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Anyway, I think I'm going to save the draft I had been working on and return to it after I've had at least a few hours sleep (go on and scold me, I just pulled another all-nighter). I might not have gone to the trouble of even starting the post (I have been griping about the constant intrusions of politics into every sphere of my existence, lately), but then, literally within hours of reading about this hoax, I shit you not, my local NBC affiliate aired the original story. As in, did not check the news feeds to learn that yesterday, it was already known that the kid (for whatever weird attention-seeking and/or specifically xenophobic reasons) made it all up.
Felt like I was in the damn Twilight Zone.
So I called the station, told them the story they'd just aired was a hoax, offered to send them the relevant news articles by email, and the dude I talked to pretty much dismissed me. (I followed up anyway, sending article links by email to the newsroom's general inbox.) Then I watched, bleary eyed, to see if they might, at any point in the remaining hour and a half of the broadcast, air even the most fleeting correction. But there was bupkis.
There are so many levels at which this incident pisses me off - but not least among them is the fact that the media is latching onto anything with the potential to exacerbate existing anti-immigrant fervor, and doing so in such an incredibly uncritical way, that stories like this (before being revealed as hoaxes) can get past all the supposed vetting mechanisms, make national news (oh the pearl-clutching white paranoia! Incite, incite!), and even the day after it's broadly revealed as a hoax, it's still being reported as straight-up news!
Anyway, thanks, as ever, for being a source of sanity. It's much appreciated. (And now I'm gonna nap. Then blog. Then maybe someday get back to writing my alleged book.)
Hey there! Nothing from me on the all-nighter, considering that for some reason I tossed and turned myself into oblivion last night...
I hope you do write about this, because I don't really think I did justice to the outrageous hatchet job nearly done by the press and parents on the school, and I think you will. The more I think about it, the angrier I get that the assumption of the press was that OF COURSE this precious white kid was bullied and harassed by mean Mexican kids. At the very least, they should have waited until the school had reviewed the tapes to break the story, given that they knew there were tapes and there might possibly have been a different reality than the one this girl claimed.
Looking forward to your take on it!
Just give me the facts and let make my on mind up.
Cheers
Yep, you nailed it right on the head. grrrr.
Racism is in the eye of the beholder. Even if it was an assignment, the message was offensive. Should it have been torn up? No. They were wrong. As to forgiveness, I hold nothing against her. My objection is mostly with the local news, who blew it up without all the facts, and also I have some criticism for her parents, because honestly, she didn't come up with that on her own. She is going to have enough grief with the charges pending on her -- I wish her no ill will, though I think a well-said public apology to the kids she accused is in order.
Her view is mainstream nearly everywhere, but it's still racist. (Remember that racism isn't just a black/white issue...it extends to Asians and Mexicans and just about anyone who isn't white.)
you sound like the one who is racist. racism extends to "just about anyone who isn't white"?? that comment is racist in itself.
the girl is 13 years old! kids do stupid things all of the time, especially in middle school. she was probably more upset about the poster being taken away than anything else. and to assume that her parents are racist just because they sent her to school with an illegal immigration poster? thats the whole point of the immigration debate... to cut down on illegal immigration!
She was wrong to exaggerate the injuries to her, but the Hispanics who forcibly took her sign and destroyed it are guilty of a crime--its called theft, or grand theft.
If you go to youtube.com and do a word search on, "Homeland Security routing"
or paste this url:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP7O4w4d_tM
to see video
It was four years ago that my father, J.R., a.k.a Gary Jesse Bowers Jr., and my mother, who shall for her sake remain nameless. divorced. There were many allegations from both sides that adultery was held on both sides. However, the only evidence of anything like that was pointed at my father, whom we had once prior to the divorce, found having sex with another woman at our house when we were away.
For a while however, I believed that my mother was at fault, and even considered going to live with my father. However, once I returned home after a lengthy summer legal visit with my father, I found undeniable evidence that my father's new "family" had filled me with nothing but lies. When I was told Shera and my father were to be wed, I took two days to evaluate what I knew. Then, two days before their wedding, I broke it off. I told my father I would never come to see him so long as they were his family.
After this, Shera, from whom Melanie's lying habits originated, called and verbally attacked my grandmother, on my father's side, with slanderous lies of what my mother was supposedly planning.
Since then, my mother and I have become close, and I understand what is illusion, and what is false. So, imagine my surprise to here her screaming from the living room, bringing me to find the first of the two reports on this subject. I was nonchalant, unsympathetic one could say. I had but one comment on the whole thing:
"Either she's a total moron, or she's lying like her mother."
Well, guess which was true?
Anyways, I'm done ranting, I'm just trying to clear the air and erase any harsh marks left on the actual Bowers family, who no longer speaks with my father after he allowed his wife to say such blasphemy about my mother toward my grandmother, though they do all still have an ironclad relationship with my mother even though they are no longer legally related.
Got anything to ask about my stupid stepsister? Please, e-mail me, I'll try to reply when I can. lol
Yeah... if I think about that, and then what my father would have done to ME, had I done it, I get nothing short of pissed.