Dust-Up About Younkin Ad and *Beloved*

I don't have time to try to figure this out, and I don't watch tv much, so I hadn't seen the ad. I can't tell exactly what Murphy--the woman in the ad--did. Contra the Blue Team claims, it doesn't sound like she exactly argued for banning Beloved (which I haven't read, but which actually sounds pretty interesting and harrowing). Sounds like she argued for some sort of temporary moratorium/ban until VA parents got the right to opt their kids out of reading that particular book...or, more likely: any book with explicit sexual content. There's a legit concern about anything even vaguely resembling book-banning. But, in the ad I found, Murphy doesn't advocate anything in the vicinity of banning books; she just advocates parents getting some control over their kids' education. So it's clear that the Younkin ad is only making the point about parental authority. 

Of course one can respond: yeah, but why pick her? What she advocates in the ad is just the tip of an iceberg, and that's intentional. It's basically a "dog whistle." That's not a stupid point. Definitely could be. I say this counts against Youngkin to some degree, but is far outweighed by the pro-parental-authority point. That point is more important now that ed schools, teachers, and teacher's unions have swung so far and so deeply to the left. They can't both (a) swing hard left and push those ideas in schools and (b) object to increased parental control. I mean: of course they do advocate both. That's the nature of radicalism. But they can't legitimately do so. They themselves have made a certain degree of parental control more important. 

And: the threat from radical, irrationalist, antiliberal philosophical, cultural, and political views invading schools is, IMO, far greater than any threat posed by increased parental control. 

This stuff's messy. The left's gone nuts with this stuff. Demanding that the conservative response must get everything exactly right in their response isn't reasonable. So I don't weigh the suboptimality of the Younkin response too heavily.

Needless to say, I could be wrong, as always.