Kinky Kentucky
Mitch McConnell. Rand Paul. Jim Bunning. The Creation Museum. These are among the baleful images that come to mind when I think of Kentucky – a state so dismal lately that even its Democratic governor is acting like a troglodyte.
As a former resident (six months at Fort Knox), I think I’m entitled to a modest proposal:
Kentucky should be ceded to some other country, assuming we can find one dumb enough to deserve it – and to accept it. Let’s say North Korea.
I know, I know. There’s Louisville. There’s Churchill Downs and the Derby, gorgeous gorges, and the Jim Beam distillery. Really hate to lose them, but enough is enough.
Here’s the latest:
In Governor Steve Beshear’s state budget proposal, K-12 education will be slashed by $47.4 million, higher education (basketball) by 28 million, public safety agencies like the State Police by 17.4 million, health and family services by 19 million, Medicaid by 375 million, and other essential services by 28 million. Thousands of jobs will be lost.
But there’s lots of money for certain things.
For instance, the governor wants a $43 million tax break for development of Ark Adventure, an 800-acre creationist amusement park with an enormous Noah’s Ark to show children the origin of species. So while the right hand is snatching $47 million from the real education of youngsters, the far right hand is lavishing almost all of that on the proposition that it’s fun to be ignorant.
Oh, and there’s an extra $11 million for a highway interchange to deliver the unsuspecting kids to this sanctimonious, candy-coated poisoning of their intellectual development.
Ark Adventures is the dream of Answers in Genesis, the evangelical cult that founded the Creation Museum, also in Kentucky.
Kentucky’s Red River Gorge is hundreds of feet deep and shows signs of primitive inhabitants as far back as 13,000 years. The depth of ignorance in state officialdom has yet to be plumbed but may prove to be even more primitive.
If you say it aloud three times, “kentucky” begins to sound like an offensive adjective; and if the knucklewalkers in power don’t mend their ways, it may become exactly that.