Cracker-Jackin' in Knoxville
Being navel-gazing San Franciscans, we at the Pepper don't often venture out to see what's going on in other parts of the nation. However, we spent a significant chunk of our lives in Tennessee and Kentucky ('round the time when the unfortunately named Bill Boner was mayor of Nashville), and we like to keep up with what's going down in that part of the world.
Hence, we are regular readers of South Knox Bubba, and SKB posted about a disturbing incident at a Knoxville public elementary school.
Here's the lede: "A fifth-grade girl at A.L. Lotts Elementary School had hoped to participate in National Pro-Life TShirt Day, so on Tuesday she donned the official shirt, which pictures a fetus and says in capital letters, "ABORTION KILLS KIDS." "
The principal sent that child - and her mother, who accompanied the child armed with legal documents - home. And rightfully so.
SKB savaged the mother who used her own child as a political pawn: "What kind of parent abuses their kid for a stunt like this?"
Of course, some of the more conservative types in SKB's comments section went to town, calling libs hypocritical for demanding free speech but saying it's okay to send this child home for expressing her opinion.
Our sharp retort to that - it's not her opinion. It's obviously her mother's opinion. And if you think that anyone under the age of 15 (and that's being generous!) has a sharply formed opinion about ANYTHING, you're living in fairy land. Expecting a 12-year-old to understand the ethical complexities of the abortion debate or even to understand how people get pregnant is ridiculous. Heck, some adults think you can't get pregnant the first time!
We would also add what we posted over at SKB, which is that in fifth grade (the child is 12 but is in fifth-grade, suggesting she really might not grasp what's going on around her), students aren't even taught fetal development. They certainly don't get anything resembling sex ed at that point.
How can anyone expect a child to wear a political tee-shirt to school? A teenager, fine, but a child? No way. We at the Pepper are big fat libs. The blue blood runs in our veins like a river, and we're even disagreeing with some of the SKB respondents on this one, but we don't think that elementary-school kids should be allowed to wear ANY political gear to schools. That also goes for anything that furthers the liberal cause. Unless the child understands it, the child can't wear it.
If only that rule applied to little girls and trampy clothes. Sigh.
We at the Pepper attended a public school in the region, and we got in hot water for wearing punk-rock shirts and even a pro-life shirt. We didn't like it when we were told "turn it inside out, or haul your sorry butt home" either. But we were 16. We knew exactly what we were saying by wearing a pro-choice shirt to school (and we knew it would tick off a school filled with Cracker-Jackin' Fundamentalist Baptists!). But this kid is in fifth grade. Our momma would have tanned our hides if we tried to leave the house wearing anything remotely offensive if we were under age 16.
Comments
I guess I am getting used to these offensive conservative T-shirts. I agree with Pepper's persuasive point that the mom is using her daughter for political gain, but I see this mainly as a moral rather than legal issue. I don't know that a school can ban people from pimping their parents' agendas. I think it can be banned for the simple reason that it's offensive. Freedom of speech doesn't apply at all in the school environment, so the question is then how to evaluate the clothing in terms of the Tennessee school's policy that "clothing must show common sense and cannot feature offensive, vulgar language or images." To my mind, it's not just the "Abortion Kills" slogan but the image of the fetus's head magnified to the size of an adult's against the blood-red backdrop of the shirt that's offensive. Conservatives talk like they represent the Stone Age but they benefit a lot from medical technology that allows the fetus to be pictured in a way that entirely separates it from the mother's body. Their posing of the fetus as an adult and sticking it on a mass-produced T-shirt is one of the most offensive aspects of the whole conservative industry. Everything about it is a shameless lie.
Posted by: DrPepper | April 30, 2005 04:23 PM