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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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 Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 2:26 am Post subject: Republicans Steal From Classroom |
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This kind of foolishness defies the imagination.
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When he went home for the weekend on Friday, one of Clifford's most prized teaching tools � a collage-type poster depicting the history of the U.S. labor movement � was affixed to his classroom door. Clifford uses it each year to teach his students how to incorporate collages into their annual project on Norman Rockwell's historic "Four Freedoms" illustrations.
The poster includes this quote from the labor organizer and one-time presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs: "Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation."
"It's one of my favorite posters," said Clifford. "I've had it sitting there for seven years."
Enter the Knox County Republicans, whose weekend convention coup has attracted national attention as a harbinger of a movement that knows a thing or two about agitation.
Details are sketchy � as they often can be when political passion gives way to apparent criminal activity. But this much we know: When Clifford returned to school Monday morning, his cherished labor poster was gone.
In its place, taped to the same door, was a red-white-and-blue bumper sticker that read, "Working People Vote Republican."
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While Clifford used his break time Monday to bang out a few pointed e-mails to GOP leaders asking for help in getting his poster back, King Middle School Principal Mike McCarthy started getting phone calls from rank-and-file Republicans who were upset by what they said they had seen in Clifford's classroom.
They objected to other "freedom" posters produced by kids from past years � one depicts former President George W. Bush with no eyes over the caption "I feel like I can see evil."
They objected to a sticker attached to a filing cabinet in the corner that reads, "People for the American Way � Fight the Right." (Clifford says he didn't put the sticker there � it was on the cabinet when he salvaged it from another classroom.)
They also objected to the contents of a closed cardboard box they found near Clifford's desk. Upon opening it for a look-see, they found copies of the U.S. Constitution printed and donated to the school by (gasp) the American Civil Liberties Union.
McCarthy, who happens to be this year's Maine Middle Level Principal of the Year (for the second time), tried to reason with the one of the anonymous callers.
"What you saw was a snapshot after school of what was up in the room on that day," he noted. "You haven't been privy to all of the different ideas that have been talked about in that classroom."
The caller's reaction?
"She just got more and more agitated," McCarthy said.
That's when McCarthy reminded the caller that a teacher's poster actually had been stolen. Her response, he recalled, was, "Well, it should have been because it shouldn't be in that classroom!"
"Well, that's not how we do business around here," replied McCarthy, by now somewhere between simmer and full boil. "We're more than willing to discuss ideas, but we don't steal."
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Speaking of the children, they got into the act Tuesday after a note from "a Republican" was found in Clifford's classroom. "A Republican was here," it read. "What gives you the right to propagandize impressionable kids?"
Responded eighth-grader Lilly O'Leary, one of several students who sent e-mails to this newspaper decrying the behavior of their weekend guests, "I am not being brainwashed in his class under any circumstances. I am being told that I have the right to my own opinion."
She added, "These people were adults and they were acting very immaturely." |
Other than the absolute absurdity of stealing anything from a classroom and leaving behind angry notes, what perplexes me most is the complaint about the Constitution. How can anyone complain about the presence of copies of the Constitution in a classroom, regardless of their original source? If anything, the ACLU donating copies of the Constitution should make true believers in the Constitution look more favorably upon that organization. I also have to say I'm incredibly sick of people using the term "anti-American" in pretty much any domestic context. Al-Qaeda is anti-American. North Korea is anti-American. The expression of opinions is not.
Admittedly, I don't think the "Fight the Right" sticker has any place in a classroom; if their complaints had been limited to that, they'd seem fairly reasonable. |
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The Happy Warrior
Joined: 10 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 3:44 am Post subject: Re: Republicans Steal From Classroom |
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| Fox wrote: |
Other than the absolute absurdity of stealing anything from a classroom and leaving behind angry notes, what perplexes me most is the complaint about the Constitution. How can anyone complain about the presence of copies of the Constitution in a classroom, regardless of their original source? If anything, the ACLU donating copies of the Constitution should make true believers in the Constitution look more favorably upon that organization. I also have to say I'm incredibly sick of people using the term "anti-American" in pretty much any domestic context. Al-Qaeda is anti-American. North Korea is anti-American. The expression of opinions is not.
Admittedly, I don't think the "Fight the Right" sticker has any place in a classroom; if their complaints had been limited to that, they'd seem fairly reasonable. |
Civil discourse in America is not very civil at all.
I'm going to take a wild guess and say that most of the Republicans complaining were Baby Boomers. Its not that Baby Boomers are the least civil and mature when discussing politics, its just that it seems to me that people who are the least civil and mature when discussing these matters are very often Baby Boomers. |
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stilicho25
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
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| Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 3:53 am Post subject: |
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| Stealing his poster was a pathetic move. Complaining about the copies of the constitution was also a pathetic move. On the other hand, the teacher having the "fight the right" thing in the classroom was also pretty pathetic. I do like Eugene Debs though. Interesting guy. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 8:23 am Post subject: |
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Knox county is a tiny county in a small state, and this being a county convention of a small group of Republicans held in a school, it shouldn't be too difficult to track down the thieves and charge them with some kind of misdemeanor.
Ds and Rs are just organized gangs that use the socialist state to loot from the people and line their own pockets, so this is no surprise. One Democratic candidate for Governor in Maine signed up convicted felons to work as thugs for his campaign, stealing opposition campaign signs and whatnot with the promise of pardons for their prior convictions if he was elected. |
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