Eons ago lived a giant of a man, six cubits and a teddy bear head in stature. Tom Neuner was a local political influencer, troublemaker and bottomless well of town gossip who constantly strolled in, unannounced, to the cramped albeit eclectic Mighty Signal editorial office to announce his presence and strut like Henry the VIII.
To my best memory, Tom was the wag who first coined the phrase, “College of the Crayons.” He was referring to, of course, our local version of the Egyptian Pyramids, COC. College of the Canyons.
Art, or, in this case, a wicked tongue, imitates life.
I used to call Tom, “Tom Nooner,” although the unasked-for reference to gleeful midday peccadillos was probably a few rungs above warnings from his heart surgeon.
As if on a bad but ineffective lifetime diet, I try to stay away from a satirist’s version of the double bacon with cheese hamburger sandwich — public education. But, the sigh-bringing, greasy odor calls are powerful.
COC recently announced that they are allowing staff members and teachers to wrap political advertisements around their mortal vessels.
Usually, that means like a T-shirt. If you’re a Republican, it’s something subtle, like, “I Like Ike.” If you’re a Democrat, the message is usually more convoluted. Like, “Death to America For Destroying Borneoean Rainforests & The Peaceful Cuddly Polar Bears That Take Sanctuary There.”
Our local T-Shirtgate came to light recently when COC spokesman Eric Harnish issued a series of policy clarifications.
Heaven holds not enough kudos in the world to thank not all, but most teachers. Passing along knowledge can be a thankless job, more monkey farming than instruction. But, there’s also been much mischief at our local post-nursery school on Valencia Boulevard. Torch-wielding Bolshevik teachers, union reps and college officials have been high-stepping about the grounds in frenzy.
The coup they recently pulled on the institution’s grand empress and doer of good works, Dr. Dianne Van Hook, was vulgar and wicked. That, in another column.
But what nincompoop came up with the idea that teachers, or anyone working at a school, should be allowed to campaign on the job?
A scant decade-and-change earlier, most of the student body were laboriously learning cursive writing. Though equipped with grown-up bodies that can make babies, shoplift or storm a beach carrying a flame thrower, many still have mush for brains and are easily connived into following the dumbest of ideas — like making babies, shoplifting or storming a beach wielding a flame thrower.
Been there. Done that. Still have the T-shirt.
I was 22 in the 1972 election of Nixon (R, no known first name) vs. the hippie knucklehead George McGovern (D). The only reason WHY I voted for the whacky South Dakotan was that: 1) this really cute and braless precinct worker sold me a really cool turquoise T-shirt with a Mao-like mugshot of Georgie; and, B), my vote would give me a chance to date the hubba-hubba political temptress. Our love? Never blossomed. Worse? I was out 10 bucks, which, back then, was the cost of a house.
Teachers are government employees and public servants. They shouldn’t be allowed to advocate — on the taxpayers’ dime — ANY political stance.
It’s like being Catholic and going to confession. After you share your week’s shortcomings of Kardashian drooling or running over a Just Stop Oil protester yoga-sitting on McBean Parkway — then, driving around the block three times to do it all over again — the priest whispers through the curtain in perfect Irish brogue, “And that’ll be 416 rosaries for thinking about unnecessarily curvaceous young Sister Tiffany Constance Marie in such a lewd and lascivious fashion or just one, insincere Hail Mary should you vote for that lovely precinct alderman Jimmy O’Hoolihan in the upcoming primary now go on with you now …”
There’s an implied, silent threat that comes with teachers wearing sandwich boards while pontificating in front of the young and somnambulistic.
It’s like waitresses advertising, “Tip Me Huge Or I’ll Spit In Your Salad.”
Or a school bus driver wearing a jumpsuit proudly commenting, “Vote for the School Bond Measure No. 14387 (which will mandate that monster truck engines shall be installed in school buses) Or Who Knows Where Your Kid Will Get Dropped Off?”
I’ve more than had it with this “express yourself” culture.
Teachers shouldn’t be allowed to actively campaign while teaching a class. Heavens to Betsy. There’s a disturbing tonnage of teachers who shouldn’t be allowed to teach. Or eat in public.
Why, do you think, schools have separate faculty dining rooms?
OK. Monkey business aside?
What’s been going on recently at COC is nothing short of an explosion in a clown factory. Forget petty politics. There has been a wholesale slaughter of common sense and it’s not just at the campus off our local interstate. College campuses across the country have been under siege by the barbarian gods of intolerance, stupidity and oppression. Schools have become Orwellian thought police headquarters.
The goal is not education. It’s power. Conquest. Job security.
Oh. And looting.
Teaching should be a priesthood, pure as the driven snow. It should not be a sanctuary for mincing harlequins — self-expressing themselves and civilization into perdition.
Come Sept. 22, John Boston is launching another hare-brained trek into capitalism. Do visit johnlovesamerica.com, where you can, and simply must, buy books.
