the blog quebecois

For anyone concerned about the politically-correct rot that's infested academia, Erin O'Connor's Critical Mass is a must-read. But as her mini-review of Diane Ravitch's The Language Police indicates, the seeds for the stifling conformity on the modern campus are planted long before (the quotation is from a Wall Street Journal editorial by Ravitch):

In Michigan, the state does not allow mention of flying saucers or extraterrestrials on its test, because those subjects might imply the forbidden topic of evolution. A text illustrator wrote to say that she was not permitted to portray a birthday party because Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in celebrating birthdays. Another illustrator told me he was directed to airbrush the udder from his drawing of a cow because that body part was "too sexual."

A review of my book in the Scotsman, an Edinburgh newspaper, said that a well-known local writer for children sold a story to an American textbook company, along with illustrations. The U.S. publisher, however, informed her that she could not show a little girl sitting on her grandfather's lap, as the drawing implied incest. So, the author changed the adult's face, so that the little girl was sitting on her grandmother's lap instead. A contributor to a major textbook series prepared a story comparing the great floods in 1889 in Johnstown, Pa., with those in 1993 in the Midwest, but was unable to find an acceptable photograph. The publisher insisted that everyone in the rowboats must be wearing a lifevest to demonstrate safety procedures.

All together now:

These. People. Are. Insane.

Is it any wonder that homeschooling is skyrocketing in popularity? Even the most inept parent couldn't be this malicious in the guise of "niceness," and could, at best, poison only his own brood.

The public education monopoly needs to be broken up and the quicker the better.

The good folks at Samizdata are all over this:

Following the recent diplomatic spat between Italy and Germany, the EU Commission has moved to ensure that there is no repetition of such unfortunate incidents with a 'Draft Directive on Cross-Border Insults'.

The new directive sets out a regulatory framework which will, in future, require all citizens of all EU countries to follow appropriate guidelines before publicly uttering any sort of cross-border insult.

They are just kidding.

I think.

From the National Post, July 26, 2003:

Law enforcement officials in Ontario are demanding the federal government immediately release the names and photographs of dozens of war criminals who vanished in Canada while waiting to be deported.

The National Post revealed last week that Citizenship and Immigration Canada has lost track of 59 war criminals, including a Lebanese murderer wanted for crimes against humanity and a Kashmiri militant considered armed and dangerous.

[Citizenship and Immigration] has maintained that the Privacy Act prohibits the government from releasing anything more than the criminals' nationalities, marital status, height, weight and eye colour. [emphasis mine]

[...]

Most are known to have committed crimes against humanity, while the rest are war crimes suspects or known or suspected members of terrorist organizations and foreign intelligence services. Aside from being war criminals, some have convictions for murder, theft, drug trafficking, drunk driving and weapons offences.

This is, of course, absolutely insane, but I expect no less from the Canadian government. The good news is that the horribly embarrassing Jean Chrétien is scheduled to retire soon; the bad news is that his likely successor will prove just every bit as nonchalant about securing our borders -- and by extension, yours.

The only interest the Liberals have in racial profiling is in courting likely blocs of ethnic voters.

See Dick. See Jane. See Dick dickover Jane

From "Pushing The Limits In Juvenile Fiction," Edmonton Journal, Oct 5/03 [no link available]:

As She Grows, a Canadian novel published by Penguin Canada earlier this year, is a case in point. Snow, the 15-year-old protagonist, lives with an abusive, alcoholic, mentally ill grandmother. Her 18-year-old drug-dealing boyfriend dumps her when she becomes pregnant. She's beaten and forced to perform oral sex by her best friend's 24-year-old boyfriend and is nearly raped by grandmother's creepy alcoholic boyfriend, who turns out to be her father.

(So -- her grandmother is, uh, her father's girlfriend. Got it.)

Dreamland, published by Penguin, a 2003 Reachers [sic] Choice Award for 2003, [sic] describes an abusive relationsip [sic] experienced by a high school senior at the hands of her drug-dealing, BWM [sic] driving boyfriend.

[I was going to bracket out all the illiteracies, but screw it. The Journal had its chance to hire me as a copy editor, but it didn't, so damned if I'm going to cover for its lousy writers.]

When Dad Killed Mom . . . is narrated by a 12-year-old boy and his older teenaged sister who discover as the plot unfolds that their psychologist father shot their mother when she threatened to leave him and expose him professionally after discovering his affair with a young patient. It's an unsettling drama of domestic violence and abuse that includes incestuous allusions between the father and daughter.

Speak . . . which deals with the rape of a 14-year-old girl by the most popular boy in the school and the ostracism she suffers from her peers."

"Well, class, do we detect a unifying theme here?"

"That the Journal's writers don't write so good?"

"Yes, but that's not it."

"That the Journal should have hired gnotalex as a copy editor when it had the chance?"

"Indubitably, but that's not it either."

"Uh, that men are scum?"

"Exactly! Class dismissed!"

Sheesh. It's enough to make you nostalgic for the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew.

The purpose of literature isn't moral uplift; but neither is it to reflect a scabby worldview worthy of Andrea Dworkin.

I don't think it's unconnected that boys are falling far behind girls in reading and writing skills -- presented with this dreary PC diet (and many of these books are mandated reading by the militantly feminist public school establishment), I'd be inclined to pack it in, too.

From Tongue Tied. Wouldn't it have been cheaper to get him some elevator shoes, or stilts, or something?

A court in Norway has ruled that the government must pay for a short man’s car because he is afraid of being teased when riding public transportation, reports the Aftenposten newspaper.

The 22-year-old man, who is 4’2” high, said he has had anxiety attacks at the thought of riding the bus ever since he was bullied as a young boy on the school bus.

Government officials initially said that was his problem, but a special social welfare court ruled that society shouldn't expose him to the psychological burden of riding the bus.

Via Joanne Jacobs:

Two Vero Beach High School students are in counseling to deal with the trauma they suffered when their teacher read a racial slur used by a black character in an award-winning novel, A Land Remembered, that depicts the rise of a Cracker family over three generations. The parents have contacted a civil rights lawyer.

I wondered why an 11th grade teacher is reading aloud in class. Can't the students read for themselves?

My own view on gay 'marriage' (like gay partnership 'rights') is that this is a fundamental category error and a policy development that should be vigorously resisted. Does this mean I am prejudiced against gays? Not a bit of it, any more than I am prejudiced against women (don't laugh, I've been accused of this too) because I believe the feminist assault upon men and marriage has to be strenuously fought. I believe deeply in tolerance, and in the liberal separation of public and private which means that someone's sexual orientation should be their own private affair and never the cause of prejudice against that person. But the gay rights movement destroys this separation, yanking sexual orientation firmly into the public sphere. I believe that this movement, like the whole of the 'victim culture', is profoundly illiberal -- indeed, distinctly totalitarian in its reflex attempts to demonise its opponents and intimidate them into silence by smears and insults -- wrapping itself in victimhood to conceal its real agenda which is to destroy normative sexual values, with incalculable consequences for children, vulnerable adults and social order.

What she said. My own opposition to gay marriage is somewhat less nuanced than Ms. Phillips'.

On all great moral questions, I first consult Barbra Streisand's website. If she's fer somethin', I'm agin it; and vice versa.

I have followed this regime faithfully for many years now, and I am today a happy man.

Via Tongue Tied:

A Sihk student at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville who complained that a student committee only brought liberal speakers to campus was derided as a “raghead” as a result, reports the Daily Beacon.

Rubenstein said his comment was taken out of context.

Yeah, those death threats are always so tricky and ambiguous.

"He was caught in a weak and dumb moment ... and we all have those"... Dean of Students Maxine Thompson said she did not believe Rubenstein had violated a standard of conduct.

No, I'll bet you have more than your share of "weak and dumb" moments, Maxine.

The University of Nashville at Knoxville is where Glenn Reynolds teaches law, and he's been covering this too. Here's a link to the original e-mails.

Anyone familiar with the history of German universities in the 1930's has got to be appalled by this.

If the school won't act against thinly-veiled racist death threats, then maybe the police should.

Diane Ravitch in Opinion Journal:

A college professor informed me that a new textbook in human development includes the following statement: "As a folksinger once sang, how many roads must an individual walk down before you can call them an adult." The professor was stupefied that someone had made the line gender-neutral and ungrammatical by rewriting Bob Dylan's folk song "Blowin' in the Wind," which had simply asked: "How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?"

feelings, wo-o-o feelings
wo-o-o, feelings
again in my arms
feelings . . .

-- morris albert

I was looking through some files on one of my old computers when I came across this. It's by the columnist John Leo and is datestamped June 4, 2000, though the article itself has no date or link.

A clearer example of how feelings trump facts is the recent uproar at Swarthmore College over a mess found in the campus Intercultural Center. On Nov. 8, students said they found excrement and vomit on the floor of the center's large meeting room. Students concluded that the mess was an attempt to divide the campus and lash out at minorities and gays.

By the end of the week, the campus learned that the vomit was real, but the excrement was not -- it was actually chocolate cake with sprinkles. In the real world, this might have slowed the momentum of those who were sure the act was intentional vandalism and hate speech. But at Swarthmore it didn't.

Was the mess the result of drunkenness, a political statement or a stupid prank? Nobody really knew, but on the modern campus, offenses are defined by feelings, not by facts or intentions. College officials termed it an expression of hate, though they didn't explain how this determination was made.

A rally against hate drew some 500 people. Cries of "respect, safety, unity" echoed across the campus. The cake and vomit were described as the work of a "handful of people who are hateful and scared," and as an act that "had the symbolic effect of a hate crime." Speakers effortlessly fell into the language of feelings and the therapeutic culture, talking about how empowered they now felt after feeling so vulnerable and unsafe because of the assault by cake and vomit.

"When you violate that space, you violate me," said one speaker. Another said he had cried all night -- "I was overcome by tears and mucus. ... It wasn't a good cry: It was a bad cry." But because of the rally, he said, he now felt "tears of hope." The director of the Intercultural Center drew tears from the crowd as she spoke haltingly about the painful healing process that she and Swarthmore now face. A list of 10 years' worth of harassing incidents was read. One example was criticism aimed at a student's boyfriend because he wore a dress.

Oh. My. God.

she ain't exactly pretty
ain't exactly small
fort'two thirt'nine, fiftysix
you could say she got it all

-- ac/dc

Noted Constitutional expert Rosie O'Donnell weighs in on the Federal Marriage Amendment:

"It will be the first time, except for prohibition, that bigotry has been added to the Constitution," O'Donnell said. "That the prevention of rights and exclusion of rights takes paramount over some religious ideology. And, supposedly, that is what we are fighting in Iraq -- A religious extreme government that is not letting people live freely."

Prohibition was about bigotry? Against whom -- drunks?

I'll leave it to readers to parse the remainder of Ms. O'Donnell's dotty ramblings.

Via NealeNews

strut on a line it's discord and rhyme
i howl and i whine I'm after you
mouth is alive all running inside
and I'm hungry like the wolf

-- duran duran

Via Tongue Tied:

An Italian school that substituted a Nativity play with a showing of Little Red Riding Hood in order to avoid offending Muslim students is drawing the ire it deserves from the Vatican and other corners of religious Italy, reports Reuters.

The public elementary school in the northern city of Treviso said that Little Red Riding Hood was a fitting representation of the struggle between good and evil and would not offend Muslim children.

Aside from the part where Little Red Riding Hood is eaten by a large unclean dog-like thing, that is.

So we could rewrite it a bit to cater to multicultural sensitivities: Let's make the wolf a ferocious jihadi, and he's captured Little Red Riding Hood and is about to saw off her head when a handsome young Marine aviator happens along and drops a 2000-pound GBU-24 laser-guided bomb, sending the jihadi to his well-deserved martyrdom.

You see? With just a little thought and effort we can make the Christmas holiday season truly inclusive for all.

I was curious about Melanie Phillips' take on the Sieg Harry hoohah. As you might expect, the 1996 winner of the Orwell Prize for journalism cuts to the chase:

[P]eople are very keen to stand up for the Jews as long as they are safely dead and a tragic chapter in history over which to wax indignant. It's the live Jews they can't stand.

The buzzword "brainstorming" is off the list of phrases deemed acceptable to for civil servants in Northern Ireland to use because it is said to be demeaning to people with brain disorders, according to the Observer.

Staff at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Belfast will from now on be using the term 'thought-showers' when they get together to think creatively.

Sources inside the department tell the paper that there was concern that the term brainstorming would offend people with epilepsy as well those with brain tumors or brain injuries.

A spokesman for the Campaign for Plain English said such edicts have "reached the point of real ridicule."

'You do sometimes wonder if some people haven't got anything better to do with their time,' said John Wild.

Via Tongue Tied

The Washington Times:

The U.S.-Canadian military commands responsible for protecting North America from terrorists have changed the names of key readiness exercises to more politically correct words that do not offend American Indians. [. . .]

An exercise called "Amalgam Chief" has been changed to "Amalgam Arrow," the message states. And an exercise dubbed "Amalgam Fabric Brave" is now "Amalgam Fabric Dart." "Fabric Indian" was deleted in favor of "Fabric Sabre."

The problem is more serious than we initially thought, gentlemen. For starters, the US is going to have to rename pretty well nearly all of its military helicopters, past and present. A few that come to mind (well, with some assistance from Wikipedia): Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Black Hawk, Shawnee, Chinook.

Canada gets off a bit easier. Our Iroquois-class destroyers will have to find some other designation, assuming we indeed still have any. Fortunately our naval helicopters are immune from this revisionism, unless I'm overlooking some obscure Indian tribe called the Sea Kings that specialized in falling out of the sky.

Via Nealenews

4. I am dismayed at the huge number of hurtful and hateful posts that have been posted subsequent to mine, and the many more that have been sent to me personally. It has certainly been enlightening.

Lisa
Mother, small business owner, PTA member, teacher, community volunteer, good Samaritan, good neighbor, and mortal.

Good grief.

Ananova:

Jeremy Clarkson has been rapped for calling a car 'gay'.

The Top Gear presenter said the Daihatsu Copen was "a bit gay" and "a bit ginger beer" - rhyming slang for 'queer', reports the Daily Mail.

Ofcom [the broadcast regulator in the UK, similar to the CRTC or FCC, and apparently just as useful] said use of the word "gay" was not necessarily offensive, citing the Oxford English Dictionary definition of the word as "foolish, stupid and occasionally inappropriate, disapproved of and lame".

But Ofcom added: "In this edition of Top Gear, the presenter's use of a Cockney rhyming phrase made clear he intended to give a particular meaning to use of the word gay . . . ie, not to restrict its meaning simply to foolish or stupid, but clearly linking the reference to homosexual people.

"This, in Ofcom's opinion, meant that the use of the word became capable of giving offence. In the context, there was no justification for using the word in this way."

Now, I'm not an expert on cars like Jeremy Clarkson, so I have to defer to his opinion, though some might find it harsh.

I will only say that I would expect to see great numbers of Daihatsu Copen in the parking lot of the local Judy Garland Film Festival.

National Post:

Sumo suits, the plastic novelties that can transform a skinny sports fan into a comically unstable sphere for the delight of a stadium audience, are racist and dehumanizing instruments of oppression, according to the student government of Queen's University.
They "appropriate an aspect of Japanese culture," turn a racial identity into a "costume," and "devalue an ancient and respected Japanese sport, which is rich in history and cultural tradition." They also "fail to capture the deeply embedded histories of violent and subversive oppression that a group has faced."

Yes, who does not condemn the "violent and subversive [sic] oppression" that sumo wrestlers have struggled against?

You guys are just making stuff up as you go along, right? Right?

[ . . . ]

"We would never want to host an event that would offend some members," Mr. [student union communications officer Brendan] Sloan said.

Last year, in a story that made national headlines, the Queen's administration appointed six "dialogue facilitators" to promote discussion of social justice, partly by intervening in conversations when they overhear offensive speech. The resulting scandal led to the appointment of an expert panel, including a former head of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which cancelled the program as "incompatible with the atmosphere required for free speech."

The student government was to meet last night to discuss another fun activity as a replacement for the sumo suits, Mr. Sloan said.

Might I suggest a torchlit parade, followed by a jolly book-barbeque and a few rousing choruses of the "Horst-Wessel-Lied"?

The title is an old joke, about how the end of the world would be reported in (I've heard both) the New York Times or Washington Post. It immediately brought to mind this story from 2004 (link long dead):

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) - Severe weather caused by global warming
can pose greater physical danger to women than men, a Canadian attending a UN conference on climate change said Friday.

"For instance, often women don't know how to swim, so in a flood situation that can lead to a higher instance of death or injury," Angie Daze, a program manager with a Canadian group called Reducing Vulnerability to Climate Change, said.

Which leads us inexorably to:

Immigrants are at higher risk for drowning when boating and swimming than people born in Canada, according to new research being released Thursday by the Lifesaving Society.

The study, believed to be the first of its kind in Canada, shows that despite plans by 79 per cent of newcomers to be in and around water this summer, they are four times more likely to be unable to swim.

Almost 20 per cent of immigrants are unable to swim, compared with just 4 per cent of people born in Canada, according to the study, which polled 1,032 Canadians between the ages of 18 and 60 in April and May.

Provincial coroners don’t keep death statistics by ethnicity or nationality, so the Lifesaving Society’s research provides the first statistical-based look at drowning risk for this group.

The study comes in the wake of what is turning out to be a deadly month at pools and swimming holes in Ontario.

Since the end of June, 13 people have drowned including Deep Engineer, one of two 14-year-old boys who died after being pulled from a Scarborough condo pool. The boy didn’t know how to swim, friends say.

“In India, nobody has access to pools. You don’t learn to swim,” said the boy’s uncle, Veejay Sonal, adding that Engineer’s family immigrated to Canada in 2001.

Anyone who names their kid Deep Engineer is clearly mocking the gods; how else to explain the survival of his brother, Shallow?

Via Blazing Cat Fur

Greg Gutfeld:

From high schools to townhalls, the topic of bullying has elbowed its way to the front of the grievance parade. City councils are passing “anti-bullying laws,” and the term is now used to describe all sorts of bad behavior. And of course, America is always accused of being the world’s bully - despite the crap we take from just about everyone (especially Belgium, and their stupid chocolates).

There’s a reason for this. It’s an easy thing to get earnest about: no matter how much of a jerk you are (and I’m at the top), you can’t say, “bullying is awesome.” You can say it builds character, but don’t tell that to a parent of a terrified kid.

And it’s a slam dunk for celebrities. It makes for legitimate and easy outrage that even the shallowest dope can get behind. More important - as every celebrity constantly reminds us - they were once bullied too. The cause becomes about them, just like everything else.

And it's an easy epithet for "disadvantaged" groups -- feminists, homosexuals, and hard-charging up the middle, Islamists -- to throw around while working the system to their benefit. The hysteria over "bullying" is just the latest manifestation of their power grab, under the color of law, in the service of the biggest bully of them all: Government.

For an earlier example of how the game is played, I'd recommend Christina Hoff Sommers' The War Against Boys (2001), though it's no less applicable to Canada in 2010. (It's still available from Amazon for about $15, and I heartily recommend it.) The Atlantic published a lengthy excerpt:

It's a bad time to be a boy in America. The triumphant victory of the U.S. women's soccer team at the World Cup last summer has come to symbolize the spirit of American girls. The shooting at Columbine High last spring might be said to symbolize the spirit of American boys.

That boys are in disrepute is not accidental. For many years women's groups have complained that boys benefit from a school system that favors them and is biased against girls. "Schools shortchange girls," declares the American Association of University Women. Girls are "undergoing a kind of psychological foot-binding," two prominent educational psychologists say. A stream of books and pamphlets cite research showing not only that boys are classroom favorites but also that they are given to schoolyard violence and sexual harassment.

In the view that has prevailed in American education over the past decade, boys are resented, both as the unfairly privileged sex and as obstacles on the path to gender justice for girls. This perspective is promoted in schools of education, and many a teacher now feels that girls need and deserve special indemnifying consideration. "It is really clear that boys are Number One in this society and in most of the world," says Patricia O'Reilly, a professor of education and the director of the Gender Equity Center, at the University of Cincinnati.

The idea that schools and society grind girls down has given rise to an array of laws and policies intended to curtail the advantage boys have and to redress the harm done to girls. That girls are treated as the second sex in school and consequently suffer, that boys are accorded privileges and consequently benefit -- these are things everyone is presumed to know. But they are not true.

The mendacity and corruption that Sommers details is stunning. If I had a son of school age, I'd be moving heaven and earth to get him out of that abusive environment, if I had to homeschool him myself. These people have no business with anyone's children; some deserve to go to jail.

The spread of anti-Semitism on Canadian university campuses is an alarming and obvious phenomenon. The University of Toronto is making a shocking contribution to the spread of hate.

It is the birthplace of the odious so-called "Israel Apartheid Week" which has best been described as, "the week in which the Western campus Hitlerjugend, Marxist-Leninists, and Islamo-fascists unite to demonstrate against and call for the destruction of the only Middle East country that is NOT an apartheid regime."

The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) is the home of some of the most appalling of The University of Toronto's extremist radicals. It's no coincidence that OISE, the home of suspect programs of dubious academic value like 'Diversity Studies', is host to a number of anti-Israel lectures during the bigotfest of "Israeli Apartheid Week."

But to what extent has Jew hate permeated the academic programs at University of Toronto? Judging by some of the theses that are being granted a form of legitimacy, alarm bells should be going off and an investigation may be merited.

Time to cut these weenies off at the knees. Let them get their funding from their generous kindred at Hamas or Hezbollah. I'm sure they've got a few million that hasn't made it to Zurich yet.

From us, now that I think about it.

The ChronicleHerald.ca:

The overreaching of Canada’s human rights commissions and tribunals into matters of free speech, as regular readers know, has been a problem for many, many years. But most politicians have lacked the fortitude to tackle the problem.

Instead, they’ve mouthed their dismay but, for the most part, left it to the courts to slap down the most outrageous decisions of these powerful quasi-judicial bodies.

The complainant’s case is argued on their behalf by the state, at taxpayers’ expense. The accused, meanwhile, must pay for their own defence. In this case, Earle, who readily admits he’s not a man of great means, asked if he could testify electronically — it being 2010, video conferencing was well beyond the experimental stage — rather than have to fly back to Vancouver and pay for lodgings. The tribunal said no. Its ruling, however, noted only that oral submissions were heard from "all parties who chose to participate."

The tribunal deserves all the scorn now being heaped upon it.

National Post:

Children wanting to wear scary, violent or blood-drenched costumes will have to trade them in for more caring and community-friendly outfits at two public elementary schools this Halloween.

The principal of Colonel Walker and Ramsay schools said her staff has chosen to use the day normally known for scares and frights as an opportunity to teach community values.

[ . . . ]

Michelle Speight, who serves as principal for both inner city schools, said the move is designed to accommodate all children, including those with cultural backgrounds that don’t celebrate Halloween. It’s also an attempt by staff to prevent students from wearing costumes inappropriate for young children.

“You can still be creative, in fact we encourage that, think of all the things you can be in a non-violent way,” said Speight. “Ones that exemplify caring for other people and be respectful of other people.”

And what exemplifies "caring and respect" more than the . . . SOCIAL WORKER! Wouldn't that creep you out on your porch? Add orthopedic Birkenstocks, and behold, the . . . LESBIAN SOCIAL WORKER!!! Flee, men, flee!

How about those "Occupy" zombies! They care so very very much! Hear their haunting chant: "Braainsss!" Which they don't seem to have a lot of. (Or possibly "Weeeedddd!")

Or if you really want to strike terror into the hearts of all . . . the Michelle Speight bureaucrat from hell! Aaiiieee!

Sculpture by Ray Villafane

Michelle Malkin:

Santa Claus doesn’t just drop off presents for kids — he also encourages the soul-crushing of generation after generation of Christmas-reveling children. Or says one author, at least.

Appearing on Fox News, author and special ed professor George Giuliani asserted that St. Nick’s behavior in the classic stop motion cartoon, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is tantamount to bullying, and sends a wrong message to children watching the family favorite. As such, he’s written a new book, “No More Bullies at the North Pole,” which re-tells the story of the triumphant reindeer.

“Santa has ten policies that are very unfair, and Mrs. Claus sets out to correct those policies, and what you just saw, where Rudolph is being treated very very badly, and that should never happen,” Guiliani said.

Via Ace Of Spades HQ

Slate:

Adopters were told not to mingle with the animals, but that specific dogs would be brought to them. While Rusty was otherwise engaged, M. asked if they could look at some of the other dogs but almost all were declared not suitable for children. As the family waited, the children sat on the ground and started writing in the dirt with sticks. A volunteer came over, alarmed. He reprimanded them, saying that if a dog sees a stick in a person’s hand it will expect that stick to be thrown, and it’s not fair to frustrate a dog.

Eventually, Rusty was brought over. He was a little hyper but everyone agreed he was fine. M. told the rescue group they wanted him, and when the family returned home they started buying dog supplies. But a call from the group aborted their plans. “We had a report about inappropriate behavior by your children,” M. was told, which meant they would not be allowed to adopt. M. and her husband were astounded and the children were crushed.

* With apologies to Kate.

360wpro.com

Warwick School Superintendent Peter Horoschak is stepping in after a student mural at Pilgrim High School was deemed inappropriate and painted over because it depicted a man holding the hand of a woman and child.

A parent of a Pilgrim High School student who first reported the incident to WPRO's John DePetro Show. The mural was meant to depict the life of a man and it ended with the scene with the man, woman and a child. The student artist, 17-year-old Liz Bierendy, said that she depicted the man and woman has married with wedding rings. According to Horoshack’s press release the scene was painted over because “some of the members of the Pilgrim High School community suggested that the depiction of a young man’s development from boyhood through adulthood as displayed may not represent the life experiences of many of the students at Pilgrim High School.”

Given the number of metrosexual morons and Talibanettes that infest the education system, this comes as no surprise. The good news is that if they're as incompetent at indoctrination as they are at everything else they're supposed to be teaching, the kids should bumble through all right.

Via David Thompson

I thought of titling this "The March Of Stupidity," but the word "march" seems too regimented -- nay, militaristic for these gentle, um . . . free-spirits. Besides, I don't think they're trainable to that degree. More here.

Forget about gay marriage -- these morons must not be allowed to mate. Does Depo-Provera work as an aerosol mist?