Hartford Courant (Sunday)

WOKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO

- By David Holahan David Holahan is a veteran freelance writer.

Are you wide-awake yet, fully attuned to the cataclysmi­c consequenc­es of wokeness? All you need to know about woke is that it’s bad and then say the word scornfully a lot, even when discussing the weather or the latest diet fad.

Anyone who disagrees with you on the right course for America is just, like, so totally woke. No need for further discussion.

In the wide wicked world of woke, sleep apnea is a good thing.

Never mind about rampaging Climate Change, war in Europe, escalating health care costs, and blindingly pink Barbie movies. What is coming for us, according to Gov. Ron DeSantis among others, is this dang woke pandemic — as opposed to that phony-baloney COVID virus (Ron and I ain’t dead yet, how about you?)

Now, gals and blokes, this woke deal ain’t no joke. It began in the administra­tion of James K. Polk, who was (like dah) a Democrat. But it’s gotten way worse since 1849.

So, what exactly is woke? You tell me; I haven’t a clue. But I’m agin’ it — and you should be, too. Let’s ask presidenti­al candidate

Ron DeSantis, who is promising to exterminat­e wokeness in Florida once and for all, like those elusive, 20-foot-long, invasive Burmese pythons that slither through the Everglades at will. He’ll have to do better with two-legged, left-wing “reptiles” than he’s doing on those freerange snakes.

Even Ron is a little vague on the meaning of the dreaded woke: it’s kind of a pig in a poke, or where there’s smoke there’s woke.

OK, wait, I got it. Here’s an example of high-toned bespoke wokeness: it’s wrong to discrimina­te against people who are different from you. Now that’s just un-American. It takes away my freedom to be a bigot.

The people from The People’s Republic of Woke think they’re so smart because they have both eyes open wide, and their pupils dilated (have another toke, folks!).

Many of these woke-toking jokers went to college and learned a useless thing or two, like there is racism in the United States and that slavery was all bad. Racism ended, of course, with the Civil War. It’s been smooth sailing ever since. And slavery, according to Ron, was really just a trans-continenta­l Vo-Ed program.

Any fool knows all that. Ron learned it at Yale College and Harvard Law, emerging from these twin hearts of wokeness unscathed.

Ron isn’t worried about climate change: he’s concerned with that clearly subversive “American” institutio­n, The Walt Disney Company and its horde of brightly clad LGBTQ fellow travelers.

Who’s got time to discrimina­te against racial minorities nowadays when there are legions of gender-fluid Americans to oppress.

Imagine the sheer horror of having to bake an artichoke-flavored wedding cake for a pair

of wide-awake homosexual­s— whether in fact or even just hypothetic­ally. Thankfully, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in to nip that national nightmare in the bud, ruling against the couple, but making no pronouncem­ent on artichokes.

I have been searching for a slogan that would help to unify our gallant anti-woke militias. In the 1950s, the catchphras­e was “Better Dead than Red!” Here’s a stroke of genius from 2023: “I’d Rather Croak than be Woke!”?

So, my fellow Americans (the ones who don’t hate their country or keep pointing out its flaws), stay vigilant on the frontlines of woke. Don’t worry if you don’t

know exactly what woke signifies. Ron and Don, those twin sleep-walking know-nothings, aren’t too sure themselves. But they think it’s their ticket to the White House, and that’s all they need to know.

Our job is to Just say woke and look all disgusted, like someone slipped a bullfrog down the back of our pajamas. Invoke woke in every sentence and dangling participle you can: here a woke, there a woke, everywhere a woke-woke. Once we get rid of woke, everything will be okey-dokey.

 ?? PHELAN M. EBENHACK/AP FILE ?? Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, not mincing words, calls his new education agenda the “Stop Woke” act. The new measures include the removal of critical race theory and “social emotional learning” — which aims to infuse hard science with social and emotional elements — from math textbooks.
PHELAN M. EBENHACK/AP FILE Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, not mincing words, calls his new education agenda the “Stop Woke” act. The new measures include the removal of critical race theory and “social emotional learning” — which aims to infuse hard science with social and emotional elements — from math textbooks.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States