"Monster Liberty": That's how the otherwise excellent closed-captioning service in the auditorium at Pennridge High School interpreted "Moms for Liberty," while one of several dozen citizens who had waited in line to lambast the group spoke at the podium. A chuckle rose up among the parents in the crowded school board meeting, held on a late August evening after the first day of classes for the Pennridge School District in suburban Bucks County, Pennsylvania. "Fair enough," one mother whispered to another.
That wasn't the only moment of levity that evening, which saw a robust crowd of largely irate parents speak out against the adoption of a social studies curriculum linked to far-right organizations like Moms for Liberty and Hillsdale College. Before the meeting, people exchanged wisecracks about "talented clappers" — an inside-joke reference to an email circulated among local conservatives that appealed for sympathetic outsiders to turn out and applaud the right-wing agenda: "You do not need to be a resident to attend and clap," it advised, for "policies that bless and protect our children."
