Thursday, April 29, 2004

Slogans In Our Schools

In the end, seventeen-year-old Jarred Gamwell, a gay student whose campaign for student body president garnered ACLU support when posters reading "Queer Guy for Hunt High" and "Gay Guys Know Everything!" were banned by the school for being potentially "disruptive to the learning atmosphere," came in last in the subsequent election. And the CNN story even goes so far as to let us know that no one's been elected yet -- instead, "a runoff was planned Thursday because two of the candidates did not received enough necessary votes to be declared a winner" [sic].

So, what have we learned today?

a) The ACLU's endorsement has a dubious effect on electability.
b) National name-recognition has little to no effect on local politics.
c) Surprisingly, a significant majority of adolescents surveyed (over 80%) are bright enough to recognize that being gay isn't a campaign platform.
d) No one cares whether I write the "what if I campaigned by saying that straight guys are smarter, huh? Huh?" blogentry, so I'm not going to bother.
e) If you're going to write an article about education, at least have an editor check your final sentence for the most godawful grammar I've seen in a while, and I teach high school.

The answer, of course, is f) All of the above.

In other short-form media news, there's a firestorm brewing on our school bulletin board about whether or not it's acceptable to wear a shirt that says "I only support gay marriage if both chicks are hot," but I've been burned too much lately, so I'm staying out of this one, letting the students duke it out on their own. Interestingly, no one complains when one of our (incidentally most "out") seniors wears his "Hooters girls love me" shirt, though it could be argued that both shirts participate in the systematic perpetuation of our peculiar and patriarchally-driven objectification of women, and are therefore equally inappropriate.

On the other hand, I think they're both funny, and support anyone's right to wear whatever the hell they please. But then, I'm an anti-PC libertarian on social issues, especially as they apply to self-definition through semiotically dual-edged, postmodernistically ironic statements. Give others the benefit of the doubt: maybe they'll let you wear what you want, too.

posted by boyhowdy | 10:35 PM |

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