(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to This Post)

Presenting our semi-regular weekly survey of what’s going down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin’ gets done, and where Ma Rainey and Beethoven once unwrapped a bedroll.

We begin this week with a round of our favorite family fun game—WTF Is Wrong with People? Let’s begin in Arizona. From The Guardian:

In October 2019, three teenage girls were punished for participating in a spiritual ceremony. Their Arizona school expelled two of them, and let the third off with a warning, citing their attendance as a violation of school policy and grounds for expulsion. Caitlyn, now 18, says she and her friends were disciplined for participating in a Sunrise Dance, a traditional Native ceremony at the core of White Mountain Apache culture. The Monday after the dance, Caitlyn’s parents told her to stay home that day. They had received a call from East Fork Lutheran school telling them not to send their daughter in. She didn’t know why. Then around noon, her mom got another phone call. The principal wanted to meet with Caitlyn, her parents and the local preacher. The principal and preacher also invited the two other girls and their families to their own private meetings with school leadership.

I’m no expert on Indigenous culture, God knows, but I’m willing to bet that this religious ritual is older than the Catholic Mass or the Lutheran Sunday service. It certainly means as much to the people who practice it.

For the first 12 years of her life, Caitlyn looked forward to having her own dance—a sacred coming-of-age experience celebrating the transition from girlhood to womanhood. It’s a great financial sacrifice for the family. Over four days, a girl’s community prays for her. They offer her gifts and witness her as she participates in rituals symbolizing her maturity and growth. A medicine man presides over the event, praying and singing with holy members of the community called Crown Dancers, who recite the creation story to the audience. At the time, her private school’s teachers were mostly white people who would often discuss the satanic nature of Apache traditions. When Caitlyn was in fifth grade, she was given an F on an art project for drawing the White Mountain Apache crest and including an eagle feather. An “A” student, she was devastated to be chastised this way. As Caitlyn remembers it, her teacher smiled and explained that this kind of project wasn’t allowed because it denoted “pagan worship”.

Oh, come on. Whatever happened to “My father’s house has many mansions?” There have been a number of other expulsions from the reservation’s schools, and the process for re-admittance has a lovely touch of Maoism to it. Or is it a summer-stock performance of The Crucible?

Althea, the oldest of the sisters, spoke first. Two of her granddaughters were expelled from school in 2018 and 2019. She still has one of the school’s letters tucked away in a box in her house. It states that these 13-year-old girls will only be allowed to return to school if they agree to confess in front of the Wels church, school and community that they were worshiping the devil when they took part in the Sunrise Dance. They must promise never to do it again.

WTF is wrong with people?

We move along to Texas, where there was an act of public savagery with no apparent connection to Governor Greg Abbott. What were the odds? From the AP:

Elizabeth Wolf, 42, has been charged with attempted capital murder and injury to a child. The child’s mother told officers that Wolf told the mother she wasn’t American, along with other racial statements, police said. The mother of the children, who wears a hijab, said in a news release from the Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations that they are Palestinians who became American citizens. Neither police nor CAIR have released the mother’s name. Police said that as the mother helped her son, Wolf grabbed the woman’s 3-year-old daughter and forced her underwater. The mother pulled her daughter, who was yelling for help and coughing up water, out of the pool, police said.

WTF is wrong with people?

Onward, then, to West Virginia, where a nice farm couple amused themselves with a little Uncle Tom’s Cabin cosplay. From the AP:

Donald Ray Lantz and Jeanne Kay Whitefeather face trial later this year after they were arraigned on 16 counts each accusing them of civil rights violations, human trafficking, forced labor, gross child neglect and falsifying an application seeking a public defender. All but one of the counts are felonies. Lantz and Whitefeather are white. Four children whose initials are in the indictment are Black. Kanawha County Assistant Prosecutor Madison Tuck said Wednesday that while she couldn’t answer questions about specific details, “I would just say that because the indictment includes a civil rights violation, that there’s definitely a racial element to the case.”

Ya think?

WTF is wrong with people?

Let’s hazard a guess. It seems to me that there is an undeniable political element to all three of these stories, and that something—or someone—in our politics has given license to people far and wide to act on their worst instincts regarding their fellow citizens. I’ll track this person down. Swear to God, I will.

We need some comedy after all that. Let’s see if the Detroit Free Press can help us with that.

Records the Free Press obtained last week show Lansing police requested felony charges of sexual assault, assault, and a weapons-related offense against Friske, but did not specify the degree. The report reveals that at least in the investigative stage, police were treating it as first-degree criminal sexual conduct, the most serious of the sexual assault charges.

The Detroit PD is being very discreet here. For the (alleged) details, we must, alas, go to our friends at the New York Post.

Neil Friske, the frisky Michigan state representative arrested last week for allegedly assaulting a stripper, insisted he was “framed” in his first interview after his release from jail. Friske was arrested June 20 after allegedly assaulting an exotic dancer from Deja Vu Showgirls Club, a strip club near his home in Lansing, and chasing her as he held a gun. “As many of us know, Rep Friske is always exercising his 2nd Amendment right,” his campaign said on Facebook after the arrest.

Somebody on Friske’s campaign staff is the greatest rapid-response operative in the history of the universe. Boss gets busted for chasing a stripper with a gun? Hey, man, Congress shall make no law. Awesome.

If you still need some hilarity to wash out whatever TF is wrong with people, head down to Georgia, where Governor Brian Kemp did a comedy tap-dancing routine that brought down the house. From CNN:

“I didn’t vote for anybody. I voted, but I didn’t vote for anybody.”

Whut?

“He [Trump] was the presumptive nominee before the primary ever got here. I mean, I didn’t support anybody in the race. was thinking about it but, you know, just because a lot of circumstances and the way things played out, didn’t end up doing that, but said all along for the most part that I would support the ticket, and that’s what I’ve always done and that’s what I’m doing this November.”

Kemp, you may recall, faced the full wrath of MAGA for failing to steal Georgia for the former president* in 2020. He’s obviously carrying the scars. Dance, monkey, dance.

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, whence Blog Official Bakery Archaeologist Friedman of the Plains brings us a tale of happy comeuppance. From Oklahoma Watch:

“I know where two big deep holes are here if you ever need them,” a voice in the room said, referring to local newspaper reporters. Another joked about a woman who died in a fire, comparing her burned body to barbecue. “I’m hungry!” he said. “I’m talking about taking ’em down to ol’ mud creek and hanging them up with a damn rope,” another said about hanging Black people. This conversation between McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy and other county officials, secretly recorded in March 2023 and published by the McCurtain Gazette-News in April, placed the southeast Oklahoma county under a national spotlight.

We’ve checked in on McCurtain County and its playful public officials before in this space, and I was wondering what the fallout over this episode would turn out to be. Well, Sheriff Clardy will have a lot of time on his hands to check out big, deep holes, because the voters kicked his ass halfway to Topeka.

“We weren’t gonna let it be swept under the rug,” said Valliant-born resident Lonnie Watson, who helped initiate the McCurtain County Movement, an advocacy group that formed against the sheriff. Frustrations with the sheriff were compounded for some at a bipartisan debate held on June 13. When confronted about the audio and his role in the remarks, Clardy didn’t apologize. Instead, he claimed that according to federal investigators, it was altered. “That was his chance to make amends so to speak and of course, he tiptoed,” Watson said.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.