It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.
This week’s fail was brought to you by Rep. Jeff Landry (R-LA), who exposes one of the biggest downsides of an economic slump (besides, you know, its existence): When everyone in Washington is asked to come up with an idea to create jobs, everyone will zero in on changes that can be made to things they, personally, don’t like. In Landry’s case, LGBTs. Or if he does like them, he’s going about a related minor at the University of Louisiana as if he doesn’t. It’s pretty hard to get your messaging right when you have the audacity to ask what he asked of the president, Dr. Joseph Savoie, of this independently run educational institution:
Please do not assign scarce assets meant for 15,000 students, on a minor that serves 5 people and offers nothing for direct employment prospects. I hope the university will put our people over politics.
Savoie then pointed out that LGBT classes existed before the minor was established, and organizing them into a formal minor didn’t actually require any more “scarce assets.” Of course, those classes aren’t exactly STEM, so Landry could be able to continue the “stop spending public funds on useless classes” argument. But like every other university on the planet, UL has a wide selection of courses in humanities and social sciences, most of which, if our goal is to kick-start manufacturing, can be charitably described as “useless.” They still have a sociology department at all, plus my personal favorite: Cultural and Eco-Tourism. (Trainee travel agents can probably learn that in weeks!)
Things got funnier when Landry’s brother Nicholas, who is gay, criticized Landry’s position on Facebook, to which Landry said:
To my brother. I am sorry we disagree, but we still love and pray for you.
Pray for him to do what? See the light and stop being gay? That might be a reflexive assumption on my part, but it’s the reflexive assumption on a lot of people’s parts; Landry should have thought of that before typing it.
If Landry wants to talk about targeting post-secondary funding to the most economically necessary areas of study, we can do that, although that might create more bureaucracy than it reduces in spending. But that element of his letter to Savoie was obscured by his laser focus on the LGBT minor. Even by the standards of a freshman congressman, Landry is a PR amateur.
