Updates and Addenda

Updates and Addenda©2011 Ross Williams

Headline: Pastor Voids Ban on Interracial Couples
Article Synopsis: The current pastor of the Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church has voided the recent 9-6 vote by a portion of its parishioners to ban interracial couples from joining the church or participating in its services. The Free Will governing conference ruled that any by-laws which violated local, state or federal law cannot be adopted. When informed of this during church on Sunday, the congregation voted on a new resolution calling for “peace, love and harmony”.

Yeah ... “Ooops”: This made national news. Who would have guessed that this move wouldn’t have resonated the way it did? ...apart from cloistered Appalachian bigots, that is.

Thompson is still claiming to not be racist, and the 8 folks who voted with him two Sundays ago should be keeping a low profile around town for the time being. There’s little purpose in such quaint traditions any longer. The nation has a far more expansive social palate than it did two generations ago.

Congratulations are in order, though, for finding a procedural loophole that allows 9 Kentucky dinosaurs to not run roughshod in a jerkwater church while not condemning them for trying. The right thing to do often starts life as a technicality. As does the wrong thing to do.

Conclusion: ...but “peace, love and harmony” also violate local, state and federal law. How about you just live up to your principles from now on, and stop trying to gain popular approval?


Headline: Boy, 9, Suspended for Calling Teacher ‘Cute’
Article Synopsis: Calling it a form of “sexual harassment”, the Brookside Elementary school in Gastonia NC has suspended a 9 year old boy for saying his teacher was cute. The principal said it was an “inappropriate statement.” Also suspended was a 7 year old Boston schoolboy for “sexually harassing” another boy by striking the second boy in the groin. The incident was a carry-over from the school bus where the harassee had choked the 7 year old. Boston school spokes-twits have no comment on why it is being treated as sexual harassment.

What do they teach kids these days?: A fight on a school bus where a child is choked is perfectly fine, but pushing back and landing a shot to the crotch is sexual harassment? Seriously?

Noticing, and saying, that a teacher is attractive is sexual harassment? Really?

If the “harassee” had choked the kid who choked him, would that have been ignored as well? Is it permissible to say that a teacher is a hag?

Conclusion: “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” -Sigmund Freud.

See, guys, even the inventor of Freudian imagery had his limits. Teachers are cute and it’s not wrong to say so; kids fight and if you don’t stop the first one, there’s bound to be a second. Get your minds out of the gutter and pull your heads out of the rulebook.


Headline: Students Suspended after Suicide
Article Synopsis: A Buffalo NY-area high school has suspended a number of students for “bullying” a gay 14 year old repeatedly until he committed suicide. The school will not say how many students were suspended or for how long. Officials cite “difficulties” in making a criminal case.

What exactly is the lesson, here?: So ... let’s see if I have this right.

Say that a teacher is cute – suspension. “Sexual harassment”.

Push back at a kid who chokes you on the bus and hit him in the junk – suspension. “Sexual harassment”.

Drive a kid to suicide – suspension.

All these infractions – even those two which are not – are treated identically by those who are charged with administering their education. And from this one-size-fits-all cookie cuttering, our kids are supposed to learn ... what? nuance? discretion? judgment?

They learn inflexibility, ignorance and reflexiveness. All qualities they are being handled with by those who purport to know better.

Conclusion: You’re giving our future a cohort of brainless, reflexive simpletons. Thanks for nothing.


Headline: Liberal Youth ‘Decimated’ in Egyptian Elections

Article Synopsis: Muslim Brotherhood has gotten 36.6% of the vote in the first round of elections; al-Nour has gotten 24.4%. Mohammed elBaradei, Nobel laureate and presidential aspirant, says the outcome “is not the greatest”. Islamists are even more popular in the rural areas which have yet to vote. The “students’” various parties collected only 13.4%.

The frying pan or the fire...: ElBaradei gained fame in Egypt – and the world – for reminding everyone that despite the rationalizations offered up in Western media for the Iraqi actions between 1991 and 2002, they still posed a significant nuclear threat to everyone in the region despite quibbling with US claims over the details involved. He collected himself a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 for it. He is currently the Egyptian version of Bill Clinton – as regards his reputation for statesmanship, if not his womanizing – and he is a leading contender to Egypt’s vacant presidency.

He is warning of the repercussions of islamists gaining control of yet another Arab nation, this time his own, as the islamists currently have 61% of parliament – a figure most likely to go higher. Egypt’s islamists have proposed that women not be allowed to drive and that Egyptian literature seen as “prostitution” – which would seem to be all literature besides the Koran – be banned. Many fear that islamist control would jeopardize tourism, which constitutes the majority of Egypt’s economy, as well as persecute Egypt’s 8.5 million Coptic christians and ban democracy – which is islamists see as putting Man’s laws ahead of God’s laws, and is prohibited by Sharia, which both of the islamist parties support. Many also believe the peace treaty with Israel will end ... suddenly and dramatically.

ElBaradei is urging both Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi al-Nour to make quick assurances to the world indicating that nothing will change in Egypt that would jeopardize the relative liberalism Egypt lives under and which promotes its tourist industry, its peace with Israel, and its US foreign aid, … all remnants of the despised and despotic Mubarak.

Conclusion: How quickly it can all fall to pieces when those who wish to change the system have no clue what they wish to change it to and aren’t prepared to make the change in any event. Idealisms and platitudes are no system of governance, and it’s usually those who have no business being in charge who end up with the job. Congratulations.