ThePoliticalCat

A Blog devoted to progressive politics, environmental issues, LGBT issues, social justice, workers' rights, womens' rights, and, most importantly, Cats.

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Arizona Racist? You Decide



OK, remember when the State of Arizona and its Queen of Prunes, Jan Brewer, passed SB 1070? That hideous piece of legislation that basically criminalizes all brown people who might cross the State borders or dwell therein? And Jan Brewer even dragged Scary Failin' away from her special-needs child to come help whitewash the law?



Less than a month after that, Brewer signed into law HB 2281, which will ban ethnic studies in that benighted state. No more Native American history classes for the half-million Native Americans living in Arizona. No more Mexican history classes for the 2.x million American citizen Latinos who comprise one-third of the state's population.

Meanwhile, the state has begun targeting teachers "with heavy accents." The state has not specified which accents it finds unacceptable. However, the fact that Latinos are being audited, and white teachers are not, makes one go "Hmmm."

Given that during the 1990s, Arizona hired native Spanish speakers from Latin American nations for its bilingual-education program, one can't help but wonder what the difference is between those apparently well-qualified yet accented speakers then and now.

The year George Bush was elected, Arizona voters passed an English-only bill, and bilingual teachers switched to English-medium classes. Those teachers have, apparently, been teaching their students just fine for two decades. But what a coincidence! Now that SB 1070 is law, their performance has miraculously degraded in a mere matter of weeks to an unacceptable level. These teachers will be "reassigned" (to what? If their accent is deemed to be incomprehensible to their students, what purpose is served by reassigning them, and where will they go? And if it is not incomprehensible, what purpose is served by such reassignment?) or fired. Of course, the fact that Arizona is facing a dire shortage of teachers is not even mentioned. Does that rate another "Hmm"? Hell fuckin' yeah. In fact the number of "Hmms" these actions have, and should, cause has us all here sounding like fucking hummingbirds.

Together, the Latino and Native American population of Arizona comprise approximately half the total population. And that, apparently, has some Bush cronies really worried. Apparently, Arizona racists like Russell Pearce, AZ state senator who thinks Latinos breed like bunnies, is hoping that by creating this legislation he will force undocumented migrant workers out of the state, and bugger all the documented American citizens who end up thrown in jail or out of the country because they don't have their papers on them.

And before y'all get all self-righteous on us with "That would never happen, the law says no racial profiling," go read these here links and then make up your mind.

Let me tell you just how bad things are right now: Some fucking witless bunch of teabaggin' ball-slurpers in fucking Ohio has announced a contest. Winners are invited to spend a week in Arizona "chasing aliens," and are reminded to "bring their green cards" with them.



This is why we all need to protest whenever shit like this happens, people. The idiot who dreamed up this incredibly insulting racist shit got his quantity of assholes increased by several as irate citizens contacted his radio station. The station manager has since apologized for this piece of shit (who has yet to offer his own fucking apology, by the way). So keep it up. You might not think you're being heard, and you might not think that you make a difference. But you are, and you do.

Without your calls and emails and letters, these fuckers would just have carried on being the fucking fuckety fucked fuckacious assholes that they've always been and will always be. At least now they know we're listening and if they don't want multiple rectal orifices, they'll quit spewing shit out of them.

Mind you, this is far from over. Just this month, artists painting a mural at a school in Prescott were told by the principal to lighten the skin colour of the pupils that they painted in the mural to a lily shade of white. Excuse me, what the FUCK? WHAT? These are actual real fucking live fucking children who attend this fucking school, the mural is part of revitalizing the downtown area, funded by a private organization and depicts the actual fucking children for christ's fucking sake!



How crazy fucking insane do you have to be to insist that black and brown children who attend this school be depicted as white? FTA:
City Councilman Steve Blair spearheaded a public campaign on his talk show at Prescott radio station KYCA-AM (1490) to remove the mural.

In a broadcast last month, according to the Daily Courier in Prescott, Blair mistakenly complained that the most prominent child in the painting is African-American, saying: "To depict the biggest picture on the building as a Black person, I would have to ask the question: Why?"
You would, you fat wrinkled rapidly aging bigot. Jesus. Holy quacking duckshit! What kind of people are these. It never occurred to me (or to any of you, I'll bet) to ask the question "Why" someone decided to paint a black face in a mural. Of course, the principal is now claiming this was simply a question of art, not actually whitening the children. Yeah, right. Just like your fucking laws aren't racist, Arizona.

You'll be happy to hear that the parents and teachers love the mural as it is. Upon questioning, the principal admitted that he had received a whole three complaints about the mural. As for those miserable fucks who drove by to scream epithets like "Nigger" and "Spic" at the kids who were helping on the mural, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves, but you're troglodytes, so you aren't. Fortunately, there's not as many of you as you thought. You pigs. Oh, wait, that's a terrible insult to pigs which are actually very nice animals.

At any rate, a big thank you to those of you who complained. Steve Blair has been fired from the radio show. Your right to free speech has not been infringed, Mr. Blair. You're free to get on your soapbox in the local park anytime and yell your hate speech. You're not free to use the public airwaves to felch the haters though. So fuck you very much, and may you live the rest of your life in a bitter oblivion, you anal afterbirth.

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Monday, May 24, 2010

OK, What-All's in the Water Down South?

Anybody know?

Because, yaknow, we here at La Casa de Los Gatos are having some serious problem understanding what the fuck is going on.

ICHC

Let's start with last week's little fiasco. A math teacher in Jefferson County, Alabama apparently decided the best way to teach his students about geometry was to give them a hypothetical about the correct angle to use when attempting to assassinate the President of the United States.

President of the United States in the Oval Office

Excuse me, what the fuck?

They finally put the sum'bitch on leave, but I'm willing to bet it was paid leave. And it took them forever to do it. Apparently the only reason the school put him on leave at all was because they were flooded with irate calls from all over the country. However, you'll be relieved to hear that the Secret Service did pay the little asshole a visit, which probably gave him diarrhoea for a week or two. Here's hoping it left teh burn of overuse and chilli dogs on his hemorrhoids. Fecking eejit. The school has not released his name. Wonder why? For those of you who care, his name is Gregory Harrison, and he teaches, or taught, at Corner High School.

So kudos to those of you who called. Until you did, the school was going to "have a conversation" with him. Probly along the lines of "Don't say stuff like that again in public, dood."

Martin Luther King's Assassination

Now, back when the Bouchebag Gee, Dumb? Yeah! was in charge, this is how teachers who did anything similar were treated:
Steve White, a science teacher at West Limestone High School near Athens, Alabama, was fired in 2006 after showing a film clip to his class in which President George W. Bush, members of his staff, and conservative personalities were referred to as "a–holes."
Incidentally, White was a Democratic candidate for the Alabama House of Representatives at the time. Imagine that, fired for telling the truth! I mean, how many people on this planet would disagree with the conclusion that conservative personalities are assholes? Geez, perhaps they're not. Perhaps they're GIANT MAJOR FUCKING OUTRAGEOUS SYPHILITIC ASSHOLES! There, I feel better already.

OK, it might look like I'm pickin' on poor ol' 'Bama, what with that story about the right Reverend or whatever you call those Baptist preachers, you know, that guy Aldridge with the two wetsuits and a condom-covered dildo stuck up his ass; followed by that darling little story about the homophobic, anti-sex-toy Attorney General of the State being busted by his wife schtupping his GAYGAYGAYGAYGAY male aide in the marital bed.

But, trust me on this, we're equal opportunity oppressors at mi Casa, just like Dear Old Mum. Catholic, as it were, in our hatreds. In fact, our next story takes place in Lumpkin County, Georgia.

I know. WTF were those dumb lumps thinking when they named the fecking place?

In the event, another fucking high-school teacher in that god-forsaken place apparently decided it was cool for her high-school advanced placement students to study racism by filming themselves cavorting around in — you guessed it, Ku Klux Klan costumes.

http://badgals-radio.com/

Except she didn't mention this little fact to anyone else in the school.

Imagine the surprise of the black and brown kids in the school who are sitting there eating their lunch when in come a bunch of assholes in Klan sheets with pointy hoods. Excuse me, Catherine Ariemma, what the fuck were you thinking? So far so bad, but here's where things take a turn for the abso-fucking worst.

The Klan-costumed kids start taunting the black kids and end up by inviting one of the black kids to join them in re-enacting a lynching.

Lynching

We leave it to you to determine what part the black kid would have played.

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Saturday, June 16, 2007

Porn - Spam Victim Gets New Trial

Image from AP
Great news! Julie Amero, substitute teacher who was indicted for exposing kiddies in her care to porn is getting a new trial. Poor woman! Some fine people rallied to her defense, though. Thanks to regular reader Sandy, who passed on the tip, and lots of other good advice, as well.

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Sunday, February 18, 2007

Embarrasment in Connecticut

If you haven't read about the miscarriage of justice in the case of Connecticut teacher Julie Amero, hie thee to MyLeftNutmeg for details. Forthwith.

Basically, Julie Amero, a substitute teacher, was given a boat anchor running Win 98 and IE, and malware on the machine caused an endless loop of pop-up porn.

Now, this happened to me nearly a decade ago, when I was taking a training class with my manager, and I work in hi-tech, and our IT department is excellent. Somehow one of the training room computers had become infected, and we could not kill the pop-ups until we cold-booted the wretched machine. Something Ms. Amero's IT department advised her never to do.

My manager was more embarrassed than I, I think, being as he was a gay man not used to viewing het porn. I was merely mildly amused at the porn but disgusted at the hijacking of the machine and interruption of the lesson.

Ms. Amero, however, is possibly looking at a 40-year jail term. For details on what to do to prevent this hideousness, click the above link. There are names, addresses, and phone numbers of folk to whom you may address a polite email or letter informing them that they are dumber than a termite-eaten post. Well, no, strike that. But call or write the goblocks, anyway.

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