Imagine if
Ron DeSantis’s
wife, Casey, established a nonprofit organization and solicited donations from the
Florida
governor’s donors and state contractors. Further, imagine if the purpose of that organization were the creation and dissemination of movies and school curricula lauding Ron for his brave fight against COVID-19 lockdowns, promoting traditional gender roles, and exposing children to pornography.
It would surely be a national scandal garnering wall-to-wall coverage. At the very least, California Gov.
Gavin Newsom
would tweet about it.
Yet that is, mutatis mutandis, exactly what Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, has done, to little notice beyond
Fox News
and the opinion page of this
news outlet
.
The nature of Newsom’s nonprofit group, The Representation Project, and the content of her movies and curriculum were
brought to light
by Open the Books, an organization dedicated to fiscal transparency. Newsom’s movies and attendant curriculum have been, according to her organization, shown to 2.6 million students in over 5,000 schools in all 50 states. The fact that these movies have been incorporated so widely and with so little public objection from public school administrators or teachers speaks to a massive blind spot within our schools to progressive political propaganda.
Newsom’s movie, The Great American Lie, prominently features her husband delivering progressive political talking points such as, “At the end of the day, a budget is a set of values, budgets reflect your values,” and “this notion of interdependence — that we’re all in this together, that we all rise and fall together — is absolutely true,” and that the war on drugs has been “a war on poor people and a war on people of color.” The accompanying curriculum asks students to discuss Gavin’s talking points and encourages them to vote and campaign for politicians who “show empathy through their support care [sic] policies.”
The Great American Lie also promotes psychological manipulation techniques to imprint progressive politics. Students are guided through a “Privilege Walk” activity (take a step forward if you identify as white, or are a “cisgendered” man), which publicly separates students by their privileged or oppressed status. New York Times opinion columnist Charles Blow makes the dichotomy explicit, telling children, “Your privilege is actually built on my oppression.”
Students are instructed that they should feel terrible about their personal role in societal oppression. Lawyer Bryan Stevenson says, “We’re going to have to express some shame and sorrow about who we are and what we’ve done, we’re going to have to find a way to reconcile ourselves to a different future.” The way to make amends: activism. “If you don’t address the racism, sexism, homophobia, hatred — the hatred — we have in our culture,” the professor explains, “then you can’t start having a conversation about love, peace, and understanding.” The way to start having that conversation: promote Newsom’s movie and message.
Another movie, The Mask You Live In, reflects Newsom’s commitment to “gender justice.” The curriculum for it contains the now-infamous “Genderbread Person” diagram, which promotes the idea that sex, gender identity, and gender expression are all necessarily disconnected phenomena. “This tasty little guide,” it reads, “is meant to be an appetizer for gender expression. It’s okay if you’re hungry for more. In fact, that’s the idea.”
Maybe the most troubling aspect of Newsom’s movies is that they expose children to pornography. Her stated purpose is to warn against pornography, and she says that “34% of youth online receive UNWANTED PORNOGRAPHIC EXPOSURE.” Yet, as Open the Books CEO Adam Andrzejewski quips, “100% of the youth (or anyone else) receive unwanted or unwarranted pornographic exposure by watching Newsom’s movies.” The middle school version of Miss Representation includes an animated topless stripper with tape over her breasts. And the 15+ version of The Mask You Live In includes (pixelated) pornography, with web addresses for various pornographic sites.
It’s a free country, so Newsom can produce and direct films warning children about pornography by exposing them to it if she likes. But school officials should have the judgment to determine that neither that nor pure political propaganda ought to be screened in schools. And yet, to repeat, her movies have been shown to over 2.6 million students.
It’s unimaginable that a conservative equivalent could have been so widely screened without teachers unions raising Cain about it. Yet the political antibodies against progressive agitprop are clearly lacking in too many schools. Ultimately, only watchful parents can police such inappropriate, partisan content. But to do that, they need state lawmakers to enshrine academic transparency into law.
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Max Eden is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
