As I mentioned, the wingnuts are all over the highly improbable teachers-taunting-students story. A reader points me to a talk radio host in Tennessee who is apparently planning to hold a fundraiser in which his listeners will be able to express their frustration with the French by smashing a Peugeot with a sledgehammer — god, it just makes your head hurt, doesn’t it? — and who now suggests that Maine schoolteachers might be a good target for those sledgehammers as well:
“Anti war” TEACHERS IN MAINE HAVE BEEN TAUNTING AND HARASSING THEIR YOUNG STUDENTS WHOSE PARENTS ARE SHIPPING OUT TO IRAQ, TELLING THEM THAT THEIR MOMMIES AND DADDIES ARE “BAD” FOR GOING TO WAR. FORGET THE PEUGEOT, WHERE CAN WE FIND A COUPLE OF THESE NITWITS.
The version of the article this thoughtful fellow links to is from the Washington Times, and if you take the trouble to actually read it, this is what you learn:
Mr. Albanese told the Bangor Daily News that only one complaint involved classroom remarks, after the child of a Guard member became upset during a discussion of Iraq when a teaching assistant “took up the anti-war” argument.
Other incidents, according to Mr. Albanese, involved a child who had requested to leave school early for a military-related activity and a student who was teased on a school bus because he has a parent in the military.
So in other words, what we’ve got here is one teaching assistant who may or may not have said something vaguely critical of the war effort, and a bunch of seven year olds teasing each other.
Maybe Bill O’Reilly can bring the little tykes on his show and expose them as enemies of the state.