From the “extremism in defense of bigotry is no vice” files
by digby
In Bucks County, Pa., school board overrides student newspaper’s ban on use of ‘Redskins’
… A school board committee in Pennsylvania passed a policy this week that prohibits a school newspaper from banning the word from its pages, according to an article that appeared in the Bucks County Courier Times.
In October, the staff for the school paper, the Playwickian, voted to ban the word, which describes the school’s teams and mascot. But on Tuesday night, a Neshaminy school board committee decided the newspaper does not have that right, with one board member citing the First Amendment rights of students who want to contribute to the publication. “If my son wants to write something proud about being a Redskin football player, the students on that paper, under the law, have no right to tell him he has to take the word ‘Redskin’ out of there,” school board member Steve Pirritano said, according to the Courier Times….
The Playwickian’s editor, Gillian McGoldrick, told the Courier Times that the newspaper’s staff voted 14 to 7 to ban the word after conversations and research on the subject….
Yes, if your son wants to be bigot he does have the right to say so out in the real world. However, right wingers have gone all the way to the Supreme Court to ensure that school kids do not have unfettered free speech. In fact, the court explicitly ruled back in 1988 that schools have the right to censor their newspapers. These right wing parents don’t have a problem with any of that until somebody decides that it’s wrong to use racial epithets.
I like free speech and I frankly think kids should have the right to it as well. But the fact that any parent thinks this kind of bigotry is worth defending makes them a real jackass regardless. And sadly, they’re probably raising more jackasses to take up the jackass banner for the next generation. The good news is that there will be fewer of them.
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