sunstoned Posted July 9, 2025 Posted July 9, 2025 Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist and grandson of Ezra Taft Benson has passed away. Highlights from the article: Quote After being laid off by The Arizona Republic in 2019, Benson joined the Arizona Mirror, shortly after the nonprofit digital news outlet launched. He continued to produce thought-provoking cartoons for the Mirror until his retirement in 2024, capping off a remarkable career that spanned nearly half a century. Quote In addition to his work as a cartoonist, Benson was an accomplished public speaker and educator, frequently giving lectures on political cartooning and free speech at universities and conferences across the country. https://azmirror.com/2025/07/08/pulitzer-winning-political-cartoonist-steve-benson-dies-at-71/ 4
The Nehor Posted July 9, 2025 Posted July 9, 2025 Bringing back memories of Evan Mecham and all those shenanigans. Weird times.
Stargazer Posted July 9, 2025 Posted July 9, 2025 (edited) 1 hour ago, The Nehor said: Bringing back memories of Evan Mecham and all those shenanigans. Weird times. Wow, hadn't thought of him in a long time. I was living in Washington state and barely noticed Arizona politics. Your comment led me to look old Ev up on Wikipedia. Ouch! Didn't know he had been impeached and removed from office; after removal from office he survived the following criminal trial with an acquittal on all charges. Wiki says: "Attorneys who analyzed the proceedings later concluded that the Mechams' lawyers' most successful strategy was keeping their clients off the witness stand." LOL! He died in 2008 from Alzheimers. What little I remember about him from that time is that he tried to promote one of Cleon Skousen's books on the Constitution ("The Making of America: The Substance and Meaning of the Constitution") as a required text for Arizona schools as part of the civics curriculum. Having read that book, I feel that was a good idea. You probably disagree. Mecham's former press secretary said this about him: "The tragic fact ... is that Mecham will be remembered as an incompetent, bumbling bigot who got what he deserved. But ... he had some charming personal qualities. He had a genuine interest in helping the disadvantaged. He understood economic development far better than his predecessor, Bruce Babbitt, or his successor, Rose Mofford. He believed in economic equality for all races and minorities, arguing this would be necessary before political and social equality could be achieved. He was deeply troubled by rampant drug abuse. And, his pet project this year [1988] would have been a statewide campaign to help illiterate adults learn to read. This side of Mecham was lost in a fog of controversy that he helped create." Edited July 9, 2025 by Stargazer 1
Calm Posted July 9, 2025 Posted July 9, 2025 (edited) On 7/9/2025 at 2:01 PM, Stargazer said: Having read that book, I feel that was a good idea. You probably disagree. I definitely do disagree if this is accurate: https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/the-holy-war-surrounding-evan-mecham/ Quote When Mecham said he liked Cleon Skousen’s book The Making of America, quotations from the book surfaced in the press. One called slave owners “the worst victims of slavery,” and two referred to black children as “pickaninnies.” Quote In a straight forward narrative, Skousen observes, “The most degraded bondage is outright slavery, where one human being pretends to own another, ‘body and soul.’ ” He also writes, “Slavery is not a racial problem. It is a human problem.” Controversy swirls, however, around nine pages in which Skousen quotes material written by the late professor Fred Albert Shannon. In this, Shannon contends, among other things, that “the slave had a deliberateness of motion which no amount of supervision could quicken. If the owner got ahead of the gang, they all would shirk behind his back.” At another point, Shannon writes: “If pickaninnies ran naked, it was generally from choice, and when the white boys had to put on shoes and go away to school, they were likely to envy the freedom of their colored playmates.” He asserts also that “numerous observers” agreed that “brutality was no more common in the black belt than among free labor elsewhere and that the slave owners were the worst victims of the system.” Further, Shannon writes: “The gangs (of slaves) in transit were usually a cheerful lot, though the presence of a number of the more vicious type sometimes made it necessary for them all to go in chains.” Skousen was reported by his secretary to be unavailable for comment Friday. She said Skousen, as a college student in 1934, read the Shannon text and decided to include it in his “The Making of America.” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-02-07-mn-1727-story.html#:~:text=Controversy swirls%2C however%2C around nine pages in,by the late professor Fred Albert Shannon.&text=Commission spokesman Kabaker said Chairwoman Crosby had,book be used as a fund-raising device. If he is using the material approvingly, as in to provide information that he believes is correct, then it doesn’t matter if he is quoting or not whether it’s inappropriate language or inappropriate ideas, imo. Skousen would be used as an authority and he is apparently presenting Shannon as an authority on slavery…which from Shannon’s writings would be a mistake because it sounds more wishful thinking than reality. Plus if Skousen’s evidence followed the methodology of his Thousand Year series, the level of speculation presented as fact is not something I would want to be taught to my kids in school This quotes in much more detail. https://www.mediamatters.org/glenn-beck/beck-guru-skousens-story-slavery-suggests-slave-owners-were-worst-victims-system And from a critique of another book by Skousen by Lou Midgley: Quote Much of what Skousen claims to have found in Quigley’s book is simply not there. There are numerous places in The Naked Capitalist in which Skousen (1) asserts something about Quigley but then inadvertently reveals that he completely misunderstands Quigley’s remarks; (2) simply invents fantastic ideas and attributes them to Quigley; or (3) makes inferences from Quigley’s book that go far beyond the bounds of honest commentary. By way of illustration, I will examine a small sampling of these many passages. https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/roundtable-review-the-naked-capitalist/ Edited July 12, 2025 by Calm 1
Stargazer Posted July 10, 2025 Posted July 10, 2025 (edited) 22 hours ago, Calm said: I definitely do disagree if this is accurate: https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/the-holy-war-surrounding-evan-mecham/ https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-02-07-mn-1727-story.html#:~:text=Controversy swirls%2C however%2C around nine pages in,by the late professor Fred Albert Shannon.&text=Commission spokesman Kabaker said Chairwoman Crosby had,book be used as a fund-raising device. If he is using the material approvingly, as in to provide information that he believes is correct, then it doesn’t matter if he is quoting or not whether it’s inappropriate language or inappropriate ideas, imo. Skousen would be used as an authority and he is apparently presenting Shannon as an authority. Plus if his evidence followed the methodology of his Thousand Year series, the level of speculation presented as fact is not something I would want to be taught to my kids in school This quotes in much more detail. https://www.mediamatters.org/glenn-beck/beck-guru-skousens-story-slavery-suggests-slave-owners-were-worst-victims-system And from a critique of another book by Skousen by Lou Midgley: https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/roundtable-review-the-naked-capitalist/ Shall we duel with journal critiques at daybreak? I spent a couple of hours writing a long response to this, but after almost posting it, I realized that it would constitute a huge derail of the topic. I still have the text saved, so if it ever becomes appropriate to share it... I'll just leave it at this: I have some disagreements with what you posted. Edited July 10, 2025 by Stargazer
Calm Posted July 10, 2025 Posted July 10, 2025 (edited) On 7/10/2025 at 3:41 PM, Stargazer said: I'll just leave it at this: I have some disagreements with what you posted. I love that you have disagreements with me. Life would be boring if everyone agreed….and frustrating because from experience I have learned it starts to feel like someone is just not putting energy into thinking about something or is agreeing to avoid bumps when what I actually want to know how they really feel about something because I am trying to support them, do something nice for them, just want to know them better, etc. I haven’t read the book itself, so I am quite open to being wrong. The quotes and my experience with his other books I have read, however, ensure I would require reading it in depth before approving of it though. (I am very familiar with his Thousand Year series or was and even as a teen, while I thought it wasn’t bad if looking for familiarity with the basic story, I could clearly see many of his ‘facts’ were more speculation) Edited July 12, 2025 by Calm 2
Recommended Posts