The story that the great radio story-teller Paul Harvey would now tell us the rest of was the subject of the post below, from August 2024. As you will see, it made my head explode, but there has finally been a resolution, and ethics and common sense prevailed. Review the horrible case. Will voters really hand power back to the party that not only responsible for such things, but that still wants to establish them as our national standards? Really?

But I digress. Here is the original post, and I’ll add the recent developments at the end…

That crude, ambiguous drawing above got a first grader—we’re talking six-years-old here—suspended. That’s almost all you have to know for your head to explode if it is properly wired.

The Ethics Villains and Dunces are so thick in this fiasco you could use it to lay bricks. I’m almost embarrassed to tell the story, which I first saw at Reason…

In March of 2021, a first grader referred to as “B.B.” ” drew a picture we are told was intended to show people of different races, representing “three classmates and herself holding hands.” (I’d save the money the family was planning on spending on art school for B.B., if that was their intent.) Above the drawing, B.B. wrote “Black Lives Mater” (Latin!) with the words “any life” stuck in-between the slogan and the jelly beans, or whatever they were. B.B. then gave the drawing to a black classmate, as what B.B. testified was intended as a friendly gesture. But the classmate either ratted out B.B. or the principal was told about it by the teacher, or something (because school administrators don’t have anything better to do than to police the political correctness of kids’ drawings).

The school’s principal, Jesus Becerra, admonished B.B., saying that the drawing was “inappropriate.” B.B. was ordered to apologize to her classmate, prohibited from drawing any more pictures in school, and prevented from going to recess for two weeks.

Ethics Villain (and toxic asshole) #1: Jesus Becerra. This is bullying, child abuse, and Big Brotheresque indoctrination. How dare a six-year-old fail to bow to the cant of Black Lives Matter! Or not draw better pictures to celebrate such cant. Or try to be friends with a black classmate…wait, why was this incident “inappropriate” again?

B.B. and her mother, Chelsea Boyle, no weenie she and thank heaven for that, filed a series of complaints against the Capistrano Unified School District alleging a First Amendment violation. Ya think?

“For more than 100 years the Supreme Court has recognized that children retain their civil rights when in school,” Caleb Trotter, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), which is representing the family, told Reason. “Just as a public school can’t punish a child for refusing to pledge to and salute the American flag, Capistrano Unified school officials could not punish B.B. for innocently straying from race-focused orthodoxy.”

Incredibly, District Court judge David O. Carter ruled in favor of the the school, claiming that he gave “great weight to the fact that the students involved were in first grade.” Suuuuure he did. Carter is an 80-year-old Democrat appointed by Bill Clinton, and if this ruling doesn’t send him into retirement, nothing will. Boyle and B.B. are appealing the decision, and the case will be heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. It will continue to waste time and money into 2025.

Ethics Villain and Dunce #2: Judge Carter. He relied on the famous school speech case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969) which held that whether the First Amendment extends to public school student speech depends on whether said speech “significantly interferes with the discipline needed for the school to function.” Really? Really, Judge Carter? Any school that is in danger of being disrupted by that ambiguous, crude drawing is so badly run it needs to be razed and the ground sown with salt. The picture wasn’t of a black student being lynched. It was wasn’t a picture of Fred Astaire playing Bill Robinson. The caption wasn’t “Kill Niggers Now ” or some other flaming racist slogan. No children are going to be offended or triggered by that crude little drawing unless the teachers and adults make sure they are.

Who are the other Ethics Villains, Dunces and assholes in this disgusting incident? Oh, only almost everyone other than B.B., her mother and the Pacific Legal Foundation: