Good day to you all. Here's a special Friday edition of MEvBLOG Headlines with a couple of stories The Internet told us about. We've learned that when The Internet speaks, it's wise to listen. (Otherwise we'd never know about the Numa Numa guy.)
Anyway, we felt they're both good reminders that no matter how crazy people are in our neck of the woods, there's always someone else who's nuttier. Enjoy!
(Don't) Have it your way - Last week in Cape Coral, FL a Mr. John Mack went into a Burger King and ordered a Whopper, fries and a drink. When he asked the dude behind the counter to cut his sandwich in half, the Counter Dude looked at the Manager Lady, then looked back at Mack and said they didn't do that there.
Mack then pointed out what most would think is obvious - that he only has one arm. Still, Counter Dude and Manager Lady refused to oblige. We can only assume it's because they thought he'd killed the wife of Dr. Richard Kimble and didn't want to present him with a knife while Tommy Lee Jones was out searching every warehouse, farmhouse, hen house, outhouse and doghouse in the area.
Ladies, leave your pants at home - Chapin High School in Chapin, South Carolina threatened to keep one of it's top students from graduating if she wore pants to her commencement ceremony. Senior Chelsea Sarvis said she doesn't feel comfortable in dresses and if men can wear dress slacks and be comfortable, why can't she?
The school's principal, Mike Satterfield, said the dress code has been in place for 25 years and it's a tradition and there's never been a complaint like this before, so she should just wear a dress and shut up. Then he grumbled under his breath, "It's not like she'll need pants when she's wearing an apron in the kitchen after graduation."
Because of all the negative publicity it's received, the school changed it's mind and said Sarvis could wear pants. Then they proudly raised the Confederate flag and called it quits on another progressive day.
Friday, June 5, 2009
The one-armed man couldn't wear pants
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7 comments:
Along with this incident, I wonder how many students were kicked out of school for their hair being too long, a' la Lumberton style? Is there no end to the silliness? What's next? Black kids? Asian Kids? Kids of mixed race? Kids carrying Hanna Montana lunch pails and Astros tee shirts?
Oh the pain! The pain!
RE: Anne
They'll probably start with a small group like Mixed-race, Bla-sian tweens who equally love Disney musical-comedies and baseball.
Why couldn't she just wear the dress? Is it really that big of a deal? Sometimes we don't get to have it our way (not even at BK evidently).
This is just a good example of what goes on all the time . . . if you don't like something and have a way to wiggle discrimination into it, go for it. The "power", in this case the school, will always give in to avoid the legal hassles. If the school had forced her to wear a dress, women rights would have been all over it for sexual discrimination.
RE: MC
Because it was a stupid rule. To not let her graduate because she didn't wear a dress? That's just a school being steeped in it's own self-righteousness.
RE: Anonymous 1:42
The argument wasn't about discrimination. It was about the rule being dumb. It was. And now it's no more, but the school officials look like bullies. Was this fight worth it? I mean, she even offered to let them approve the pants she wore.
As the AMC Network was made to play only "US Marshals", I find myself using that quote on a weekly basis.
This one in SC made it into the media, but unpublicized similar incidents have continued to happen in recent years at who-knows-how-many other school districts in the country (probably most in the south), unfortunately. Some of the schools have quietly changed the policy after enough students boycott graduation; some just keep right on with the misogynistic discrimination regardless.
Why is it "really that big of a deal"? Some women don't want to be forced into traditional stereotypes, powerless to make their own respectable choice of a valid alternative. Particularly at an event which is supposedly honoring their intellectual achievements and moving into independence, some women feel it is demeaning to be sent the message that those things are totally unimportant compared to what they wear and how they look and how well they fit in the little box into which society wants to shove them.
It's not some arbitrary "not liking something and wiggling discrimination into it". It is taking a stand against a ridiculous rule which is symbolic of many major problems still pervasive in some cultural attitudes.
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