Lawmaker to Push Bill Requiring Dinesh D’Souza’s ‘America’ Be Shown in Schools.
Apparently Hays wants to start a mandate for “Teach the Controversy” chapter III… (Evolution Denial, Climate Change Denial, and now Historical Revisionism)
A Florida state senator plans to introduce a bill that would make Dinesh D’Souza’s docudrama, America, required viewing for most teenagers in the state, The Hollywood Reporter learned on Friday.
Republican Alan Hays said he’ll introduce in November his one-page bill that simply states that students in the 1,700 Florida public high schools and middle schools are to be shown the film unless their parents object….
…”The most dreaded disease in America today is political correctness. We need to inform our students of our whole history, and teach them how to think, not what to think,” Hays said. “Let them talk with their teachers, their peers and their parents, then draw their own conclusions. But they need both sides, and this movie shows a side they just aren’t seeing.”
Link
Third version of the movie trailer for “America.”
Youtube Video
You should watch the video above to get a sense of what this movie is like and what it is about. It is nothing more than a collection of simplistic apologetics for anything in America’s past that anyone might claim to be less than ideal.
Basically the premise is to interview anyone willing to espouse a very negative view of America’s past actions (the more extreme the better) and then “refute” them with “Yeah but if it wasn’t for America the Nazis would have won,” or “The USSR would have taken over the world if it wasn’t for us.”
While I admit that it is sensationalized jingoistic propaganda at its very finest (James O’Keefe should take notes from this movie if he can get over his jealousy for long enough), its relationship to historical study is somewhat nebulous. Mandating that it be shown to all Florida high school and middle school classes is just a way to force the exposure of a young and less informed captive audience to this Right-Wing propaganda. :(
(EDIT: The sad part is that with Florida’s current Republican dominated legislature this bill will probably pass easily when Hays brings it to the floor.)
