Craft wrong for Kentucky

Kelly Craft’s latest ads are the ugliest, most disrespectful pieces of political cinematography I have ever seen. While the trajectory of Craft’s campaign was easy to predict, her pledge to dismantle the Kentucky Department of Education should send chills down the backs of every parent. Craft sees the major threats to the educational system as ideas, books, discussion, transgender human beings, and Critical Race Theory, the theoretical examination of how laws, social, political movements and media shape conceptions of race and ethnicity. Theories should be openly debated and scientifically scrutinized in progressive societies. DeSantis, Guthrie and Craft are incapable of intellectually challenging CRT so vow to just stop it.

Her use of WOKE as applied to an African American, Daniel Cameron is illustrative. The term woke emerged in African American vernacular English in the 1930s and refers to being aware and actively attentive to facts and issues of racial and social justice. To Republicans, it’s a slur to agitate uninformed base voters who believe advancement of these concerns is moving way too fast. Maybe Craft should have depicted herself as a polar bear instead of a grizzly.

Craft appeared with Riley Gaines, (who actually finished sixth) to protect and purify women’s sports. She and Craft should be cognizant of the historical fact that women in sports most likely need protection from their coaches. Let sports bodies (NCAA, FINA etc.) regulate rules, not human bodies.

When will we be treated to the inevitable scenes of Craft shouldering a shotgun in the field or possibly walking school corridors with an AR-15 pledging to “dismantle the department of education and start from scratch.”

No integrity, no governmental acumen, no cognitive empathy. She is as wrong as it gets for an angry, violent society.

Mike DeVillez

Bowling Green