I showed Swamp Rabbit recent articles about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who backs the state requirement that middle-schoolers in Texas be taught that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

The requirement, part of Florida’s new standards for teaching African American history, prompted New Yorker satirist Andy Borowitz to air the grievances of an imaginary victim of “white underprivilege”:

An unskilled Florida man said that he deeply regrets having missed out on the opportunity to be a slave. The man said that his “lack of access to enslavement” had made his acquisition of essential skills “impossible.”

“Every day when I mess something up at work, I wonder to myself, would I be doing a better job if I’d been a slave?” he said. “There’s no question that it would have been a game-changer for me.”

At this point it’s no secret that, in a field of Republican presidential candidates who are bigoted, oblivious, or just plain mean, DeSantis is a standout. His politics are as loathsome as Donald Trump’s, but he seems much less likely to appeal to a broad cross-section of voters. He whines constantly and has the charisma of a crash-test dummy.

“Trump can at least make them yahoos laugh,” Swamp Rabbit said. “DeSantis don’t even know what a joke is.”

His attempt to convince voters that there was a good side to slavery is in keeping with his support for Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act,” which calls for the teaching of an alternative American history that soft-pedals racism and, in effect, bans information that might make public school students feel “shamed because of their race.”

I told Swamp Rabbit that DeSantis’s views on slavery are weirdly reminiscent of an old Randy Newman song, the one that’s narrated by a slave trader who’s trying to coax Africans onto a slave ship bound for America:

In America you get food to eat/Won’t have to run through the jungle and scuff up your feet/You just think about Jesus and drink wine all day/It’s good to be an American

“The guy in the song lies about the future,” I said. “DeSantis lies about the past.”

Clarification: DeSantis, a graduate of Harvard Law School, had this to say about the new curriculum: “They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.”