A friend of our family sent me this story about dueling political janitors and free speech. She also sent me some great photos of the stickers she mentions in this story, but Blogger is not cooperating tonight, and it won't let me upload them to this post.
But no matter. I'll let A.E. McDonough tell her story and you'll just have to imagine what the photos look like--especially the "robo Romney" one.
"I did not watch the [first] debate due to being several loads of laundry behind my goal of having at least one pair of clean socks per person in the sock drawer. Luckily, Zayn still insists on wearing sandals so I'm up by one pair in the total count.
According to one of the janitors at the kids' school who posted a super caffeinated robot photo of Romney on the exit door with a quote from CNN, Romney won the debate.
Yes, the political janitor wars are raging at Northeast Elementary. This all started back in the primaries when said janitor posted several republican signs on the school garbage cans. I was irritated but let it go until "Gone Back to Hawaii" appeared and I had a visceral reaction to the quasi-racist undertones and just tore the damn thing off and stuffed it in said garbage can.
The aforementioned janitor and I then had it out in front of a horrified Zayn, an unconditonally supportive Sami, and several other first and second graders eating french toast. The janitor thought it was his right to post whatever garbage he wanted on 'HIS' garbage can. He said there was a picture of Obama in the hallway so I tried to explain the difference between the Office of President (President Bush was up there when he was President) and a political statement that doesn't belong on a school trash can, especially one in favor of Newt Gingrich, the republican front runner at the time. He later told Zayn, 'Your mom is crazy." I said, "I'm crazy? How about a janitor who posts signs in support of a candidate who wants to eliminate his job and replace him with 8th graders! Now that's crazy!"
So I complained to the principal about the political garbage cans and the signs ended up on the doors near the back exit. The right door for Romney. The left door for Obama.
Then the "Anyone But Obama" signs started appearing on the back exit door which working moms have to use when they pick up their kids from afterschool care. So I started removing them under strong protest from Zayn who complained that I was infringing upon aforementioned janitor's free speech rights. Far be it from me to squelch free speech and I love a good argument but can we contain the political rhetoric to one door that I don't have to see every day?
When the in-your-face bumper stickers start spilling out onto garbage cans and exit doors, it becomes a bit excessive, especially since the one Obama janitor seems to belong to the minimilast school of political sign posting. It's classy but does not seem to be getting the job done. But then maybe the Obama janitor knows about that wonderful vestige of 18th century American politics, the electoral college.
So now I need to plot my oh-so-clever response to said aforementioned janitor's latest post. Or I could just ignore it and do another load of laundry. But the photo of Romney is just so perfect for a speech bubble on top of the paper. I was thinking .... "What? I could've gotten another tax break when I shipped all those jobs overseas. I maybe need to get a new accountant." (Second half of sentence an actual Romney quote from this article.
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