Political Forum - View Single Post - Politician curses in front of teens at their high school

Rebellion · #1 (**permalink**) 02-13-2007, 01:23 PM

http://www.boston.com/news/local/art...talking_tough/

Quote:

Get over the words. Get over yourselves. Instead concentrate on the message of Brown's memorable little visit: If you want to be vulgar on the Internet, with him, with his family, with anyone else, it's best to wisely consider the consequences of your actions.

Here, in short, is what happened: A particularly outspoken history teacher at the public school went on a self-described rant to students about Brown's opposition to gay marriage.

So he called up the school and asked to be able to speak to students on "the legislative process and what makes people so divisive."

The night before he went in, he got a call directing him to look at a page of facebook.com created by King Philip students. The page included a slew of vulgarities about him, as well as a depiction of him with horns and a tail, all because of his stand on issues.

Then he got to class the next day and named names.

"I told them that some people really love my votes and some hate my votes," he recounted. "I said, in this class, some people appear to hate me. I said Johnny Jones has depicted me as the devil from the underworld. I can assure you I'm not the devil; I'm from right down the road. And Sally Jones says I should go [expletive] myself and I should die. And my daughter is a rich [expletive]."

When a teacher complained from the back of the room, Brown replied, "Hey, you write it, you own it."

"The real issue isn't me and my family getting kicked around," he said. "The real issue is that these kids are out of control. They cyber-bully.

"Anonymous kids gang up on other kids like packs of dogs. It's leading to depression, helplessness, and potentially to some of the suicides."

I brought this up with Richard Robbat, the sage-sounding school superintendent in the King Philip district who has been critical of Brown. He defended his students, while conceding that "it's the nature of civility today." He's right.

I'm glad a politician had the courage to give these kids the verbal slap they so obviously needed. Maybe the superintendent should stop making excuses for their behavior and instead of condemning the words that were merely repeated and condemn the actual author of them instead. Kudos to him.