It is currently, as I write this, six degrees in Louisville, KY. The high today is going to be 11, maybe, but with a wind chill that will keep things feeling like they’re well below zero all day. It’s right around the time when most kids would be heading to school, many of them either waiting for a bus or walking, two things that would be absolutely miserable when it’s this cold. Schools in Louisville are sensibly closed out of consideration for students’ safety.
But oh shit, here comes Republican Gov. Matt Bevin with the hot take that actually, the brutal cold is good for you ungrateful kids!
“Now we cancel school for cold... I mean there’s no ice going with it, or any snow. What happens to America? We’re getting soft Terry, we’re getting soft,” Bevin told WHAS-AM radio host Terry Meiners, according to WAVE-TV.
Bevin had already established himself as a reactionary shithead on many occasions, but he still had the audacity to tell teachers that he hoped schools were conserving heat if they were closed for the day, per WAVE. This is the same guy who presided over a state that decimated school funding so badly that teachers joined in widespread strikes last spring. He then claimed the resulting school closures caused children to be sexually assaulted. The guy is a moron.
Bevin apparently tried to hedge his incredibly dumb opinion that not sending children to freeze is “soft,” but didn’t do a very good job.
“It’s better to err on the side of being safe, and I’m being only slightly facetious,” he said, “but it does concern me a little bit that in America, on this and any number of other fronts, we’re sending messages to our young people that if life is hard, you can curl up in the fetal position somewhere in a warm place and just wait ‘til it stops being hard. And that just isn’t reality.”
Shut the fuck up, my dude! The only message this is sending young people is ‘it’s too fucking cold outside, we’d like you to not freeze.’ Are some kids going to be stoked that they get to stay home and play Xbox or whatever for a day because it is four degrees with a massive windchill outside and the people running their school have a conscience? Yes, because that would rule. It’s only 20 degrees in New York today and I’m considering telling my editor it’s too cold to come in today. Am I soft? Well, yes. But also fuck Matt Bevin, go stand outside today if you’re a big warm boy who can take the cold. The rest of us will be inside.