration” in our schools had set in, so who knows?)
Secondly, this is a galling message to send to working women — some of whom work in the classroom as teachers — who are basically being told they don’t belong in the workforce. It will also insult men, many of whom have women in their lives who work just as hard at their careers as they do at being a parent.
Sadly, this regressive attitude has a precedent on the Texas SBOE. In 1994 religious-righters on the board called for the removal of a textbook photo of a woman carrying a briefcase. They preferred a photo showing a woman baking a cake. Some things never change.
Here’s the video of Spurlock’s comments:
That loud thump at the end was obviously God’s displeasure.
Baking a cake, huh? I know what kind. If you know me, you do too. I wonder something though.
If God designed women only to stay at home, copulate, raise children, watch soap operas all day, and bake cakes, why would he have given them the ability to solve calculus problems?
But, let us consider the truth of the way it was in olden times—say 1957. I was alive back then and knew the time.
Women were sweet little sugars and honies, weak of muscle, designed for the light, gentle, and femme things in life only. It was necessary to help the poor helpless little things out of cars. They were so weak you had to hold doors open for them. Some schools systems would not let them play basketball because their tissue-paper-delicate ovaries might get damaged by the “physical strain” of play. Men had to take care of them and baby them for their whole lives as if they were on life support in the Intensive Care Unit. Letting them think would be unthinkable. Letting them support themselves would be a cruel and impossible strain on these delicate creatures who needed men for what little money the could get in life.
However: If she failed to marry:
“Naw!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You is a dadgum man with pubic hair growin’ on your arms now as far is we is all are concerned. Open your own damned door!!! Nawsiree!!!!! You get out your sledge hammer and go to work out there on the rock pile with them men right now. You have to work twice as hard and take half the pay. There’s no way an able-bodied he-woman like you is gonna freeload on society. You make yer own way from now on Sadie!!!! And don’t come whining to me if you get hurt. Suck it up like a man!!!”
In other words, God made women sugar and spice and everything nice—until they threatened a man or community’s real God—its WALLET.
If the decline in Texas education began 26 years ago, then that would be about the time of the rise of the Republician Party in the state. Coincidence? Why has education here continuied to decline under the leadership of Bush and Perry?
Hey great Gail, that’s just what the SBOE needs, another right wing ideological extremist piece
Texas, with apologies to all rational Texans, is a disaster. The state has the highest percentage of uninsured residents in the nation at 26.7%. So Rick Perry opted out of Medicaid expansion. It has 2nd highest teen birth rate in the nation. So Rick Perry managed to get Planned Parenthood de-funded in the state. Study after study over the past two decades have shown Abstinence-only sex education is a failure. So 90% of the schools in Texas teach just abstinence-only. And the filthy little religious right perverts continue to attack the poor on every front, all the while cursing them for being slovenly, lazy, spoiled, etc. etc.
Damn those poor, let ’em rot in the streets.
Abortion? Hell no! Contraception? Hell no! Rationale and logic? Hell no! Disgusting perverted fundamentalist religion is the answer. Uh-huh.
I wonder….Diderot said man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. If he were alive today would he say Texans will never be free until Rick Perry is strangled with the entrails of Robert Jeffress?
Welll…we’d be better off if Spurlock were back in the kitchen instead of working for the state, so maybe she’s at least half right ?
k
Fascista ..
But Gail has some seriously big Texas hair
covering the block of cement she calls a brain.
Small world, small mind Spurlock.
The religious right in Texas politics is living proof that Texas schools are in bad shape.
In 1935, Sinclair Louis said that “fascism will come to America draped in a flag and carrying a cross” (close quote.) Sounds like the tea-party to me. When did we make this abrupt u-turn and start speeding back to the middle ages?