Friday, February 03, 2006

Just so you know: insufficient indoctrination will not be tolerated

This may be one of those stories that gets downgraded or completely debunked within a few news cycles. If it's a hoax, it's spot-on. If it's real, then we live in a nation of self-important cheese-eaters.
WEST WARWICK, R.I. --A seventh-grader who wrote an essay saying his perfect day would involve doing violence to President Bush is being investigated by the Secret Service.

The unidentified boy from West Warwick turned in the essay on Tuesday, and his teacher alerted school officials. The assignment was to write about what he would do on a perfect day.

Thomas M. Powers, Secret Service resident agent in charge in Providence, said the investigation is ongoing but the essay may have been a "cry for help." Threatening the president is a felony, he said.

The one-page essay also said the student wanted to kill Oprah Winfrey, hurt executives at Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart and attack a Walgreens pharmacy, police and school officials told The Providence Journal.

"His perfect day would be to see the destruction of these people," Schools Superintendent [and cheese-eater supreme] David Raiche said.

Raiche said the student felt the companies were doing inappropriate things. He said the student had been barred temporarily from coming back to school, but as a mental health rather than disciplinary precaution.

The essay did not threaten anyone at the school, and did not detail specific plans for an attack, police Detective Sgt. Fernando Araujo said.

The boy was not arrested, and authorities would not release a copy of the essay.
Ever vigilant, the ACLU weighed in, complaining about "the criminalization of student thought."

I'm no expert in childhood development. Just how advanced are the cognitive and linguistic abilities of an 11-year-old child?
Clearly he didn't know to substitute "impeach" and "extraordinary rendition to the International Criminal Court to stand trial for crimes against humanity" for "doing violence," which is what grown-up lefty bloggers do.

Give the kid extra credit: he caught on extraordinarily early to our crap culture. Oprah Winfrey? Coca-Cola? WalMart? Walgreens? Poor little guy had an epiphany, and the authorities were duly informed. Insufficient indoctrination will not be tolerated. Wonder if this kid ever feels free to express an opinion again.

And just imagine the thrill of it all for the teachers and the principal and the superintendent and the school board members. Call the Secret Service! Are they in the Yellow Pages? Call Oprah's management company! Get the school board legal counsel on the phone -- is this in violation of our Food Services Department's exclusive Coca-Cola contract? Who's going to do the interviews with the Providence Journal and the Boston Globe?

So the kid's essay on "his perfect day" creates a perfect day for a bunch of very self-satisfied education professionals who were just compelled to meet the press. It's not as if this could have been handled, you know, discreetly.

What a triumph. The establishment just nailed another 11-year-old.

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