Texas schoolchildren as young as four years old are being given Winnie-the-Pooh cartoon books, teaching them to “run, hide, fight” if a gunman enters their building.
Parents and teachers in the Dallas area have expressed alarm and concern that the Stay Safe book, produced by a law enforcement consulting firm in Houston, has been sent home in the backpacks of children in pre-kindergarten and elementary classes.
The book features the honey-loving bear created by AA Milne and illustrator EH Shepard instructing kids about how to react to a mass shooting. It is not an official production, Winnie-the-Pooh has been in the public domain since 1 January 2022.
Oh, that’s right! Did you know anyone can release a Pooh book now? He’s in the public domain! That’s how this gem got green-lit:
Yup, that’s a serial killer Pooh out for revenge against his childhood pal Christopher Robin, who abandoned him in the wilderness after reaching puberty and discovering that porn is cheaper and more widely available than Top Ramen now. And if you think that’s bad, imagine what atrocities Puff the Magic Dragon is capable of. Jackie Paper better watch his back.
Anyway, the point is: Just because you can write your own Winnie-the-Pooh adventures now, that doesn’t mean you should. (And, yes, Tigger turned out to be a horrible anti-drug spokesman, especially after it came out that he smokes more meth than the meth-smoking half of Kansas. Back to the drawing board.)
The book’s subtitle is, “If there is a danger, let Winnie-the-Pooh and his Crew show you what to do: Run Hide Fight.” Uh huh. And yet Texas teenagers can’t read Toni Morrison because her books might disturb and confuse them.
One of the book’s pages includes this life-affirming and not-at-all-disturbing sentence: “If it is safe to get away, we should RUN like Rabbit instead of stay … If danger is near, do not fear, HIDE like Pooh does until the police appear.” And the “hide” page includes a picture of Pooh sticking his head in a pot of honey. Which makes one wonder if the SWAT team that responded to last year’s Uvalde, Texas, school shooting (good guys with lots of guns!) read this book, too.
Following the section on sticking your head inside a dark, sticky orifice instead of facing reality (wow, the Texas Legislature also read it!), distinguished Hundred Acre Wood denizens Kanga and Roo, who should have stayed the fuck in Australia, are shown wearing boxing gloves underneath the caption, “If danger finds us, don’t stay, run away. If we can’t get away, we have to FIGHT with all our might.”
According to The Guardian, the book was distributed to kids in Dallas-area schools on Monday “without discussion or comment either with teachers or the families who received it.”
One Dallas grade school teacher who preferred to remain anonymous told the newspaper, “I found it extremely disturbing, and was very uncomfortable with the whole contents of the book.”
The teacher also noted the irony of handing out a book like this while Texas seizes on every available opportunity to relax its gun laws. “The fact that people think it’s a better idea to put out this book to a child rather than actually take any actions to stop shootings from happening in our schools, that really bothers me. It makes me feel so angry, so disappointed,” the teacher said. “It’s a year since Uvalde, and nothing has been done other than this book. That is putting it on the kids.”
Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a state which has prioritized the passage of effective gun laws, took aim at Texas and its ass-backward approach.
For the nontweeters:
“Winnie the Pooh is now teaching Texas kids about active shooters because the elected officials do not have the courage to keep our kids safe and pass common sense gun safety laws”.
Well, at least Pooh isn’t woke! Maybe the next Pooh adventure will show him hiding from the gay mafia. They’re everywhere these days, you know.
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
