Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the project. Rep and Dauphina.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
You did an excellent job.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
You are maybe the most popular story teller in America
right now. How does it feel.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm actually a little overwhelmed. I didn't expect all the
attention to get brought to this subject, but I couldn't
be more pleased that people are catching on to what's
going on. I'm assuming it's probably more than just Connecticut,
but people need to hear and know what's really really
in the books, the school books of children's libraries in
(00:35):
the public school.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah, and what was lost on me? And if you
don't mind my calling you ann Is, I thought you
were seizing a moment. It's like, well, we've got everybody here,
we're discussing the budget. This has been a cruise side
of yours, and rightly so. For the life of me.
I don't we got rid of the classics where we
(00:57):
get rid of Tom Sawyer, but we welcome in fifty
Shades of Gray or I guess I could go with
me and Earl and the Dying Girl, although I do
want to talk about that with you, and I know
this is something you've been on for a while. I
thought you were seizing a moment and like, well, I've
got you all here. How do you feel about this?
But tell me how this whole book banning thing in
(01:20):
our libraries. How it's actually part of the budget too,
because you weren't doing that. You're like, hey, it's in
the budget, that's why I'm talking about it. Tell me.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah. So this came up. This was introduced by Senator
Bob Duff. For some reason, he feels very compelled to
protect the librarians across the state that are approving of
this kind of material in our children's school books. And
he put in a bill and it came to me
before me and the Children's Committee, and so we had
(01:51):
a hearing and I heard this here, you know, we
tell this hearing and I heard the testimony with regard
to this back and I think it was February, and
so I knew that there was a possibility that this
was going to get heard in the chamber, but I
had no idea that they were going to sneak it
in the implementer. Now we have a budget and we
(02:13):
have an implementer, and the implementer actually implements the budget,
and it's supposed to be all monetary. That is an
expenditure put aside for any particular thing is then you
then implement what it's going to go for. And they
put this splid this and this isn't the only thing
they slid in, but they slid this bill in. So
(02:35):
what we really deprived the good citizens of Connecticut from
was a real floor debate to really listen to all
the details of what this bill had in it, what's
going on across our state. And it was quite appropriate
because it was in the implementer.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Yeah, and was it also beyond bill, it's also dollars
going towards it. Right, I'm assuming that this obvious the
salaries of the librarian's notwithstanding also the purchasing of the
books right to stock the libraries with them.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Now, no, there's no physical note, physical note to this.
This is completely through, you know, through their own local
towns with regard to what they're putting into their library expenditures.
This has nothing to do with the budget.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Okay. And then I wanted to ask you, so you
get up and you start reading from me and Earl
and the dying Girl. I'll tell you it was a
heck of a moment. And you mentioned elementary school because
there's there's a part of me you know that was
turned into a film. I don't know if you know that,
or that was made into a movie, a PG thirteen
(03:43):
movie ten years ago. It certainly does tackle the topic
of grieving. I mean, there's a character in the who
has cancer and how you deal with a friend dying
of can I don't I watched that movie. None of
what you read made it into the movie. So if
the filmmaker decided, well, our target demo, that would alienate them.
(04:05):
You know, I don't know why our schools aren't viewing
it the same way. But when you said elementary school,
how what that would be beyond their reading level? They
were were Never mind in Connecticut literacy, you know, we're
breaking records there too. A fourth grader wouldn't even be
able to read them. It would exceed the reading level.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, there was. There's a website called take Back the
Classroom dot Com. I saw, and anybody can go on
there and look up their local towns and investigate the
books that might be in their own public school library.
So that's where these were listed, and that's how I
was able to ascertain those particular schools and the books
(04:51):
that were in them. And the specific book you spoke about,
I've never read. I only identified them through this website.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah. I only knew of it because I had seen
the movie. And I'm like, jeez, the book sounds wildly
different than the filmmas so and that's why I just
wanted to point out if a filmmaker saw it as well,
let's sanitize this. We want to get fifteen and sixteen
year olds to watch this. And they got rid of
all of those sexual terms and they made a PG. Thirteen.
(05:22):
You know, I don't know why any libraryan anywhere. You know,
that's a struggle for me too. And do you have
you have children?
Speaker 2 (05:31):
I have four grown children and four grandchildren.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah. And your grandchildren are you know, I would imagine
they're in school? Right? They were elementary, middle school thereabouts
high school.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Yeah, there's all school aged fifteen, thirteen and two eleven
year olds.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah. Do they have good relationships with their librarians?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
So there, My grandchildren are all homeschooled.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Oh really, that's an interesting development too. The all the
Dems must recoil and terror when you say that, and.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I try not to advertise it. I try to keep
families information private because they you know, I, you know,
the legislators are always under a lot of spotlight, so
I try not to publicly share a lot of my
own personal information. But they've made those choices. Probably one
of them is because of some of this sort of
(06:24):
thing that exposed the children in the schools, right yeah,
But there's a lot of reasons why they've chosen to
do that.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Well, well, you know, I was going to fly in
the face of that just a little bit, just being honest.
It's what I find so interesting about what's going on
with this whole thing is both of my kids, who
are now nineteen and twenty two, they had great relationships
with their librarians from middle school through high school. Like
(06:52):
the librarian knew what they liked and would recommend things,
you know. But Harry Potter, it was stuff that was
you know, it was great. It was fantasy and sword
and sorcery. I can I'm struggling with the actual librarian,
who's like some of the books that are on the list.
(07:13):
Pam sent me the list. I can't picture a grown
a page. The librarian's a good gig too, comfortably pushing
this book across the counter to a twelve year old kid.
That was just not my experience. So I'm blown away
by to be honest.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, well I think just so I can give you
a little bit more background. During testimony, Senator Duff came
in and he just went on and on and on
about how the librarians were qualified experts to pick out
books with appropriate content for the children, and if you
(07:53):
look at the bill, it even requires that we acknowledge that.
And so his defence was, they're the expert. So what
he was saying, and it was very dismissive of parents
who are have different opinions about the morality and the
exposure of some of this stuff for our children. But
(08:14):
I want you to visualize your neighbor, your maybe fifty
or sixty year old neighbor man, he could be any age.
He's a man, he lives next door, and he goes
to the library and takes out one of these books, okay,
And he's sitting on his front foord steps and a neighbor,
his young neighbor, who's about eleven is or nine or
(08:35):
ten or whatever, is riding his bike right in front.
He says to the little boy, Hey, I've got this
interesting book. Would you like to sit down and read
it with me. Now, I want you to visualize him
reading that book to him, and then the boy going
home and telling his parents what he heard in the graphics. Now,
(08:55):
if the mine, we're not allowed to use props. I
was asked to I had a stack of books on
my desk, and I was asked to remove those I
couldn't hold up. If you think the words I said
were bad, you should see the graphic.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah, these books, they were sent to me. Yeah, they
were sent to me.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
I'm s what do you think? What do you think
would have been the outcome of that little scenario I
played out for.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
In a room, in a room full of grown ups.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, I'm sure. I'm quite sure. The police would have
soon been at that door of that individual who read
that book to him, and there would have been some
serious charges made against him. Oh so this is what
this is what we had before us, these sorts of
books with this, these kinds of graphics. A few doctors
came out and testified at testimony and said how terribly
(09:46):
bad this was for our children. And once our children
see these graphics and hear these words, you can't unsee it.
You can't take it away.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Okay, of course I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Parents, I have no idea their children may have seen it.
Maybe the child didn't bring the book home. Maybe he
was just scanning it in school and it looked very
scary to him and he was afraid to say anything
to his parents. These sorts of things are going on
in Connecticut.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yeah, yeah, this is going to be a little bit
awkward for me. And again we're on with Rep. And Dauphine,
who I've never met before. But after you reading to
me the other day, I do feel a certain level
of comfort with you now, I can say. And she's,
of course Children's Committee ranking member from representing Killingly. I
(10:37):
looked at Pam sent me what I guess is a
manual instructions for young men, showing you how to do
something we all discover on our own. Quite a book,
is what book is that in? And and I read
a little bit of it down the air. What I
(10:58):
could it was so strange because it was it was
elevating a certain prime something that just a coming of age, right,
a passage thing we stumble upon on our own. It
was giving. The instructions were strange, They were around the bend,
(11:18):
like maybe when you're forty five and your marriage is
on the on the falling apart stuff. You do what
doctor in the right mind would say, Oh no, no, no, no,
this is how an eleven year old should go about
pleasuring himself.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
This room up, so you know, please, this is the
grooming of our children. This is exactly what this is.
Let's call it what it is. It's normalizing whatever you
want to say that was where it was in the books,
whether it's pedophilia or these graphic visual pictures that were
exposing our children to. We have a huge mental health
(12:00):
problem with our children across the state and across the country.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
It's only going to exacerbate it. It's just going to
exacerbate it.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah, because we all go through the I feel like
an outcast. I feel like a misfit. As it is,
you're going to read all the stuff that I've been
sent this morning. You can't wrap your head around that
at twenty eight, at eight, you're just going to think, oh,
I'm truly a misfit. It's confounding and confusing the children.
(12:33):
Do you feel like you got anywhere on I mean,
you certainly made your noise, but at the end of
the day, where were we at with the bill? Did
you get anywhere? Well?
Speaker 2 (12:41):
The bill I from what I understand, the only thing
that the governor can veto out of the bill are
fiscal things. So the monetary items, I don't know that
for a fact, but there was discussion about that yesterday.
So I don't know where this is going to go.
I think it.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Will pass, and it'll give a lot of power to
the librarians and it will make it much more difficult
for any parent to go in and object to a book.
There's going to be if you will this line item
of things you have.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
To check off the box. You have to go to
the superintendent and the principle and the YadA YadA, YadA,
and they define a board that can hear your case.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
And this should be done at a local level.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Boards of eds that the residents of the towns are
selecting to be on. The boards of eds should be
the ones that are taking up these issues and making
the policy around this. This shouldn't be an edict from
the State of Connecticut to every town across the state
telling them when, how, and you know who can be
(13:48):
on the committee, the procedure they must follow, and honestly,
you should see the topics that you can't challenge in
addition to you can't challenge a viewpoint, so they have
literally locked out every single topic and viewpoint that you
can you can if you will object to.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, I mean, well, there's there's a little left.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
To be able to go in front of this board
and say I don't like this book. I think it's
inappropriate for our children. And that's what I'm here for today.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah. Uh, do you feel like there's a Democrat that
you could could get to agree with? Like I could? Actually,
I can't see the governor and I'm no fan. I
can't see him thinking this is normal and fine. And okay,
I could see Chris Murphy completely championing, you know, being
a champion of it, but not the governor can have
(14:43):
no allies as far as across the aisle is concerned.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
What what I find they do is they dig their
heels in the.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Sand because it's insane stuff. It is insane stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
They gaslight us and then they make it all about us.
If you look at that reader's comment to what was said,
not one person, not one Democrat came out and said,
you know what this is concerning, and I'm glad Rep.
Dauphine brought it to my attention because I wasn't aware
of that, and I'm going to go check it out now.
(15:14):
I brought out a couple of books that were of
the particular district, and the representative was stood up on
the house floor and went on and on and on
about how inappropriate the language I used on the house floor.
Not once did he say he was concerned that that
was in his school. That should have been the concern.
(15:37):
What he said to me was I should have named
the books and that would have been enough. Well, what
I said to him was I did name those books.
I named them at the committee hearing, and there was
no attention or concern given to them. So I had
to take it a step further and say, Okay, this
is what's in our books. It's not appropriate for the
chamber and all the adults in the chamber, but we
(16:00):
put it in the books and put it in our
school library.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah. Yeah, it's beyond tail.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
But we are normalizing this every day, and I think
most people are just, well, what's the big deal. Somebody
said to me, and I thought it was pretty impactful.
They said, well, you know, some of this might be
appropriate for high schoolers. And then another person came back
with a comment, and I thought it was really brilliant.
What she said was if these kids were in the
(16:29):
hallway and the school and a boy was saying some
of the things that I said on the house floor
to a girl nearby or whatever, they were having a conversation,
they probably would have been quickly brought down to the office.
The parents might have been called, and something would have
been addressed there. Right, So, if the high school students
(16:50):
can't talk about this in the hall, how is it
appropriate in their book?
Speaker 1 (16:55):
That's good that they're reading. Yeah, that's good, that that's
spot on. I'm dumbfounded myself by what I'm seeing, uh,
and by I can't imagine having a conversation with a
parent who's like, no, it's good, it's healthy. We've got
to open the lines of commit Those aren't lines of communication,
(17:15):
those are lines of confusion. Especially in a state with
the tragedy that we had many years back, that we
emerged caring about mental health and kids not feeling alone.
This is just going to create more issues. I believe
we're manufactured. We're manufacturing more social outcasts with this stuff.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
I think the policies that are coming out of Hartford
are feeding this mental health crisis.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Agree single day, I agree with you. You're my new hero.
I look forward to me. I mean that
Welcome to the project. Rep and Dauphina.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
You did an excellent job.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
You are maybe the most popular story teller in America
right now. How does it feel.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm actually a little overwhelmed. I didn't expect all the
attention to get brought to this subject, but I couldn't
be more pleased that people are catching on to what's
going on. I'm assuming it's probably more than just Connecticut,
but people need to hear and know what's really really
in the books, the school books of children's libraries in
(00:35):
the public school.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah, and what was lost on me? And if you
don't mind my calling you ann Is, I thought you
were seizing a moment. It's like, well, we've got everybody here,
we're discussing the budget. This has been a cruise side
of yours, and rightly so. For the life of me.
I don't we got rid of the classics where we
(00:57):
get rid of Tom Sawyer, but we welcome in fifty
Shades of Gray or I guess I could go with
me and Earl and the Dying Girl, although I do
want to talk about that with you, and I know
this is something you've been on for a while. I
thought you were seizing a moment and like, well, I've
got you all here. How do you feel about this?
But tell me how this whole book banning thing in
(01:20):
our libraries. How it's actually part of the budget too,
because you weren't doing that. You're like, hey, it's in
the budget, that's why I'm talking about it. Tell me.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah. So this came up. This was introduced by Senator
Bob Duff. For some reason, he feels very compelled to
protect the librarians across the state that are approving of
this kind of material in our children's school books. And
he put in a bill and it came to me
before me and the Children's Committee, and so we had
(01:51):
a hearing and I heard this here, you know, we
tell this hearing and I heard the testimony with regard
to this back and I think it was February, and
so I knew that there was a possibility that this
was going to get heard in the chamber, but I
had no idea that they were going to sneak it
in the implementer. Now we have a budget and we
(02:13):
have an implementer, and the implementer actually implements the budget,
and it's supposed to be all monetary. That is an
expenditure put aside for any particular thing is then you
then implement what it's going to go for. And they
put this splid this and this isn't the only thing
they slid in, but they slid this bill in. So
(02:35):
what we really deprived the good citizens of Connecticut from
was a real floor debate to really listen to all
the details of what this bill had in it, what's
going on across our state. And it was quite appropriate
because it was in the implementer.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Yeah, and was it also beyond bill, it's also dollars
going towards it. Right, I'm assuming that this obvious the
salaries of the librarian's notwithstanding also the purchasing of the
books right to stock the libraries with them.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Now, no, there's no physical note, physical note to this.
This is completely through, you know, through their own local
towns with regard to what they're putting into their library expenditures.
This has nothing to do with the budget.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Okay. And then I wanted to ask you, so you
get up and you start reading from me and Earl
and the dying Girl. I'll tell you it was a
heck of a moment. And you mentioned elementary school because
there's there's a part of me you know that was
turned into a film. I don't know if you know that,
or that was made into a movie, a PG thirteen
(03:43):
movie ten years ago. It certainly does tackle the topic
of grieving. I mean, there's a character in the who
has cancer and how you deal with a friend dying
of can I don't I watched that movie. None of
what you read made it into the movie. So if
the filmmaker decided, well, our target demo, that would alienate them.
(04:05):
You know, I don't know why our schools aren't viewing
it the same way. But when you said elementary school,
how what that would be beyond their reading level? They
were were Never mind in Connecticut literacy, you know, we're
breaking records there too. A fourth grader wouldn't even be
able to read them. It would exceed the reading level.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, there was. There's a website called take Back the
Classroom dot Com. I saw, and anybody can go on
there and look up their local towns and investigate the
books that might be in their own public school library.
So that's where these were listed, and that's how I
was able to ascertain those particular schools and the books
(04:51):
that were in them. And the specific book you spoke about,
I've never read. I only identified them through this website.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah. I only knew of it because I had seen
the movie. And I'm like, jeez, the book sounds wildly
different than the filmmas so and that's why I just
wanted to point out if a filmmaker saw it as well,
let's sanitize this. We want to get fifteen and sixteen
year olds to watch this. And they got rid of
all of those sexual terms and they made a PG. Thirteen.
(05:22):
You know, I don't know why any libraryan anywhere. You know,
that's a struggle for me too. And do you have
you have children?
Speaker 2 (05:31):
I have four grown children and four grandchildren.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah. And your grandchildren are you know, I would imagine
they're in school? Right? They were elementary, middle school thereabouts
high school.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Yeah, there's all school aged fifteen, thirteen and two eleven
year olds.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah. Do they have good relationships with their librarians?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
So there, My grandchildren are all homeschooled.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Oh really, that's an interesting development too. The all the
Dems must recoil and terror when you say that, and.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I try not to advertise it. I try to keep
families information private because they you know, I, you know,
the legislators are always under a lot of spotlight, so
I try not to publicly share a lot of my
own personal information. But they've made those choices. Probably one
of them is because of some of this sort of
(06:24):
thing that exposed the children in the schools, right yeah,
But there's a lot of reasons why they've chosen to
do that.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Well, well, you know, I was going to fly in
the face of that just a little bit, just being honest.
It's what I find so interesting about what's going on
with this whole thing is both of my kids, who
are now nineteen and twenty two, they had great relationships
with their librarians from middle school through high school. Like
(06:52):
the librarian knew what they liked and would recommend things,
you know. But Harry Potter, it was stuff that was
you know, it was great. It was fantasy and sword
and sorcery. I can I'm struggling with the actual librarian,
who's like some of the books that are on the list.
(07:13):
Pam sent me the list. I can't picture a grown
a page. The librarian's a good gig too, comfortably pushing
this book across the counter to a twelve year old kid.
That was just not my experience. So I'm blown away
by to be honest.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, well I think just so I can give you
a little bit more background. During testimony, Senator Duff came
in and he just went on and on and on
about how the librarians were qualified experts to pick out
books with appropriate content for the children, and if you
(07:53):
look at the bill, it even requires that we acknowledge that.
And so his defence was, they're the expert. So what
he was saying, and it was very dismissive of parents
who are have different opinions about the morality and the
exposure of some of this stuff for our children. But
(08:14):
I want you to visualize your neighbor, your maybe fifty
or sixty year old neighbor man, he could be any age.
He's a man, he lives next door, and he goes
to the library and takes out one of these books, okay,
And he's sitting on his front foord steps and a neighbor,
his young neighbor, who's about eleven is or nine or
(08:35):
ten or whatever, is riding his bike right in front.
He says to the little boy, Hey, I've got this
interesting book. Would you like to sit down and read
it with me. Now, I want you to visualize him
reading that book to him, and then the boy going
home and telling his parents what he heard in the graphics. Now,
(08:55):
if the mine, we're not allowed to use props. I
was asked to I had a stack of books on
my desk, and I was asked to remove those I
couldn't hold up. If you think the words I said
were bad, you should see the graphic.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah, these books, they were sent to me. Yeah, they
were sent to me.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
I'm s what do you think? What do you think
would have been the outcome of that little scenario I
played out for.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
In a room, in a room full of grown ups.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, I'm sure. I'm quite sure. The police would have
soon been at that door of that individual who read
that book to him, and there would have been some
serious charges made against him. Oh so this is what
this is what we had before us, these sorts of
books with this, these kinds of graphics. A few doctors
came out and testified at testimony and said how terribly
(09:46):
bad this was for our children. And once our children
see these graphics and hear these words, you can't unsee it.
You can't take it away.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Okay, of course I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Parents, I have no idea their children may have seen it.
Maybe the child didn't bring the book home. Maybe he
was just scanning it in school and it looked very
scary to him and he was afraid to say anything
to his parents. These sorts of things are going on
in Connecticut.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yeah, yeah, this is going to be a little bit
awkward for me. And again we're on with Rep. And Dauphine,
who I've never met before. But after you reading to
me the other day, I do feel a certain level
of comfort with you now, I can say. And she's,
of course Children's Committee ranking member from representing Killingly. I
(10:37):
looked at Pam sent me what I guess is a
manual instructions for young men, showing you how to do
something we all discover on our own. Quite a book,
is what book is that in? And and I read
a little bit of it down the air. What I
(10:58):
could it was so strange because it was it was
elevating a certain prime something that just a coming of age, right,
a passage thing we stumble upon on our own. It
was giving. The instructions were strange, They were around the bend,
(11:18):
like maybe when you're forty five and your marriage is
on the on the falling apart stuff. You do what
doctor in the right mind would say, Oh no, no, no, no,
this is how an eleven year old should go about
pleasuring himself.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
This room up, so you know, please, this is the
grooming of our children. This is exactly what this is.
Let's call it what it is. It's normalizing whatever you
want to say that was where it was in the books,
whether it's pedophilia or these graphic visual pictures that were
exposing our children to. We have a huge mental health
(12:00):
problem with our children across the state and across the country.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
It's only going to exacerbate it. It's just going to
exacerbate it.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah, because we all go through the I feel like
an outcast. I feel like a misfit. As it is,
you're going to read all the stuff that I've been
sent this morning. You can't wrap your head around that
at twenty eight, at eight, you're just going to think, oh,
I'm truly a misfit. It's confounding and confusing the children.
(12:33):
Do you feel like you got anywhere on I mean,
you certainly made your noise, but at the end of
the day, where were we at with the bill? Did
you get anywhere? Well?
Speaker 2 (12:41):
The bill I from what I understand, the only thing
that the governor can veto out of the bill are
fiscal things. So the monetary items, I don't know that
for a fact, but there was discussion about that yesterday.
So I don't know where this is going to go.
I think it.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Will pass, and it'll give a lot of power to
the librarians and it will make it much more difficult
for any parent to go in and object to a book.
There's going to be if you will this line item
of things you have.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
To check off the box. You have to go to
the superintendent and the principle and the YadA YadA, YadA,
and they define a board that can hear your case.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
And this should be done at a local level.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Boards of eds that the residents of the towns are
selecting to be on. The boards of eds should be
the ones that are taking up these issues and making
the policy around this. This shouldn't be an edict from
the State of Connecticut to every town across the state
telling them when, how, and you know who can be
(13:48):
on the committee, the procedure they must follow, and honestly,
you should see the topics that you can't challenge in
addition to you can't challenge a viewpoint, so they have
literally locked out every single topic and viewpoint that you
can you can if you will object to.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, I mean, well, there's there's a little left.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
To be able to go in front of this board
and say I don't like this book. I think it's
inappropriate for our children. And that's what I'm here for today.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah. Uh, do you feel like there's a Democrat that
you could could get to agree with? Like I could? Actually,
I can't see the governor and I'm no fan. I
can't see him thinking this is normal and fine. And okay,
I could see Chris Murphy completely championing, you know, being
a champion of it, but not the governor can have
(14:43):
no allies as far as across the aisle is concerned.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
What what I find they do is they dig their
heels in the.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Sand because it's insane stuff. It is insane stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
They gaslight us and then they make it all about us.
If you look at that reader's comment to what was said,
not one person, not one Democrat came out and said,
you know what this is concerning, and I'm glad Rep.
Dauphine brought it to my attention because I wasn't aware
of that, and I'm going to go check it out now.
(15:14):
I brought out a couple of books that were of
the particular district, and the representative was stood up on
the house floor and went on and on and on
about how inappropriate the language I used on the house floor.
Not once did he say he was concerned that that
was in his school. That should have been the concern.
(15:37):
What he said to me was I should have named
the books and that would have been enough. Well, what
I said to him was I did name those books.
I named them at the committee hearing, and there was
no attention or concern given to them. So I had
to take it a step further and say, Okay, this
is what's in our books. It's not appropriate for the
chamber and all the adults in the chamber, but we
(16:00):
put it in the books and put it in our
school library.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah. Yeah, it's beyond tail.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
But we are normalizing this every day, and I think
most people are just, well, what's the big deal. Somebody
said to me, and I thought it was pretty impactful.
They said, well, you know, some of this might be
appropriate for high schoolers. And then another person came back
with a comment, and I thought it was really brilliant.
What she said was if these kids were in the
(16:29):
hallway and the school and a boy was saying some
of the things that I said on the house floor
to a girl nearby or whatever, they were having a conversation,
they probably would have been quickly brought down to the office.
The parents might have been called, and something would have
been addressed there. Right, So, if the high school students
(16:50):
can't talk about this in the hall, how is it
appropriate in their book?
Speaker 1 (16:55):
That's good that they're reading. Yeah, that's good, that that's
spot on. I'm dumbfounded myself by what I'm seeing, uh,
and by I can't imagine having a conversation with a
parent who's like, no, it's good, it's healthy. We've got
to open the lines of commit Those aren't lines of communication,
(17:15):
those are lines of confusion. Especially in a state with
the tragedy that we had many years back, that we
emerged caring about mental health and kids not feeling alone.
This is just going to create more issues. I believe
we're manufactured. We're manufacturing more social outcasts with this stuff.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
I think the policies that are coming out of Hartford
are feeding this mental health crisis.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Agree single day, I agree with you. You're my new hero.
I look forward to me. I mean that
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