When news came that a Florida principal had resigned after parents complained that their sixth-grade students were shown photos of Michelangelo’s David during an art history lesson, calling it “pornographic,” I was reminded that the spirit of the Puritans is alive and well in America, not to mention hysterical hypocrisy. One of the most […]
Commentary
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Weed for me but not for thee
Okies apparently don’t like the word “recreational,” but they love the word “medical”—especially when it comes to cannabis. With roughly 400 dispensaries in Oklahoma City alone, you can’t spit without hitting that green demon leaf that once prompted the propaganda film Reefer Madness. Almost 10 percent of Oklahomans have medical cannabis cards, and they are […]
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Wolf in sheep’s clothing
If those Jesus Gets Us ads look too good to be true, it’s because they are. My progressive Christian friends have been almost giddy over their apparent emphasis on peace and justice, on immigrant rights, on a thoroughly human Jesus who knows the limits of politics, of family, and of judgmental fear mongering instead of […]
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Good for Oklahoma, good for the industry
At Yes Trees, we grow great cannabis. We are proud of it. Our products, which are sold on the medical market in Oklahoma, help people. We love the opportunity Oklahoma provided us to pursue our passion when it chose to legalize medicinal cannabis. Now it is time to take the next step and pass State […]
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I alone will indoctrinate your kids.
Oklahoma’s new state schools superintendent is about to take a desperate situation and make it awful. His plans for stamping out “wokeness,” critical race theory, and boys using the girl’s bathrooms sounds nothing like a plan to advance education, and more like a platform to become Ron DeSantis Jr. The irony of this culture war […]
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Dr. King’s “mistake”
I’m writing on the day we celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Many people observe the holiday by doing a service project, and I just returned from helping OCU students make a thousand sandwiches for the Homeless Alliance. We mostly remember the “I Have a Dream “ speech King and […]
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To legalize or not to legalize? That is State Question 820.
Oklahoma is just under six weeks away from voting on State Question 820, a citizen-led ballot initiative that could statutorily legalize cannabis for adults over 21 while placing a 15 percent excise tax on those sale and also provides expungement pathways for people with past legal entanglements from decades of what some would call over-criminalization […]
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Here’s to a less violent 2023
You can’t escape the tears and the outpouring of prayers for Damar Hamlin, a young safety for the Buffalo Bills, who collapsed of cardiac arrest and almost died on the field during a Monday Night Football game. After medical workers worked for ten minutes to restart his heart, an ambulance carried him off the field, […]
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What momentum?
Just after the election of Kevin Stitt for a second term as Oklahoma’s governor, the photo and headline in The Oklahoman said it all: RED WAVE IN OK! Stitt is seen raising his arms high above his head, his mouth open in a kind of sport’s happy primal scream, hoopin’ and hollerin’ over his good-old-boy […]
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It’s the guns, stupid
In 1992, James Carville, a political strategist, coined the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Three decades later, we need a new slogan: “It’s the guns, stupid.” Not mental illness, which certainly deserves more attention and funding. Not our failures to recognize and help alienated, “invisible” young men before they snap. Not the tired argument that […]