tax payers funding right wing rock band in schools

Right-Wing Rock Coming soon to a school near you, and at taxpayer expense.
By Brian D. Greer
Wednesday, November 16, 2005

First there was Ted Nugent. Then Foghat. (Okay, that was just an ugly rumor.) Now there's a new right-wing band to vying for the hearts and minds of America 's youth: Junkyard Prophet.

But, instead of trying to beg its way onto MTV to build its audience, this band is performing directly inside of America's high schools.

Oh, and the federal government is footing the bill.

That's right. Over the last few years, a band called Junkyard Prophet (through its youth outreach organization, You Can Run But You Cannot Hide) has been touring across Middle America, spewing its ultra-conservative message at hundreds of school assemblies along the way. And it's received hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars for its efforts. Armstrong Williams, eat your heart out.

To be fair, unlike the Williams situation or the grossly misleading abstinence education program that the Bush Administration promulgated, there's no allegation that the federal government is promoting or even tacitly endorsing Junkyard Prophet. Nonetheless, the band's activities stand as yet another example of the publicly-funded, conservative indoctrination of America's youth, and someone should put a stop to it.

I first learned about Junkyard Prophet from my hometown newspaper, after its controversial appearance there last year. What I found in that article (reprinted here, scroll down) and in my subsequent research alarmed me.

The story is relatively straightforward. My old high school hired an unknown, out-of-town band to perform at one of those nauseating educational school assemblies that most of us remember all too well (think: "My name is Matt Foley, and I live in a van down by the river").

As the paper tells it, "The purported content of the compulsory assembly was characterized by the performing group…as ?'drug and alcohol awareness,' but the program's actual content addressed a much broader list of concerns." Rather than focusing on drug and alcohol awareness, the band instead delivered a conservative message of intolerance and extremism.

What's most alarming, however, was that this was far from an isolated incident. After some quick research I found articles from several other towns describing almost exactly the same sequence of events.

In the group's numerous school assembly appearances, frontman Bradlee Dean has covered most of the right-wing topics du jour. At one stop, for instance, Dean strongly defended the Second Amendment and said that "blaming Columbine on guns is like blaming spoons for Rosie O'Donnell being fat."

Invoking another favorite target of conservatives - the "liberal" media and entertainment industry - Dean has repeatedly criticized them for supporting and promoting adultery, homosexuality, and abortion.

On religion, Dean has praised Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," and members of his entourage distributed religious literature at several stops. He has also told students that "there is nothing in our Constitution or founding documents about separation of church and state" and criticized the theory of evolution.

Speaking of science, in another appearance, Dean attacked Alcoholics Anonymous, stating that alcoholism is not a disease. He also comes armed with statistics: apparently pornography increased by a staggering 97 percent when Bill Clinton was President, according to Dean.

And perhaps most bizarrely, in at least one assembly, the boys and girls were divided into two groups for part of the performance. In the girls' session a female staffer from the band told the girls that they "would get black spots" on their wedding dresses if they held hands with a boy and would be serving "leftovers" to their husbands if they lost their virginity before marrying a "God-fearing man."

The Des Moines Register reported that after one 2004 performance, Junkyard Prophet handed out CDs to a few random students that bore this message: "the death sentence [is] on you due to your sins! The very evidence of your sin will be your death! It is appointed to you to die and after that you will be judged according to your ways! His judgment is so thorough every thought will be brought to the light. When all your sin against God is exposed, how will you escape the damnation of hell?"

Not surprisingly, several of the articles quote school administrators expressing shock and anger over what occurred. As one superintendent in Arkansas explained, "We had no idea about their religious, right-wing message. They misrepresented their program." Another principal in Iowa felt the same way, stating, "The [band's] brochure has nothing in it regarding a religious message."

Students and their parents were also understandably upset. "They're selling us propaganda," one student protested. Another student added, "They're trying to create fear by stereotyping." In at least two schools, students were told that attendance at the assembly was mandatory and that they would be suspended if they skipped out.

Even worse, the band apparently receives about $1500 per appearance - an amount that some schools have paid out of their drug-free schools funding from the Department of Education. According to the band's website, it has appeared at over 220 schools in the last few years, which means that it's probably taken in over $330,000 from federal taxpayers to spread its right-wing message to our nation's schoolchildren.

Perhaps, in exposing Junkyard Prophet's cycle of fraud, school administrators will no longer unwittingly support its right-wing message, particularly with Department of Education funds.

By way of contrast, we all remember when Education Secretary Margaret Spellings sharply denounced federal funding recipient Buster the Bunny, the lovable animated rabbit who had the nerve to talk to a lesbian couple about making maple syrup in Vermont on public television. "Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in the episode," Spellings stated. "Congress' and the Department's purpose in funding this programming certainly was not to introduce this kind of subject matter to children…."

Well, Margaret, we've got another problem with publicly-funded indoctrination of our schoolchildren, but I somehow doubt you'll do anything this time around.
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Brian Greer is an attorney in Washington, DC.