Imagine if Dr. Seuss memorialized our current political leaders.

The Sneetch who lived on a Florida beach might insist: I do not like Black history and books. I do not like them, Ron I am!

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took the unprecedented step of banning an Advanced Placement course on African American history -- an optional, college-level course for high schoolers -- for violating state law. DeSantis tried to justify his actions by railing against "indoctrination" because the class included texts from modern Black thought leaders and history teachers he didn't approve of. The course, developed by respected scholars and approved by the College Board, covers topics from literature, the arts, science, politics and geography related to Black Americans.

No state has ever refused to certify an AP course since the program began in 1952. Banning students' access to early college credit is the latest salvo in the war against educators and what they can teach and say.

Censoring an entire course for all the students in the state is a draconian step, but there are smaller repercussions of the conservative censorship wave rippling across the country. Earlier this month, NPR's "Planet Money" podcast was recording an episode in a third grade classroom in Ohio during a lesson in economics. The teacher was reading the Dr. Seuss book "The Sneetch and Other Stories" to the students. A child named Noah spoke up, connecting the theme of the book to history.

"It's almost like what happened back then, how people were treated," the student said. "Like, disrespected. ... Like, white people disrespected Black people, but then, they might stand up in the book."

The school administrator observing the lesson stopped the reading, saying they did not have parental approval to discuss race and they were uncomfortable with the discussion.

Is this what lawmakers are so afraid of? Is a third grader's observation about a Dr. Seuss book so dangerous and threatening that the entire lesson must be shut down?

Right-wing lawmakers in state legislatures, including Missouri's, have been whipped into a frenzy about "critical race theory" being taught to children, but it's a cover to stop conversations exactly like this. In real-life classrooms, this crackdown translates to teachers or books never mentioning race at all.

How can you teach even the most basic American history without discussing race? Hundreds of years of America's history and violence were predicated on the belief that whites were superior to other races.

This isn't new information. But it's important to know and understand the truth.

This is how politicized culture wars end up playing out in classrooms: School administrators and teachers become so afraid of offending someone's feelings, and of threats of criminal charges, that they will self-censor what is taught. People have literally called the cops about books in school libraries.

Ironically, it was conservatives who were upset about Dr. Seuss for an entirely different reason not that long ago. In 2021, the Dr. Seuss Foundation said it would stop publishing six titles that included outdated images depicting East Asian characters as offensive caricatures.

At that time, warriors crying about "cancel culture" lashed out about the Great Cancellation of Dr. Seuss. But when an actual school lesson involving a Seuss book literally gets canceled, it's been crickets from the cancellation crowd.

Granted, intellectual consistency isn't a hallmark of partisans.

Teachers have been dismantling their classroom libraries for fear of violating state laws. Educators have been fired or pushed out because they support diversity and inclusion programs. Now, an AP course gets shut down in Florida.

More crickets.

There's a lesson here in the words of the Lorax: "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

At least there's some advice from Dr. Seuss kids are still allowed to read.

Missouri lawmakers kicked off the year tackling a dubious issue: covering up women's exposed arms.

Lawmakers in the Missouri House of Representatives, disturbed by the sight of female biceps, made national news last week. The GOP-controlled House adopted a stricter dress code requiring female legislators and staffers to cover their shoulders.

Some writers had fun with the irony: A state that worships guns won't let women bare arms.

The lazy pun could be amusing if we weren't so tired of being national laughingstocks. Missouri frequently finds itself in the national spotlight for cringeworthy reasons. We had a former state health director tracking the periods of Planned Parenthood patients. One of our senators raised a fist in support of Jan. 6 protestors, then ran like Chicken Little when they attacked the Capitol. Our other newly elected senator sued China and local school districts during the pandemic, and made us the first state with a near-total ban on abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe.

We're not sending our best, and we know it.

The latest embarrassment about legislating women's sleeves highlights our peculiar brand of Missourah misogyny -- it's powered by Republican women. Every single statewide elected official in Missouri is a white, Republican man. Women hold less than a third of the seats in the Missouri House. Those looking for the best way to cozy up to power know exactly where it rests.

It was a GOP woman, Rep. Ann Kelley, who proposed tightening the dress code for the ladies. Last year, Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman was pushing for laws to prevent women from leaving the state to get an abortion. Once they've got our uteruses in their clutches, someone has to up the ante. These foot soldiers for the patriarchy will join history books alongside the women who crusaded against giving women the right to vote.

The same religious believers mandating that a girl must bear her rapist's baby also perpetuate the idea that the female body is inherently sinful. Whether it's our exposed hair or bare arms -- and whether via school dress codes that target girls more than boys or via police-enforced hijabs in Iran -- the push to cover us up comes from the same place. The root of the argument: Women cannot be trusted to dress themselves.

It's not about the professionalism of a woman lawmaker wearing a sleeveless dress. It's about who controls what a woman can wear and deem it acceptable. It's about women with a little power signaling to those with more power that they're on the same team. This message becomes even more urgent when more people challenge the assumptions keeping outdated rules in place.

Reporters and lawmakers used to be required to wear dresses and blouses with sleeves upon entering the U.S. House chamber. In 2017, a group of bipartisan female lawmakers protested the rule, and then-Speaker Paul Ryan's office conceded that the dress code should be updated. The U.S. Senate also amended its rules.

Now, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the country's most well-known Republican women lawmakers, is frequently seen in sleeveless attire. She wouldn't be allowed in Missouri's House in those outfits.

The rest of the country isn't laughing with us.

They're laughing at us.

A Southwest Airlines gate agent made a tempting offer for travelers in St. Louis right before all heck broke loose.

On Dec. 22, we were waiting to board a flight to Houston, where we planned to spend the winter holidays with my parents and siblings. The flight was overbooked. The gate agent asked for two volunteers to give up their seats to be rebooked on a later flight. Each volunteer would get $1,500.

That was an eye-popping number. My daughter and I looked at each other, possibly having similar thoughts. We had taken advantage of getting bumped on this same route a few years ago: We'd waited four hours for the next flight, and the airline gave us each $500 in future travel funds.

That looked like chump change compared to the $3,000 on the table now. I started imagining beach getaways during the upcoming winter months.

"Should we take it?" I asked. My daughter, who shares my love for a bargain, volunteered to stay back with me. Our current circumstances -- three days before Christmas, with a winter storm predicted for that evening -- were considerably different than the last time this risk paid off, and the chances of making a later flight looked iffy, at best. On the other hand, we were about to board a 5 a.m. flight. Surely there would be a few more chances to make it to Texas before the weather got too dicey.

My spouse immediately quashed my desire to gamble on the holidays.

"No way," he said. "It's not worth it."

He pointed out the worst-case scenario: What if we couldn't make it there for days? Would it be worth the time lost with my family?

I agreed that the potential for hassle and regret was higher than I cared to risk. In hindsight, his advice seems even wiser than it did in the moment.

We had no idea how bleak air travel on Southwest was about to become.

Later that day, the winter storm caused massive disruptions and flight delays. The problems at Southwest escalated due to antiquated crew-scheduling technology that hadn't been updated in decades. The airline canceled 15,000 flights around Christmas, stranded tens of thousands of passengers and lost truckloads of luggage. It took eight days for the airline to recover from a meltdown never before seen in the industry.

It's hard enough to admit your spouse made the right call when you were wavering. It's even harder when the news is continuously blaring evidence of that rightness.

Marital scorekeeping aside, I learned some surprising things from the Southwest fiasco. For one thing, I had no idea I had been flying regularly in aircraft that rely on technology from the 1990s to get where they need to be. We used pay phones and StreetFinder maps in the '90s. I had visions of Southwest pilots answering rotary telephones to get flight instructions. The airline hasn't made any promises about when these systems will be updated, but they did pass out 25,000 frequent flyer miles (equal to a base fare value of around $300) as a "gesture of goodwill" for all the holiday plans they wrecked.

I also learned that airlines are required to compensate travelers who are involuntarily bumped from a flight, but not those whose flights are delayed or canceled because of bad weather, air traffic delays or mechanical issues.

While Southwest continued to work on refunding customers and rebuilding its reputation, another unprecedented snafu grounded all domestic flights temporarily: On Jan. 11, an FAA system failure caused more than 7,000 flights in or out of the United States to be delayed.

Given the potential impact on our lives and economy, updating systems and technology ought to be a higher priority for government and commercial air carriers.

For the rest of us, difficult situations largely outside of our control provide a chance to model patience and resilience for our children. It's never the poor gate agent, ticket counter worker or customer service representative who decides to cancel a flight.

Our own near-miss with the Southwest meltdown reminded me it's not worth gambling on special family moments.

Those days ended up being worth much more than $3,000.