The Glade 4.0

Its really all about timing. If they'd worn American Flags last Cinco de Mayo no big deal. Everything needs context.

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And if they hadn't worn it two years before that, is it still okay? Come on...

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The Dude abides.

I am just saying being a douchebag requires careful timing. What is innocous can change very quickly.

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The problem with your example is that students have to attend school. A person going dressed in drag to Easter Mass is purposefully invading someone else's private funcation (churches being private, after all). Your example of the black man is closer to the mark; while a lunch counter is a private enterprise, like a church, disrupting someone else's service is an aggressive action in and of itself, while eating lunch is... not aggressive. Neither the black man nor the kids in the story are being douchebags; they're calling attention to someone else's douchebaggery, while the protestor in the church is calling attention to what he perceives as douchebaggery by being a douchebag himself, and arguably an even bigger one.



They don't have an incredibly profound point to make. They have a very simple one. They go to high school with a bunch of people that think we owe respect to other nations' holidays beyond letting people celebrate it. The ones being disrespectful are not the kids wearing the flag attire; it's the ones getting up in arms because they are.

Imagine if the same thing had happened because one kid wore a "My dad is in Iraq" shirt with a flag on it, without all his buddies.



That much is true.



Look, no one is taking issue with the assertion that these kids were trying to stir **** - of course they were. However, 9 times out of 10 high school **** stirring is either A) overly idealistic teens stirring **** over issues they don't really understand, often egged on by teachers who use the kids as proxies and don't understand much better or B) it's self-centered bullshit which amounts to "I don't like something adults are telling me, so I'm going to pretend its a matter of principle even though there's holes in my position you could fly a 747 through - if my position is anything beyond 'the school is being mean by not letting me <insertwhateverhere>"

This is the tenth time, where the kids actually had a perfectly valid point, and illustrated it in a perfectly mature way. It isn't like they went up to the Mexican-American kids and said "Hey biatch, I'm cruisin' with a flag on your holiday, mofo! Whatcha gonna do?"

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

A couple things to keep in mind:

The five who were removed weren't the only ones wearing American Flag apparel, and kids have worn American Flag apparel in years past as well.

It does sound like we're all pretty much in agreement that it shouldn't have resulted in them being forced to turn their shirts inside out be removed from school, unless I have missed someone's objection.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Douchebaggery requires being in the wrong.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

What's fine today might be wrong tomorrow. Douchebaggery is context-sensitive.

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No, no no no. All it requires is someone going out of their way to annoy others.

This.

Provided those others are not themselves going out of their way to be annoyed.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Unless these kids are in somebody's face to show off their clothes, then they're not being annoying. Not that I'm even conceding that "being annoying" is sufficient reason to kick them off campus to go home and change.

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The Dude abides.

Other people's perception defines whether or not what you're doing is offensive, regardless of what you're actually doing or what the intent was. It's pretty good that they learn this sooner rather than later. Go read your workplace's sexual harassment policy. If your co-worker feels harassed, you are guilty regardless of what you actually were doing.

That's another kind of douchbaggery.

Oh, I agree with you wholeheartedly. Even if they were being douchebags (which I see no evidence of), they didn't do anything wrong and shouldn't have been harassed.

No, that isn't how most sexual harassment policies work. What they actually say is, if a reasonable person (or something generally synonymous) would feel harassed by what you actually did or said. Your officemate cannot simply claim you did something you didn't do and claim they were harrassed by your fictitious behavior, nor can they claim that something obviously not sexual harrassment is, just because they say so.

For example, if you say "What time is the meeting?" and they claim you were sexually harrassing them because asking them when the meeting is has some unexplained sexual connotation in their mind.

In any case, that really doesn't matter here. Obviously the perception of the Mexican American students determines whether the Mexican American students were offended. That doesn't matter because them being offended is not important. They had no good reason to be offended by this. It is not like sexual harrassment, which can make it difficult or impossible to function in an environment. It's people getting butthurt because they think Cinco de Mayo is somehow deserving of special consideration.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's another kind of douchbaggery.[/quote]

It is. However when someone is doing that, and another person goes out of their way to set off that hypersensitivity to annoyance for the purpose of exposing it, it seriously calls into question whether the annoyer is being a douchebag.

Particularly when they really aren't going all that far out of their way to be annoying.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You're defending an unreasonable standard by citing another unreasonable standard?

Welcome to the failboat.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

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Nice to know where you stand on this.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Bottom line is kids were apparently threatened with suspension from school, for wearing a shirt with the US flag on it.

Should we scour the schools for flags of other nationalities on the 4th of July? No, because that would be clearly absurd. Just as this is.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Not to mention completely impossible.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Our policy is based on whether or not the person felt harassed or uncomfortable (even if nothing was directed at them); there isn't a "reasonable person" standard on paper. Maybe in practice...

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When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?

This reminds me of the story several years back when a white cop was eating a banana in view of a bus of black attendees of some sort of function. One of the women on the bus got all offended because she thought that the cop was equating blacks to monkeys.

I.E. People blowing innocent circumstances out of proportion.

Something else I wonder: Would this have had a different outcome (or even escaped notice) had only one of the boys been wearing the outfit as opposed to several of them? Gang perception vs Individual expression.

As stated earlier, it's a bit messed up when someone gets in trouble for displaying their own country's emblem's while in their own country, regardless of what day it is. That's like telling your fellow Toyota employees in a Toyota plant that they can't wear Toyota-banded clothing on the anniversary of a GM plant shutdown, due to sensitivity to co-workers that were formerly GM. You're on a different team now that you of your own free will agreed via contract to be part of.

Now, if this were a group of Americans visiting/living in Mexico, it might be different. I think when you are traveling or living abroad, it is in your best interest to be respectful of the host culture (not to mention using common sense to avoid conflict).

Then your policy is all **** up and unuseable.. or people are simply saying it's however the person feels and the actual written policy is that it's a reasonable person. I don't think a policy that simply treats the stated feelings of the "harrassed" person as the standard is legally enforceable.

Lots of people think their policies are based on the feelings of the accuser. This is especially true in the military; most Soldiers think all someone has to do is claim sexual harrassment and its automatically true because they felt harrassed. The actual policy does not work that way, however, but Soldiers persist in believing it does

In fact the policy is designed that way because on a good 50% of the cases the supposedly-harrassed person was accepting, encouraging, or even participating int he behavior themselves and then something happened (usually they got in trouble for something unrelated, or their behavior was sending signals they didn't intend and someone responded in kind, or someone else passed over some personal "line" they have, or some soldier they just didn't like as much got involved) and the case gets tossed out on its ear.

If you don't have that kind of protection for the accused, your policy is unfair and worthless.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

http://posseincitatus.typepad.com/posse ... bully.html



Somehow I doubt it would still be ethical if the flags in question were reversed.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe