A Year of Strange Progress

George Will writes a piece some of the strange progress made in 2005:

Onward and upward with progressivism: In a Las Vegas suburb, the United Food and Commercial Workers union hired temp workers at $6 an hour to picket a nonunion Wal-Mart, where wages start at $6.75 an hour. A British teachers-union official proposed that instead of bad students' receiving a "failing" grade, their grade should be called "deferred success." A Milwaukee 17-year-old and his father sued to end summer homework because the stress of honors precalculus assignments spoiled the lad's summer. When Jada Pinkett Smith, wife of actor Will Smith, told a Harvard audience that women "can have it all—a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career," the campus Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance said its members were made "uncomfortable" because Mrs. Smith's words were "extremely heteronormative." A majority of teachers, parents and students at Jefferson Elementary School in Berkeley favored renaming the school Sequoia Elementary because Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves. Under Chief Sequoia, the Cherokee nation owned more than 1,500 black slaves. You cannot be too careful, so Timnath, Colo., banned smoking in bars and restaurants, of which Timnath at the time had none. The often hilarious New York Times, which opposes capital punishment, reported disapprovingly that a life sentence "is death in all but name."

Read the whole thing here.