Win Or Lose? Transgender Loses

The Schloss-Blog wants to know, did you hear about the Disney animated series set at the middle-school level that has pulled a transgender storyline that was supposed to be running through it?

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According to Disney, the storyline, in the Pixar series "Win or Lose," was pulled because they believe that parents should be able to discuss this with their kids rather than have them exposed to it at that age in an animated series.

You don't suppose they pulled it because of pressure from conservatives?

Then again, Disney didn't exactly stand up to the State of Florida, which pulled the state's largest employer's self-governance of its Reedy Creek development after Disney opposed the state's "Don't Say Gay" bill.

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No sooner did Bill Belichick become head football coach at North Carolina than ESPN started kowtowing to "Chapel Bill" and the Tarheels.

On a Sports Center telecast featuring highlights from a high-profile Florida-North Carolina men's varsity basketball game, unbeaten Florida built a big lead and held on for a 90-84 victory in a game that included great plays by players on both teams.

You'd have never known it if you'd tuned in late to Sports Center and caught the usual, closing Top Ten plays segment.

Two of the plays included North Carolina highlights, of which there were some during the game. Victorious Florida made even more special plays, but ESPN's highlight package didn't include them in the closing segment.

Homage to "Chapel Bill," perhaps?

Probably.

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On a personal note to me and on a sad, consequential note to higher education not only in Chicago but across the nation, Columbia College Chicago, a bastion of creativity and achievement, will be shutting down as many as 11 undergraduate programs and laying off 25 faculty members (full disclosure: I used to be one, for 23 years, until retiring six years ago). 

Enrollment has slipped from as high as 11,400 in 2010 to a reported 6,200 in 2022, a huge drop.

What's next?

School officials say they hope these cuts now will lead to a gradual growth in enrollment and  enrichment in the curriculum.

Enrichment? The number of degreed programs will drop from 58 to 33. Four undergraduate and seven graduate programs will be eliminated in their entirety.

Sure hope one of them isn't journalism.

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On another note, which is as personal as personal gets, another school shooting took place, this one in Madison, Wisconsin, at Abundant Life Christian School, and it left one student and one staff member dead, six others wounded.

The shooting, allegedly by a 15-year-old female student, has to make you scratch your head and cry at the same time: what is going on in America?

CNN is reporting that there have been 83 - EIGHTY-THREE - mass shootings at U.S. schools in 2024. This is sick.

Think Trump and the Republicans will do anything about it?

Yeah, neither do I.

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Good night, Mrs. Calabash. Here's to you, Ohio State Buckeyes.

More Sunday night on my Radio Free Phoenix rock 'n' roll show.

And tune in to radiofreephpenix.com on Tuesday, Christmas Eve, at 6 p.m. Phoenix time (that's 8 p.m. Eastern) for Andy Olson's annual 30-hour Rock'N' Roll Christmas, live, his 36th annual. You never know what Andy might do.