The Lexicographer's Rules

Banning plays like Grease and The Crucible in my home state of Missouri is one more incident in a series going back decades that make it difficult to tell people that yes, indeed, that’s where I was born and that’s where I’m from.

This case, like the others that have happened in Missouri, is shameful. In many of these incidents soul-blind and life-ignorant cells of squinty-eyed butter-eaters consider everyday evidence of gender or sexuality to be harmful. In others, teens and children have their rights withheld.

The cases run the gamut: banned books (lots of these), interference with consenting sexual relations between adults, banned video games, prejudice against homosexuals disguised as law, bans on skating and skateboarding, bans on supposedly sexual billboards, bans on certain clothing in schools.

If you think Harry S Truman is evidence that Missouri can be salvaged, just remember that the political machine that put Truman in power is exactly the same sort of sly old-boy machine that put Roy Blunt in Congress and his son Matt Blunt in the Missouri governor’s mansion.

Besides, Truman being a Missourian is far outweighed by both John Ashcroft and Rush Limbaugh also being from Missouri.

OK, you make it sound like all Missourians are like this and we all support that. I went to high school in Missouri and I had one of the leads in the Crucible when we performed it my senior year.
Of course, Missouri is also the state that had an extermination order from the governor to kill Mormons on sit. Apparently, freedom of religion isn’t a strong point either.

Of course there are plenty of decent, thinking folks in Missouri. They seem to be out-shouted, though. Those on what I consider the side of right are timid, quiet, and entirely too tolerant of haters, liars, bigots, grafters, and those who cover cravenness and greed with false piety and trumpeted jingoism.

The Mormon extermination order was in 1838. I’m not sure I’m ready to fall into the trap of blaming children for the sins of their great-great-great-great grandparents and so forth. Seems like the saying “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” should always be followed closely with “those who remember history are doomed to be trapped by it.”

On the other hand, I once applied for a newspaper job in the British Virgin Islands. It seemed pretty clear from my discussions with the editor that the reason I didn’t get the job is because most of the island population is black and according to her, I, being a Missourian, would probably not get along with them. She specifically named the Missouri Compromise that admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state in 1820 or so. I tried explaining to her that I was a fair-minded fellow and that the reason they needed the compromise in the first place because Missourians were sharply divided in their opinions over the morality of slavery, but she didn’t believe me.