Window Dressing

 

Compare and contrast. You remember those high school essays, don’t you? Some memories stick with you. I find that juxtaposition informs a lot of my work here. Images, especially.

Today I have two images for you from the Howard County Republican Party. The first was taken by Maryland Reporter’s Len Lazarick at a fundraising event.

MarylandReporter.com photo by Len Lazarick

The second was posted on the Facebook page of the Howard County Republican Party.

Image from Facebook: Howard County Republican Party

The first photo accompanies a piece on Maryland Reporter entitled “Ex-Gov Ehrlich tells Howard County Republicans they still have a chance.” (Len Lazarick, Maryland Reporter, 3/12/2023.) The caption for the photo reads:

Former Republican Gov. Bob Ehlrich on the stairs speaks to a crowd of Howard County Republicans during a Feb. 25 fundraiser at the home of Marleen Eck, far right, in Glenelg. Next to her is the county's GOP Chair Beth Lawson. 

The second image was posted on the Facebook page of the Howard County Republican Party on March 12th. If you scroll further down you can see that the Lazarick photo was taken at February 25th event called Ballots and Brunch. 

One wonders if the public outreach for Board of Education candidates came about as a result of the February 25th event or if it was already in the works. 

Much has been made of this call for BOE candidates - - and rightly so - - because of the ongoing outcry of local Republicans in past election cycles to anything in the BOE race that hinted of what they called partisanship. I guess that, in the desire to elect Republicans locally in any way that they can, they have decided to drop that pretense. And it was a pretense. HoCo Republicans have been recruiting, organizing, and supporting Republican candidates for BOE for quite some time: privately. 

Now we have a very public and carefully crafted solicitation intended to stir interest and excitement for the 2024 BOE race. I will probably write an entirely separate post about this:

We need candidates who can ensure accountability and trust in our education systems. The issues are plenty: parents rights in education, accountability & transparency, School Resource Officers (SROs), redistricting & neighborhood schools, prioritizing education over politics and ideology. Are you ready to step up and lead? (Text from Howard County Republican Party campaign flier)

But right now let’s look at the images.

One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn’t belong. Can you see it?

The creator of the flier chose a nice assortment of diverse-looking children from some collection of stock photos. They know our schools have a diverse student body. They’re indicating that their message will be what’s best for those kids. 

But who is “they”? When I look at the photo of Ehrlich and his admirers I see sameness. And not just because everyone in that particular photo is white and well-to-do, although that’s a big tell. I see ideological sameness. 

Ehrlich’s speech underscores this view as he describes Democrats in years past in the State legislature:

The State House leadership and particularly committee chairs were to “the right of center.” They were “businesspeople, owning bars and restaurants, signing the front of checks, hiring people, people who were entrepreneurs, who do capitalism. And as a result, the legislature and the state were fairly well in balance.”

Yes, they were Democrats but they were the right kind of Democrats: ownership, management, people who reap the juiciest benefits of capitalism. Those are the people who ought to be in charge. That is the lens through which decisions for everyone in Maryland should be made.

And those are the people who ought to be in control of our schools. People like us.

It’s interesting to note that nowhere in Ehrlich’s speech is there any mention of putting one’s self in other people’s shoes or of the diverse needs of the county’s residents. It’s a one-size-fits-all message. You can put a lovely multicultural bouquet of children on a flier but it means nothing if your essential message is diametrically opposed to that. 

It’s window dressing. It’s every bit as false and staged* as a fundraiser photo of a former governor on a stair case surrounded by affluent donors. 

Here is the mission statement for the Howard County Schools:

Mission

HCPSS ensures academic success and social-emotional well-being for each student in an inclusive and nurturing environment that closes opportunity gaps.

In my opinion, candidates for the Board of Education should be committed to that mission. That alone should be a given.

Does the campaign flier make you think that they will be?

*I don’t know if that photo was staged or a candid. It just rings false to me.