I previously posted about the latest rash of scandalous photos coming out of Afghanistan showing U.S. military atrocities under Obama’s command, and wondering if the media would pick up on it the way they did when it was Bush’s army… Well, here’s a twist I wasn’t expecting: yes, one of the U.S. media, Rolling Stone, [...]
Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for the Atlantic, cast a spotlight on yet another disgustingly overt example of pure bias in the mainstream media, particularly at the anti-Semitic Reuters newswire. He points to a Reuters news item which contains the following despicable sentences: Police said it was a “terrorist attack” — Israel’s term for a Palestinian [...]
In the [sparse] reporting of the Palestinians’ massacre of the Fogel family, several newspapers stand out with their distorted sense of “balance”, i.e., where they feel overwhelmingly uncomfortable describing the barbarity of the Palestinians without at least taking a swipe or two at the Israelis, no matter how patently irrelevant or disgustingly disrespectful it comes [...]
Al Franken’s Inane Logic
Print This Post
Email This Post
James Taranto had this great post this past week in his WSJ Best of the Web Today column (I guess this is what you get when you elect such a complete ass as your Senator):
Al Franken is now a senator, and he makes clear just how bad a joke that is in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio’s Cathy Wurzer (whose name the MPR website misspells). Franken has introduced a bill called the Student Non-Discrimination Act, which, in MPR’s description, “would prohibit discrimination based on actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. If [the bill is] signed into law, public schools that violate the statute could lose federal funding or be sued by victims.”
It sounds well-intentioned, but Wurzer’s interview with Franken gives the sense that it is terribly poorly thought out. It turns out that Franken is interested in policing not just official acts by schools but also students’ conduct. Here is our partial transcription of the MPR audio:
Wurzer: As other parents listen to our conversation here, and maybe their child’s been the target of a bully–maybe the child’s not gay or lesbian. Could you,,in the statute, say–why not just bullying is for any reason?
Franken: Well, uh, we, you know, it–it is illegal for so many reasons that–you know, race, religion, uh, national origin, disability, uh–I guess, I guess you can say that bullying–then it kind of depends on what you’re talking about. If, you know, I guess kids have a right not to bully, but to basically, you know, tease each other about the stupidest things, but certainly not about those things.
Wurzer: Um, would a court–
Franken: You know, “I don’t like your taste in TV shows,” or something like that–
Wurzer: Right. Or how you’re dressed.
Franken: To get to a point where we got to define these things.
Wurzer: Right. And in this case, you’re talking about being bullied–a student being bullied for either being gay or being perceived as gay, which–
Franken: Yeah.
Wurzer: –you could say is quite hurtful.
Franken: Mm-hmm.
Wurzer: What constitutes harassment under your bill, specifically?
Franken: Uh, I think that harassment and bullying is really, uh, it’s one of these things that you know it when you see it.
Wurzer: Does–but does the bill outline anything specific?
Franken: I don’t, uh, believe we have the language in it to define bullying, but maybe I do. I’m not–I’m not sure about that aspect of, of the bill. I know that it’s, it’s, it’s defined the same way as it is for, um, race or for religion, or, um, the, uh, disability–the other reasons that are outlawed in, in–nationally. In other words, all these other things, uh, are, are national, uh, but not, uh, gay and lesbian.
Wurzer: Public schools, under this bill evidently, that violate the statute could lose federal money or be sued by victims?
Franken: Yeah.
Wurzer: How would a court determine that a school ignored harassment? Have you figured that out yet?
Franken: Uh, I think that they would just, uh, the facts of the case–I mean, that would be up to the court, and if the, um–you know, what I’m hoping is, is this’ll start disappearing. Unfortunately, it’s all too–it’s almost sanctioned, as you can tell by the story in Anoka, by the schools, and I think that once we raise awareness about this, and have a law, that it’ll, it’ll, uh, bring down the incidence of this and make life a lot better for these kids.
Knowing how public schools actually operate, you can write the story before it even happens. “An 8-year-old pupil at Tom Davis Elementary School was arrested today, charged with harassment and expelled from school. The boy, who allegedly taunted a classmate as ‘gay,’ is accused of bullying on the basis of sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation. ‘This is crazy,’ said the boy’s mother. ‘He’s too young to understand what “gay” means.’ ”
Life will be just great for these kids when Al Franken gets done changing the world.
[...] Al Franken's Inane Logic | Indisputable [...]