On the very serious and earnest common-core beat, there aren’t many laughs. So we’re grateful when one comes along.
Exhibit #1 for today: a Missouri lawmaker who actually wrote into a proposed bill some funding for aluminum foil hats in a bid to protect the common core from opponents who see it as a dangerous federal overreach.
You know about the tin foil hats thing, right? It’s been fancifully used by schizophrenics and others as a defense against dangerous rays from the universe and other threatening forces. (As a young reporter on the overnight shift at United Press International, I took more 3 a.m. calls than you might imagine from folks claiming a dire need for tin foil hats to protect themselves against terrifying forces that were threatening.)
In a jab at common-core opponents, Mike Lair, the Republican chairman of the state House Education Committee, allocated $8 for “two rolls of high density aluminum to create headgear designed to deflect drone and/or black helicopter mind-reading and -control technology,” according to local media reports.
“Basically, when you deal with conspiracy theorists, you do logic first,” Lair told the committee, as quoted by the Columbia Daily Tribune. “If you can’t deal with folks with logic, you use humor.”
UPDATE: Apparently Lair’s jab at common-core opponents earned him some payback: MissouriNet reports—with a photo that circulated on Twitter—that someone covered his desk, chair, laptop and voting box with aluminum foil.
Photo: beright/iStock Photo