VILE: Podcast Smears Homeschooling as ‘Evil,’ ‘Child Abuse,’ ‘Trickle Down Stupidity’

During the same podcast posted Tuesday in which they referred to the late Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) as a “homicidal,” “demonic warhawk,” the co-hosts of I’ve Had It teamed up with a fan’s voicemail to hurl weapons-grade-level smears at homeschoolers as “dumba**,” “evil” “idiots” who “fear critical thinking more than anything on the planet” and are “incapable of deduction skills.” 

In addition, co-hosts Jennifer Welch and Angie “Pumps” Sullivan dubbed homeschooling parents “selfish” human beings riddled with “trickle down stupidity” and come off as “f***ing weird as f***” for “want[ing] your kids around you all day, every day.” 

And to top it all off, they said “America has...a fundamental, crazy Christian problem” because far too many Christians are “incredibly toxic” and “the most f***ed up people you know” who engage in “child abuse” by raising them in the faith.

It all started with a caller named “Ellie” who said she’s “absolutely f***ing had it with...watching some of the stupidest people I went to school with decide that they’re qualified to homeschool their children.” 

“Ellie” made some wild generalizations about homeschool parents by saying they’re the kind of people who “couldn’t hand in a single homework assignment, coasted through every group project, were proud members of the D-Honor Roll” before posting “Facebook manifestos, laden with spelling and grammatical errors about how public schools are evil and full of indoctrination.”

It was as though this woman was conceived in a lab by the Babylon Bee or Fox News as a stand-in for the cantankerous creep as she went on about how these “morons” believe “being uninformed somehow is a personality trait”: 

These idiots competence-to-confidence ratio is absolutely off the charts. It’s the blind leading the blind, and it feels like this has only gotten worse in Trump’s America, which I’m sure is no coincidence where being uninformed somehow is a personality trait that we’re just passing on to our children. I’ve fucking had it with it. I can’t stand these morons attempting to homeschool their children when they probably shouldn’t have even had children to start with. That’s all. 

The Beeker or McMahon to Welch’s Bunson or Carson, Sullivan actually spoke more than a few words. Once she stopped laughing, she claimed homeschoolers only top out at an eighth-grade education and thus the concept “is a bad idea from soup to nuts.” 

Showing how much she hates her children and parenting, Sullivan said, “it’s just f***ing weird as f*** that you want your kids around you all day, every day, and all night,” and thus anyone who does becomes someone “I don’t trust[.]” 

Welch finally weighed in, starting with asserting homeschoolers believe “dinosaur and man lived on earth at the same time” before turning up the invective:

These are people that fear critical thinking more than anything on the planet, that have to be taught a script of reality, and that they are incapable of critically thinking, they’re incapable of deduction skills, and what pisses me off about this the most is how many parents project a script onto their kids. “I’m a dumbass. So, therefore, I’m going to make sure you’re a dumbass. I’m a fucking idiot. I made D’s,” as our caller said, Ellie. She — you know, the people, the dumbest people she knew in college were homeschooling their kids[.] 

This crabby malcontent added “this is trickle down stupidity” and “MAGA on steroids” with the “worst...s***” imaginable to prove “America has...a fundamental, crazy Christian problem.”

“I’m talking about the freaks of the megachurch. I’m talking about the ones that have schools that are, you know, these crazy indoctrination factories, hate, hate academies. And then when that hit isn’t strong enough, then they go to homeschooling. And I just — I think it’s a huge problem. I cannot stand these people...[I]t’s such a selfish thing for parents to do,” Welch screeched. 

Always pumped with vile bile, Welch pivoted to Christianity and said it’s “child abuse” and “selfish for parents to push a religion on a child, and make them believe one before they’re old enough to hear about all of them.” 

Seeing as how these are the kind of rancorous creeps who believe three-year-olds can change their gender and men can get pregnant, it’s not all that shocking.

In response to their cartoonish hostility to homeschooling, the great Bethany Mandel wrote this over at her Substack, The Mom Wars (click “expand”): 

I often think about one of Jordan Peterson’s simplest pieces of parenting advice: raise children you and others actually enjoy being around...Children are not static creatures who simply happen to us. They are shaped, profoundly and continually, by the adults raising them. The more time you spend with your children, the more they begin to resemble you. They absorb your habits, your sense of humor, your emotional responses, your values, and your view of the world. Which is why it is always so striking when parents publicly describe their children with open contempt. 

(....) 

It apparently never occurred to [Sullivan] that some parents genuinely enjoy their children’s company, or that spending more time together might itself be part of what produces close families and delightful children in the first place. Imagine hearing your own mother say something like that publicly. Imagine realizing that she regards time spent with you not as one of life’s greatest joys, but as something only a fool would voluntarily choose. As painful as that would be for any child to hear, it also reveals something much larger about the way many progressives have come to think about parenthood. 

This strikes me as one of the least discussed ways our culture is bifurcating. We spend enormous amounts of time talking about political polarization, but almost no time talking about the radically different emotional narratives Americans are telling about family life itself.

But, wait, there was more from this episode of I’ve Had It.

To the delight of Satan, Welch possessed more virulence in saying evangelical Christianity is “a really toxic culture” and “mega church culture is incredibly toxic,” consisting of “the most f***ed up people you know.” 

She also spited one of Christianity’s sacraments: 

[T]hey’re the ones who are post on Easter these — sigh. On Instagram, if you live in a Bible belt state, when Easter rolls around, it’s, it’s like dunkings — like, these baptisms on the Instagram stories. I just keep [inaudible] — like, why is everybody dunking? It’s just so — it’s so crazy. 

The pair then relitigated how an ex-husband of Sullivan’s was “re-saved” at “some baptism at some — some house.” 

Once they rehashed how much Sullivan hates her ex and mocked the notion of baptismal pools, they illustrated why we should pray for them by fundamentally misunderstanding how following Jesus works. 

“I wish that it were that simple. I wish that, if you f***ed up really bad in your life, you could just say, Jesus, I repent, accept me. Unfortunately, in order to truly change, it takes a lot of grunt work and a lot of introspection and suffering, you suffer. Nobody comes in and just scoops and makes all your pain go away,” Welch fretted. 

As Sullivan repeatedly interjected in agreement, Welch argued Christianity fails because “[n]obody comes in and just scoops and makes all your pain go away,” meaning “you suffer a lot” and “the things that I’ve changed the most, I’m f***ng suffered from” instead of “a dive in, dive out.” 

To see the relevant transcript from July 14, click here.