In no way do I compare myself to popular conservative Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, nor do I think that in my lifetime I have faced the amount of public scrutiny and nastiness that Cruz endures on any given day.
Still, I couldn't help but feel some form of kinship when I witness the online media frenzy that surrounded the Senator last week over his questioning of Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Some context: In June of 2013, at the small high school where I teach, the graduating class had asked me to be their speaker. Whenever that happens, I try to give a speech that recalls some of my favorite personal memories of the graduates, their class as a whole, and to give them some advice that they can lean on in the future. That year, I wanted to stress to them the importance of investing in their future families.
As a teacher, I have a front row seat to the misery and pain that is caused in the life of a young person by family dysfunction. Selfish parental decisions can ruin their children's lives and leave them jaded and bruised in ways no young person should ever have to endure. If there's anything I have become convinced of throughout my years in the classroom, it's that America's biggest problems are not going to be rectified economically, militarily, or in the business world. They'll be solved at home. So I shared these words:
"Men, to solve the problems of our society, we don't need more men as millionaire entrepreneurs. We need more men acting as fierce defenders of their wives and providers for their children. Ladies, to solve the problems of our society, we don't need more women CEOs, we need more women loving their homes, their husbands, and their children."
Though the speech earned a standing ovation from the crowd gathered there at commencement, it only took two days for word to get out to a media hungry for a scandal. It started on the ABC affiliate in Indianapolis; soon, these actual headlines were running online and my summer was ruined:
"Graduation Speaker Bashes Female CEOs" - Yahoo News
"Commencement Speaker: We Don't Need Female CEOs, We Need Invested Moms" - MSNBC
Even the supposedly conservative Daily Caller ran a hit piece on me, without even so much as picking up the phone, emailing, or doing a modicum of fact-checking on the furor. Instead, editor (at the time) Eric Owens plastered up a stock image of a 1950s kitchen scene with mom and daughter cooking, and titled his libel, "High School Commencement Speaker Tells Females: Stay at Home, Don't be CEOs."
I can only imagine if the cancel mob of today would have been empowered back in those days. The truth didn't matter – even to the Daily Caller. What mattered was a scandalous headline that was sure to get clicks.
Which brings us to last week when Senator Ted Cruz posed this question to Attorney General Merrick Garland:
"General Garland, is doing a Nazi salute at an elected official, is that protected by the First Amendment?"
Garland answered plainly, "Yes, it is."
The reason Cruz asked the question was obvious to anyone paying attention. Garland's Department of Justice is under fire for a memo, based off a single letter from the National School Board Association – which has now been revealed to be coordinated by the Biden White House – that compared parents protesting at school board meetings to domestic terrorists.
One of the dangerous offenses those parents had committed, according to the NSBA letter, was making Nazi salutes at the school boards. And why were they doing that? This isn't difficult. The frustrated parents were sending the message that the school boards, with their draconian mandates, radical curriculum, and silencing of dissent, were acting like Nazis.
The Nazi salutes were satirical, intended to send a publicly degrading message to elected officials that had gone off the rails – an act that Attorney General Garland was forced to acknowledge was constitutionally protected. Senator Cruz was exposing the fact that it was illogical and an abuse of power for the DOJ to treat parents acting in constitutionally protected ways like domestic terrorists.
That was the story.
Instead, the dishonest media was ready to pounce:
Vox: Ted Cruz defends Nazi salutes at school board meetings.
Daily Beast: Ted Cruz Defends Parents Doing Nazi Salutes at School Board Meetings
Huffington Post: Sen. Ted Cruz Defends Parents Who Gave Nazi Salute at School Board Meeting
Representatives Ilhan Omar and Eric Swalwell joined in on the fun:
And shockingly, none of those stories, tweets, or retweets were flagged as misinformation, none were taken down, no accounts suspended for disseminating untruths. They're all still up, still un-retracted, still deceiving.
It's almost as though – and hear me out – truth takes a back seat to politics for some people.
