Good morning! Blessings on you and your family, and from all the Huckabee staff!

Today's newsletter includes:

• "Free-speechers"
• 13 Hidden Pages
• Ainsworth: THE LAST WORD on "the slap" on Oscar night
• And much more.

Sincerely,

Mike Huckabee

1. DAILY BIBLE VERSE

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6

If you have a favorite Bible Verse you want to see in one of our newsletters, please email [email protected].

2. "Free-speechers"

Just as leftists have tried to make being patriotic, pro-life, capitalist, believing in a equality under the law and a colorblind meritocracy, and recognizing that men and women are different into horrific thought crimes, they’re now trying to convince us that defending free speech means you just want to use racist slurs in public. They’ve even come up with a derogatory pejorative for those who dare to defend the most basic, God-given, First Amendment right: we’re “free speechers.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/04/10/former-reddit-chief-uses-free-speechers-as-a-pejorative-term-n1588597

Well, I proudly wear your dumb pejorative as a badge of honor. While I may find your arguments destructive, misleading and frankly idiotic, I will defend to the death your right to voice them. After all, as the Founders intended, free speech not only lets us express great thoughts and criticize the government, it also allows us to identify the actual racists, Nazis, communists and others who would try to take away our rights on the flimsiest of pretexts. They just open their mouths, and they tell us.

3. Desperation: Democrats throw the kitchen sink

Here’s how desperate Democrats are to deflect away their terrible agenda: They actually claimed that it’s really Republicans who are enabling pedophiles.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/athena-thorne/2022/04/09/lol-leftists-try-fail-to-paint-republicans-as-the-real-pedophiles-n1588423

Now, this is pretty stupid, so follow me closely: The Tennessee GOP proposed a bill defining common law marriage as being between “one man” and “one woman.” Since it didn’t include a minimum age, some Democrats immediately went the “Don’t Say Guy” route, slapped a false and misleading name on it (the “Marry Little Kids” bill!), and claimed it would legalize child marriage.

Of course, everyone other than Democrats and our newest Supreme Court Justice knows that “woman” means “adult human female” and “man” means “adult human male.” But the sponsors went ahead and added an 18-year-old minimum age, to make it crystal clear to those who are a bit slow.

On the other hand, if you’d like to see what it looks like when people with a political agenda aggressively push sexualizing small children, let me introduce you (and I’m sorry) to “The “GayBC’s.” It’s a book that allegedly teaches kindergarteners how to read by telling them that, say, B is for “bi,” C is for “coming out,” D is for “drag,” I is for “intersex,” N is for “nonbinary,” T is for “trans,” and so forth. And does “G” stand for “groomer”?

Roger Simon at Epoch Times reports that this was actually on iPads given out to kids by schools in Williamson County, Tennessee. That article is behind a paywall, but Instapundit has a lengthy excerpt.

https://instapundit.com/514166/

Oh, and if that isn’t disgusting enough, try this (and I warn you, you will be outraged that anyone thinks this is appropriate for children.)

https://thepostmillennial.com/theater-group-stages-naked-family-sex-show-to-teach-children-as-young-as-five-about-sex

By the way, if these people don’t like being called “groomers,” no matter how accurate it might be, then what else could possibly explain their relentless efforts to force inappropriate sexual materials onto small children? Amber Athey at the Spectator has a plausible theory. (Again, this is for subscribers. You can read it for free by registering, but Instapundit has an excerpt.)

https://instapundit.com/514291/

And as long as we’re on the subject of motivations for indefensible policies, here’s a look at why schools are trying to force “The 1619 Project” onto kids as a history book, even though it’s a big load of codswallop.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/schools-1619-project-curriculum-historical-errors

4. 13 Hidden Pages

Parents who are thanking God that they were able to get their kids into charter schools should be aware that the Biden White House hid 13 pages of rules into a proposed federal funding bill that would put so many burdens and restrictions on charter schools that it would basically turn them into public schools.

https://redstate.com/jeffc/2022/04/10/biden-administration-takes-aim-at-charter-schools-n548312

For the record, here's what public schools will soon be doing in New Jersey:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/new-jersey-second-graders-learn-gender-identity-alarming-parents

5. Social Media censorship

You won’t believe what social media tried to censor that was posted by a US Air Force veteran. This should stand as an infuriating Exhibit A in the case that what these platforms are censoring isn’t “disinformation,” it’s just anything that challenges the “progressive” left’s radical agenda.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/big-tech-linkedin-air-force-veteran-college-debt

And please note, this isn’t Twitter or Facebook, as you might expect. It’s the allegedly staid and professional business networking site, Linked In. How much would it cost Elon Musk to buy that? Surely, for him, the toll booth change in his Tesla would cover it.

6. FYI

Under the Democrats’ own definitions, Hillary Clinton just attacked our democracy and committed treasonous insurrection by telling a “Big Lie” designed to incite her followers not to accept the results of a free and fair election.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/04/10/hillary-clinton-foments-insurrection-about-the-2016-election-according-to-her-own-partys-rules-n548504

7. Will Smith Update

You’re probably tired of this story, but just to bring you up to date on the latest: The Motion Picture Academy voted to ban Will Smith from attending the Oscars for 10 years. He can be nominated and even win, but he can’t show up to collect it. They couldn’t kick him out of the Academy because he already resigned in the wake of outrage over him slapping and cursing Chris Rock on live TV for making a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.

Several comedians had a similar reaction to the news: being banned from having to sit through four hours of boredom is hardly punishment. If they want to punish him, they should force him to host the Oscars for ten years.

The silver lining to this shocking incident is that comedians are finally rallying to stand up against the cancel culture crowd who have been silencing and censoring them with the threat of attacks that Smith just pushed into the realm of the literal. On his show Friday, Bill Maher threw down the gauntlet and declared that he’s sick of having to explain jokes to idiots and “the war on jokes must end.”

https://redstate.com/tladuke/2022/04/09/free-speech-means-sometimes-explaining-jokes-to-idiots-like-bill-maher-just-did-n547809

That clip is a must-see, but I warn you, because it’s Bill Maher, there is some rough language. I also have to take issue with his attempt to include conservatives under the cancel culture umbrella because they complained about Kathy Griffin holding up a replica of President Trump’s bloody, severed head. Bill says that comics have to have freedom of speech to determine where the line of offense is with jokes, and I agree. But who would be dense enough to think that could possibly be (A.) not offensive or (B.) a joke?

I’m sure a lot of leftists don’t appreciate my Biden jokes, but if I just held up a replica of his bloody, severed head, I would expect a visit from some real Secret Service agents. They aren’t very receptive to people who encourage assassinations then say, “Don’t you know a joke when you see one?”

8. Ainsworth: THE LAST WORD on "the slap" on Oscar night

by Laura Ainsworth, staff writer/researcher

I waited a long time to comment on the big slap-down at the Academy Awards. For one thing, I like to have the last word, and maybe by waiting this long, I can actually have it. For another, there’s a lot to be said for the information-gathering phase preceding any expression of opinion –- it’s a phase many people skip –- and I processed a LOT of information. For example, I now know more about Will and Jada’s supposedly open marriage than anyone not getting paid $200 an hour should know, no matter how much Jada seemed to want to gab about it on video. Perhaps someday, if God is merciful, it will vanish from my brain cells to make room for something more worthwhile, which is to say just about anything else.

As far as I’m concerned, the Academy Awards have been ruined, but not by this literal slap in the face. I can’t remember exactly when it was during the past decade that I totally lost interest in what had always been a fun yearly tradition. But it’s no fun to watch an almost unimaginably successful but apparently broken man experiencing a public emotional meltdown, committing violence and bellowing the f-word from the audience on live TV. Now people will busily disagree about whether or not his punishment is appropriate, but it hardly matters. The Oscars were already wrecked.

The insular Hollywood community has always held little mystique for me. Celebrity means essentially nothing; some of the most talented people I know will never live in mansions or be household names. The sanctimonious and ill-informed politics of Hollywood have been extremely hard to take in recent years, but I think it was the “Oscars so white” brouhaha a few years back that finally did it, as the woke-left’s raging obsession with diversity got to be just too much. In a huge overcompensation, the race and gender quotas that are now built into Hollywood film projects and the awards that honor them have taken the focus away from fine artistic achievement in film. (And, sorry, but I don’t think you have to BE a (fill in the blank) to PLAY one. It’s called acting.) So goodbye, Oscars; I just don’t like what you’ve become. I feel like starting another #MeToo movement, as in, “Abandoning the Oscars? ME, TOO!”

I’m saying all this as a huge film buff, an actor myself and a member –- wait, the membership might have lapsed –- of the Dallas chapter of Women In Film. Deserving people should be recognized and rewarded for their talent and their work, period. These days, we’re lucky to see great films made by anyone. If they happen to check a few boxes, fine.

My personal taste runs to old movies, especially screwball comedies (not generally considered Oscar material) and black-and-white film noirs (ditto) featuring detectives in suits with fedoras, bad women with .22s in their rhinestone evening bags, and a total absence of cell phones, GPS and security cameras (which would make all these plots impossible). Most of my favorite movies were made before I was born, and the occasional modern remake typically pales in comparison to the original.

All of the above “backstory” is included as “exposition” for why I didn’t bother to tune in for the Academy Awards this year, I saw “the slap” later that night, on the news, and heard the criticism of Chris Rock for cracking a joke about the health condition (alopecia –- hair loss) suffered by Will Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. How dare he!

I won’t get into the marital issues that Will Smith and his wife are dealing with, other than to say to Will, “Get thee to a counselor,” and I don’t mean the one he and Jada have been seeing together. For Will to have done the shocking thing he did, he must be going through a terrible time in his life. At the same time, that doesn’t excuse him.

What I really want to say relates more to Chris Rock and his joke. As someone who’s been writing humor for more years than I care to divulge, I know that Chris –- a truly great standup –- would have known better than to joke about someone’s medical condition, at the Academy Awards no less. (As blunt as Ricky Gervais can be, I don’t think even he would do that.) Chris surely just thought she’d had her head shaved, either for the style or for a role. I myself had assumed she was just rocking the latest fashion trend among black women.

That’s because a week or so earlier, I was at the hair salon and happened to pick up the March issue of ELLE. It had a feature called “Black Women Cutting Their Hair Short Is Not Just a Style Trend.” Yes, it’s a trend among stylish black women, the article says, but it’s also about freedom and confidence. And right up there at the top left is a picture of Jada Pinkett Smith, looking fabulous and very glam with her confident smile and shaved head.

https://www.elle.com/beauty/hair/a39264372/black-women-buzzcut-not-a-trend/

The article goes on to talk about how much effort black women have traditionally put into their “crowning glory,” with wigs, weaves, processing, etc., and many are deciding to let go of all that. “’Hair carries a lot of power and energy,’ says Carla Gentry, PINKETT SMITH’S LONGTIME STYLIST [emphasis mine]. ‘Sometimes cutting it off offers a new start, and you might need that.’”

The piece goes on to quote Pinkett Smith from last fall, saying that she “was ready for this kind of expression and release.” Once the hair was gone, she said, she felt “more connected” to herself. In other words, losing her hair was an empowering thing. A positive thing.

In fact, Will and Jada’s daughter Willow –- known, ironically, for her music video “Whip My Hair” –-had HER head shaved the same week, onstage, as part of another music video of the same song. “I’m always shaving my head at monumental times in my life,” she explains, “when things are really changing. And this is one of those moments.” So, it can even be a mother-daughter thing.

https://www.prevention.com/beauty/hair/a37065810/willow-smith-shaved-head-concert/

Way down in the ELLE article, it mentions that Jada had been dealing with alopecia, “a condition that can cause patchy hair loss.” It says she’d had a post on Instagram that “implied it had influenced her decision to adopt a crop.” I never saw that Instagram post, and I’ll bet Chris Rock didn’t, either. And if she did mention the alopecia any other times, I didn’t see those, and I’ll bet Chris Rock didn’t, either. I only saw the article about how great and empowering it was when black women cut off their hair.

Chris did nothing wrong and handled the incident and the aftermath with class. It was just a silly joke about somebody’s shaved head. And if shaving one’s head is so all-fired empowering for a woman, then that woman should smile graciously and accept the little joke, and the moment should pass. As for Jada, she seems to be doing all right.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/jada-pinkett-smith-stuns-gold-191400851.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

That’s about all I have. I hope this is the last word.