LIBERADIO(!)

On this morning’s show, Freddie and I discussed Rep. Stacey Campfield’s (R-Knoxville) glee at finding out that Penn & Teller’s Showtime TV show was coming to interview him about his bill (HB0821), which would prevent teachers from discussing sexual diversity. I’ll have the audio posted tomorrow but needless to say Penn & Teller aren’t coming by to talk about the intellectual merits of ol’ HB0821. From the show’s website:

In Penn & Teller: BS!, the crusaders utilize principles of magic and trickery, as well as good old fashioned “hidden camera” sting operations, to smoke out these nonsense peddlers and reveal how they operate.

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As our increasingly anti-intellectual, anti-science culture moves on each day to new crackpot subject matters, Penn & Teller are there to aggressively shoot down whack-jobs and fuzzy thinkers, no matter where they originate.

I think Freddie is right, it’s all performance art coming from conservatives these days and they apparently always crave a bigger audience.

We’ll have the audio posted tomorrow but in the meantime, Aunt B. of the Tiny Cat Pants has strike two against Rep. Campfield. She asks, is Rep. Campfield a Communist since he seems to be, albeit quite selectively, anti-Capitalism?

Campfield is trying to pass a law that would allow college students to not buy the assigned books for their classes if those assigned books are written by their professors. I’m having a great laugh at this, just trying to imagine how the hell UT or other state schools are supposed to recruit top talent and then turn around and tell them that their expertise isn’t valued in the classroom.

I mean, shoot, if the guy who designed your car wanted to show you all the nifty features it had, you wouldn’t be all “Oh my god, the designer of the car is only trying to tell me what he knows so that he can make a profit! I demand you give me someone who doesn’t know as much about this car to tell me about it!!!!!!”

But the best part is the comment he left at the bottom of this story.

I tried to make clear to the reporter the bill would not stop the professor from possibly requiring a book they authored. It would only keep them from directly profiting from that sale. They could still require the book then forgo the kickback they get from the book publisher for their classes sales.

That “kickback” is called “royalties.” That’s what you get paid to write a book. Is your paycheck a “kickback” from your employer? Does Campfield really believe that college professors should just write books for the good of the world and not be payed the fair market value for their work?

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I just love how telling people what money they can make and how they can make it are supposed to be bad things under Tennessee conservative ideology until the people making it are academics and then, whoa boy, the Republicans better get in there and run things like Soviets.

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But damn. “Kickbacks.” Yes, when you get paid for the work you do and Campfield likes you, it’s called a paycheck. When you get paid for the work you do and Campfield doesn’t like you, it’s called a kickback.

I think Stacey Campfield is the Frank Sinatra of Tennessee. It’s his State, we just live in it.