Thumbs up, down: Beto vs. heckler
Also, ‘Scamilton’ snubs Miranda rights; Cy-Fair dystopia; Little League’s heartwarming moment on the mound.
Jesus Christ apparently wasn’t content just being a superstar. He had to share the stage with the forefathers, too. Actually, we don’t blame the great Redeemer at all for what appears to be an unredeemable infringement of intellectual property rights at McAllen’s The Door church, which presented an unauthorized, Christianized version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Pulitzer Prizewinning musical “Hamilton.” If Christ had really been in the room where it happened, he’d have written better lyrics. As it was, lines and scenes in the church production broadcast on YouTube were re-penned with the poetic precision of a hung-over Sunday school teacher. The episode, promptly dubbed “Scamilton” in a trending hashtag, seemed to earn that assessment when the church’s claim that it had permission to riff on Miranda’s masterpiece proved untrue. On Twitter, Miranda called it an “illegal, unauthorized production” and wrote: “Now lawyers do their work.” Seems church leaders have some work to do, too, maybe a little soul-searching about what happened, and some reading of Scripture. Might we suggest they start with that trusty ol’ Eighth Commandment: “Thou Shalt Not Steal.”
A mind is a dangerous thing. So dangerous that, in its impressionable years, it must be shrouded, encased in bubble-wrap and cordoned off with yellow caution tape lest it go wandering wayward into a devil’s playground of literary perversion, otherwise known as the public school library. You’ve heard of a “red” light district? Cypress-Fairbanks ISD just created a veritable “read” light district around every school library in its 93campus confines. The school board voted unanimously to let parents ban their kids from checking out library books. It’s the latest chapter in a dystopian saga of Texas culture wars, stoked by Texas Republican leaders, in which books about race are deemed liberal indoctrination and those about LGBTQ people are labeled “porn.” Parents have always had the right to challenge books they feel are inappropriate — and on occasion, one is discovered — but CyFair’s policy seems to encourage parents to deny their kids access to one of humanity’s greatest conceptions for no good reason. A Houston Chronicle analysis published this week showed that most book challenges stemmed from the complaints of Republican politicians and activists, not parents. The bright side of Cy-Fair’s policy? Stipulating that parental control over instructional materials “extends only to his or her own child.” We do feel for the kid who must watch paint peel while peers embark on fantastical literary adventures. We’re just glad their parents can’t slam the book on everybody else.
There’s no crying in baseball, but hugs are just fine. That’s exactly what Pearland pitcher Kaiden Shelton needed Tuesday after an errant pitch hit batter Isaiah Jarvis in the head. As if the nerves of a Little League regional tournament final weren’t enough, Shelton said watching his new friend from the opposing team fall to the ground scared him. “I thought, like, I really hurt him,” said Shelton in an interview with KHOU. But the scary moment led to one of the most heartwarming we’ve seen. After Jarvis got back up and made the walk to first base, he saw that Shelton was still shaken up on the mound. In video that made the rounds this week, Jarvis can be seen walking over to Shelton, giving him a hug and reassuring him as Shelton wiped away tears. “Just take deep breaths,” Shelton remembered Jarvis telling him. “Hey, you’re doing just great,” the Oklahoma player said. Shelton’s teammates quickly joined but for a moment it was just the two of them on the mound — opposing players in a moment of vulnerability, the game paused around them. Broadcaster and former professional player Danny Graves called it “the best thing that I’ve ever seen in Little League baseball.” Pearland went on to win the game 9-4, and the team is currently headed to the Little League World Series, but it was that moment that captured audiences in the stands and beyond, giving both teams cause to feel proud. As for Jarvis, Shelton shared he had just one request after the game: go win it for us.
You can tell a lot about somebody by when he chooses to deploy his F-bombs, or M-F-bombs, as the case may be. In 2005, an apparently annoyed Gov. Rick Perry let one rip, albeit a sanitized version, in an infamous hot mic moment following an interview with ABC 13’s Ted Oberg. The reporter kept angling for a scoop on Perry’s education plan that the governor didn’t want to give. “Adios, MoFo,” Perry said as soon as he thought the camera was off. This week, even potty mouths were agape when Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke detonated a more authentic M-F-bomb. He did it because, as he spoke somberly to a crowd in Mineral Wells about the need for gun reform after the murderous, AR-15-fueled rampage at a Uvalde elementary school that killed 21 people, a heckler laughed loudly amid a group of Gov. Greg Abbott supporters. O’Rourke appeared to ignore it at first and then suddenly shot a finger in the man’s direction, saying “It may be funny to you, mother---ker, but it’s not funny to me, OK?” The crowd agreed, jumping to their feet in applause and waving their “BETO” signs. You can never be sure with politicians, but O’Rourke’s response seemed authentic and true to the rage many Texans feel at our government’s lackadaisical response to repeated mass shootings. We really can’t say it better than Quorum Report’s Scott Braddock, who tweeted that while O’Rourke may have committed profanity during his stump speech, “Obscenity is laughing about a weapon that liquefies children.”