IRSD Checking into Report of Obama-Smearing Teacher
Selander just told me on the air that the district is checking into the claims in a recent letter to the Cape Gazette which read in part:
Last Tuesday, her teacher “taught” her class that Barack Obama is a Muslim and that she would not vote for him because he does not swear on the Bible, nor recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Her teacher told the class that she is a Republican and that Barack Obama “believes in different things and is scary.”
“Obama Smearing” should be hyphenated. I read that headline very differently than was intended 🙂
Gracias.
Nice recommended diary on DKos, J!
I’m soooo proud of our ‘Little Alabama’ we have going on in SuKKKess county! 😉
Obama-smear tastes great on a bagel.
Thanks but I’m kinda having mixed feelings about having put it on kos.
I can’t really explain it because this teacher is no doubt quoting that wingnut email that is going around, and yet I feel kind of sorry she her because she is so clueless and teaching is a hard freaking job.
I understand the mixed feelings but I bet without the kos publicity the whole thing would be swept under the rug and the IRSD community would do a Dobrich on the letter-writer’s family. If you waited for proof you’d be waiting a long time. So you done good.
Another neo-conservative smear….
You did good Jason and the next time some teacher is tempted to repeat this sort of tripe in the classroom perhaps s/he will think twice about it.
It’s a long haul til November and we’ve got to do everything, everything, to insure that this reign of greed, incompetence, and unitary-executive ends on Nov. 4th. That includes stopping this sort of ignorant sludge from being repeated by anyone, but especially by teachers who should know better. She’s just another incompetent and she deserves to get called on it just like “Brownie”.
Don’t start going soft on us now Jason. The real fun hasn’t even started yet and we’ve got eight tough months ahead. We’re gonna need you and your clear-eyed leadership. Call it what it is. Ignorance, bigotry, and total lack of empathy for her students.
Oh, one more thing. She was the one with the power and she chose to use it to bully the less powerful. I hate bullies.
I think I’m in love with Rebecca. Easy guys, you don’t even know what we look like.
Jason, if you read my post on this, you would see that I’ve had personal experience with issues like these. I even have letters of apology from the school districts.
Christ, these people wrote a letter, and a newspaper printed it. Where is the papers investigative reporting? My parents live in Fenwick, this isn’t a busy time down there.
So, quit kicking yourself. This is a blog, not the NYT… er, maybe that was a bad example.
Seriously, they wrote the letter. The newspaper printed it. Fair game in my book for discussion.
Rebecca, to an extent you are right. However, we must make sure we have due process. If this is a BS story, it should be called as such. I have to admit that I am not 100% convinced yet. I was going to call down there today, but got tied up at work.
The last thing that we need these days is another Tawana Brawley. So I will pledge to go hard at people who done wrong, but going hard at someone when the offense is still up in the air is…well…Republican. I will reserve judgement until more of the story is revealed.
Geek is dead-on. You shouldn’t be even close to 100% convinced.
There’s a LOT more to this little yarn than y’all know, and even so — to automatically take the word of a TEN year old over that of a teacher — to suit your pathetic political ends — speaks volumes. I’m sure y’all are the type that believes your “little angels” about each and every anecdote they tell you about school, especially if they get in some trouble in class, right? It’s never their fault. Nice.
(BTW — I cut Jason a lot of slack on my above remarks since he has consistently commented favorably about teachers. And Geek, too, since he’s one of the few sensible ones ’round here.)
Yeah Hube! There are sooooooo many 10 year olds out there who are sooooooo politically informed to come up with that slightly-credible fib!!
And blaming the kid first, huh? That’s very republican of you too, y-y-y-you arbiter of all things sensible!!!
p.s. ~ I have a ME degree, spent some years in DE/MD middle and high schools, and heard some really inappropriate shit come out of educator’s mouths, either amongst adults or waxing moronic while in front of the classroom…..so something like what was described in the LTE comes as no surprise at all…..
“You did good Jason and the next time some teacher is tempted to repeat this sort of tripe in the classroom perhaps s/he will think twice about it.”
I reiterate: nobody knows what the teacher actually said; and do you really want to create an atmosphere of vigilantes pursuing every perceived teacher misstatement in the classroom? Talk about empowering 10-year-olds to rat out their teachers.
“It’s a long haul til November and we’ve got to do everything, everything, to insure that this reign of greed, incompetence, and unitary-executive ends on Nov. 4th. That includes stopping this sort of ignorant sludge from being repeated by anyone, but especially by teachers who should know better. She’s just another incompetent and she deserves to get called on it just like “Brownie”.”
Again: you are now slandering somebody you never met, based on the second-hand (her sister wrote the letter) testimony of a 10 year old you never met.
“Don’t start going soft on us now Jason. The real fun hasn’t even started yet and we’ve got eight tough months ahead. We’re gonna need you and your clear-eyed leadership. Call it what it is. Ignorance, bigotry, and total lack of empathy for her students.”
Exactly how–based on a single report from a 10 year old–do you jump to slandering a person whose name you don’t even know with “ignorance, bigotry, and lack of empathy”?
“Yeah Hube! There are sooooooo many 10 year olds out there who are sooooooo politically informed to come up with that slightly-credible fib!!”
VonC–you’ve obviously never worked in the schools, have you. ALL 10 year olds lie. And mis-hear. And imagine things.
This incident is more revealing for what it says about the people so concerned with “right-wing-smears” that you employ virtually the same tactic:
1) you received one unsubstantiated second-hand charge and immediately turned it over to the kos without any corroborating evidence
2) you began declaring the teacher to be an ogre-bigot
3) you somehow interpreted yourselves as having the legitimacy to insert yourselves into the issue before the district even had a chance to respond….
At this point you haven’t got a single ethical leg up on Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.
There can always be things we don’t know. And something may be false, even if someone says it’s true. But in my experience 10 year olds are not necessarilly more likely to lie about what another person said than adults. Adults lie when in trouble, by the way, just like kids – ask Bill Clinton, or any other adult who was ever asked, “Did you have sex with that woman?” in a room full of lawyers.
In any case, this is not a situation where the child was in apparent trouble. Nor is there any other prima facia motive for lying.
Also, as has been noted, many readers are familiar with the fabicated talking points that often bubble up from various right-wing “news outlets.” I’ll bet most DL readers have even now and then encountered uncritical souls who believe THESE yarns whole cloth. In my own experience as an educator, I have encountered colleagues who, believe it or not, could be this uncritical. It’s happenned before.
I don’t think taking this story as credible, though unproven, is necessarilly evidence of “pathetic political ends.” I guess I’m just showing how anxious I am to be counted as one of the ‘sensible ones’ ’round here.
1) you received one unsubstantiated second-hand charge and immediately turned it over to the kos without any corroborating evidence
Bullshit. I linked to a letter to a signed letter to the editor. If I were a rightwing blogger I would be able to move forward with far less.
2) you began declaring the teacher to be an ogre-bigot
I declared that she was clueless and that the letter in question was heartbreaking.
At this point you haven’t got a single ethical leg up on Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.
See my response to item 1.
Steve, please refer to my post that’s above yours…
…and you have the balls, dude? You can’t even comprehend what you’ve just read and you think I’m clueless? Wake the fuck up, man! I doubt that the kid had the wherewithal to come up with this story all by herself…either the teacher said it (or something close to it) or the letter writer made it up. The only other option (i can think of, at least) would be the kid heard it from another student….but why would she tell her mother it was the teacher and not just some kid in class?
I do hope the story’s not true, though you fellas assume the worst in people who try to expose wrongs and other shitty deeds….why is that?
Jason,
A clarification: I intended to use “you” in the second-person plural, meaning all of the people who jumped on this and began declaring the teacher a bigot; I did not intend that specifically against you; I apologize for that insinuation.
However: sending it to the kos is still, in my mind, a hideous overreaction; let’s just sample the responses you got from commenters based on, again–no real evidence:
“There was a Muslim child in the class who has been marked for life by being told in front of her peers that her religion is scary and different.
I’d fire her. But if they’re going to suspend her, at least they could make her pay for some counseling to counteract this nastiness.”
“She should be suspended and forced to visit a mosque and actually speak to some real Muslims. The school should also institute a policy where teachers are NOT allowed to discuss their personal opinion of politicians with students.”
“There is no circumstance under which what the teacher in the article did is OK. That district should be awash in lawsuits. Wonder what, if anything, Barack will say/do about it?”
“Maybe it’s up to us to do something. I wonder if we could get an email address for the school board in Delaware. Perhaps a gentle reminder that the entire country is watching them would be helpful.”
“If she actually spent a couple of hours with some Muslims I’m sure it would change her attitude. The school needs to fire her or offer her a chance to make amends (and what better way than by visiting a mosque and learning what Islam is really about)?”
There was this one (a distinct minority among 385 responses so far):
“Note the letter at the end of the diary. While there’s cause for concern, it’s possible that the events didn’t happen as they were reported, and this will need to be investigated before anybody can be sure there was real wrongdoing here.”
So here’s my point: you now have people all over the country who have convinced themselves that this really happened and that this teacher should just simply be fired.
All on the basis of one letter and no investigation.
Yeah, you’re right: this is certainly a lot more ethical than Limbaugh or Hannity.
Steve Newton: It’s a different school district, but bear with me: There was an item in the News Journal Saturday about the out-of-court settlement between the Brandywine School District and a guidance counselor who warned the administration about Rachel Holt, the teacher now serving 10 years for molesting a young adolescent boy. She told the administration Holt was kissing kids and sitting on their laps; for her trouble she was fired.
Now let’s look at the Indian River School District. They have spent well over $100,000 at this point fighting the ACLU and two Jewish families, insisting the district has the right to use Christian prayers at commencement and to open school board meetings — in other words, this is hardly a district committed to equal treatment under the law or those practicing religions other than Christianity. Now ask yourself, do you really think the district is going to come clean about this? Or do you think they’ll try to minimize it, or lie if necessary, to make it go away? Fool me once…
You had me and you lost me. Yes the kosians went ballistic. But people who don’t have their radar on for this kind of shit after two Bush elections are few and far between.
Limbaugh and Hannity make shit up.
Al and Jason
Not for a second am I supporting the IRSD; but you still haven’t gotten around the initial problem of NO bloody evidence beyond one letter.
Yeah, Jason, Limbaugh and Hannity make things up. But people who pass on unsubstantiated allegations (it’s the seriousness of the charge, you know, not the nature of the evidence) aren’t different by kind but by degree.
You know what I’d have like to have seen you do?
Run the exact same initial story with a caution to the faithful that while it seems in character we don’t want to end up witch-hunting the same way the far right does, so we’re going to follow this and see if the district does the right thing….
Instead, we opened up the floodgates for everybody to dump all their cathartic angst over right-wing smears by conducting a full scale cyber lynching….
You can’t tell me you support somebody posting the names of all fifth grade teachers at that school and telling people nationwide to write to all of them because we don’t know which one of them is guilty. Or do you?
And Al, give me a break. You hate slippery slope arguments and you’re making one just as bad. It’s the magical theory of similarity: it happened over here in similar situations so its OK to condemn over here.
Yeah, IRSD has done a lot of dumb shit over the years. And there are also a lot of committed, talented teachers in that district working to educate kids who you have just dumped on en masse….
At this point I’m surprised you haven’t gone full throttle and named this teacher as the worst person in Delaware for the week–even though (and it needs to be said again because you still don’t get it) … at this point you have no evidence beyond a second-hand allegation by a 10 year old ….
I haven’t actually said a word against anyone, Steve. I’m pointing out that, for many people, this district has used up its reserve of good will, and that if you wait for some sort of confirmation, you might be waiting a long time — and that the wait, or an absolution, might not be the truth, either.
At this point, I’m waiting to hear what Hube knows about “the rest of the story,” to steal a famous radio line.
Al,
Agreeing with 99% of what you say, here’s the problem: the blogosphere community nationwide is busily trashing not only that teacher but in effect ALL the fifth grade teachers at that school.
Starting that fire (and I am not accusing you of having done so) is no more appropriate than the district whitewashing this incident.
One more thing, the Indian River School District is being sued by the ACLU for running their own version of a Christian Academy with my tax dollars.
I love Christians, I was one once and I still believe Christ was probably the world’s greatest teacher. I love teachers too. I had a few truly wonderful ones and I still think about them often.
But I also love liberty and there’s not much of that in the Indian River School District. I love security and I expect non-Christian families don’t feel real secure sending their kids off to those schools. Finally, I love opportunity for all, not just for Christians.
Oh, and Pandora, it’s mutual.
Fair enough, Steve. I suppose it’s a good example of feeding frenzy, new media-style.
Rebecca,
The IRSD’s insurance company refused to insure them after they turned down the Dobrich arbitration (e.g. call the winter holiday “winter break” instead of “Christmas”, don’t use graduation as an opportunity to proselytize, allow that some people don’t believe in Jesus, etc. .) so there is that in the mix as well.
I’m not sure how/if that was ever resolved.
While it true that we shouldn’t be “100% convinced” (Hube’s words). This is NOT at all far fetched.
My wife coordinates the math coordinates the math curriculum at a Maryland middle school. While discussing our attendance at the Obama rally in Rodney Square with co-workers earlier this month a staff marched up and asked, “do you know his middle name?!?!”. She replied tersely, “Hussein” and at that her colleague dropped her head and shuffled away. This you can believe, 100%!
Now this wasn’t said directly to students, but this was said out in the open in a public middle school.
Moral of the story…
Don’t have the middle name Hussein?
how about: say, “I don’t care,” smack said-staff in the head while saying, “but yours is ‘Jackass!'”
Geek: Good thing I didn’t read that with the microphone open…
🙂
If you had, you could consider it my contribution to your show..
“This speaker-blowing outburst brought to you by LiberalGeek”
Did you know Hillary Clinton’s middle name is Mussolini? I read that in an anonymous e-mail someone forwarded to me, so it must be true.
I know I am way late on this but I like how Jason justifies jumping to conclusions and lying by saying that Hannity and Limbaugh do it! That makes it all right in your mind doesn’t it?
You really are a joke!