Left Side of the Aisle #112 - Part 2

Clown Award: Bill O'Reilly

The whole preceding item could be taken as a very long introduction to one of our regular features, the Clown Award, given for acts of meritorious stupidity.

This one starts with the news that Tippecanoe School for the Arts and Humanities in Milwaukee recently celebrated School Spirit Week with a series of events for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. As part of that, the student council chose Friday of the week to be what they called "Gender Bender Day," a voluntary event that called for boys to dress like girls and girls to dress like boys.

And of course some parents hit the roof. It was called “ridiculous,” “creepy," "the wrong lesson," it's "having students dress as transvestites," and in one particularly revealing comment, one mother claimed the event promotes the acceptance of homosexuality among students - and we all know what a horrible thing being accepting of gay people is.

The school tried to cool things off by renaming it "Switch It Up Day" but that of course failed. Still, what happened is that the day came and went, some participated, some didn't, and the world, naturally did not come to an end.

Despite that, those parents are not the winners of the big red nose this week. No, this week, it goes to that supremo of stupidity, that icon of idiocy, the clown's clown, Bill O'Reilly.

The topic of "Gender Bender Day" came up on his show, and he denounced the school's teachers as his favorite long-since cliched epithet "pinheads" while claiming the whole thing was a "politically correct" "anti-bullying" project. Which first off shows how, typically, he has no idea what he is talking about: recall this was done by the student council, not the teachers or administration, as part of "school spirit week" and had nothing to do with any anti-bullying effort.

But that sort of base ignorance is not enough for the high standards BO usually sets. In response to BO's "it's an anti-bullying tactic" rant, his guest, comedian Adam Carolla, said "I have a six-year-old son, I have twins. He had to ride in his sister's pink car seat the other day for a mile and he screamed like a stuck pig the entire time."

O'Reilly says, quoting, "That's a good sign. That's a good sign because, if he had liked that, you might have to send him to camp."

That's right, according to Bill O'Reilly, if a boy likes pink, there's something wrong with him. He needs correction. He needs treatment, he needs to be sent to - just what sort of camp were you thinking of, Mr. BO?

This kind of rigid, doctrinaire, sexist thinking is stupid, it is bigoted, it is damaging to children, it is the notion of a complete and total clown.

Oh, and by the way: Apparently, according to BO, a boy liking a pink car seat is a sign of - well of something being wrong with him. I wonder if the same applies to pink ties.

Sources:
http://fox6now.com/2013/05/24/gender-bender-day-causes-controversy-at-tippecanoe/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/gender-bender-day-homosexuality_n_3346285.html
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/06/04/bill-oreillys-parenting-advice-punish-boys-who/194335