Huh? Isn’t what racist?
If someone’s known overwhelmingly for one thing, and you say something about him, people are going to assume you’re saying it in reference to that one thing. Race has nothing to do with it.
If I say ‘I love Mozart’, you’re going to assume I love his music, not his looks or his personal habits. Because that’s the salient thing that makes Mozart worth mentioning to begin with: his music.
Or am I totally misunderstanding the question?
For me, it’s Wagner.
Jah? Now you see?
Yeah, but I’m assuming you love him for his killer 'do.
Perhaps for less intelligent conversationalists, one should say, “I love Wagner’s music, despite his being a prototype Nazi.”
:rolleyes:
Naw, it’s more just a “nun thing”. A lot of old school nuns tended to use colorful analogies like that. (the Simpsons riffed on this with “make the Baby Jesus cry”. That’s the kind of thing they said.)
Agreed on the basis of it, but how was MLK’s work not linked to his race? He wasn’t “that Boston Brahmin who’s got a burr up his butt about nigger’s rights,” he was “that damned nigger who’s brewing a ruckus”.
Mighty fine pontificating, there, Your Highness/Mindreaderness.
You’re clearly never going to get what I’m talking about. That could well be deliberate, but either way, it wouldn’t make any difference if I explained it all again.
Sorry, forgot to answer Nava -
Of course King’s work was linked to his race. The process of associating a comment about a public figure with the main thing that figure’s known for, rather than with some peripheral thing - that isn’t linked to race.
I had a Priest flip me off in HS once. Granted I deserved it, but…
Well, thank you. Most readers don’t give any feedback. I appreciate it.
My Catholic high school employed a married cpuple as teachers. She was well-liked, he was almost stereotypically nerdy. Then they hired an attractive young female history teacher who proceeded to carry on an open affair with him (to great consternation). They sat in a pep rally holding hands with his wife on the ither side of the gym.
They didn’t last long after that. Catholic schools could fire you for that sort of thing. The wife stayed till retirement though.
Also a male film teacher who tried to entice some of the boys into watching gay porn at his house. That wasn’t in class, though.
When I lived in Brussels, my kids attended the DOD school. It was a small school and all the teachers attended the sporting events. One teacher’s wife always showed up wearing extremely short skirts and sheer blouses, with no benefit of a bra or panties. She made a point of sitting at about eye level to the playing field and openly flirting with the older boys. I always wondered if her husband was ever talked to about it.
I saw Dolly Parton on tv last night. Reminded me that my 6th grade math teacher called top-heavy fractions “DPs.”
Let’s see… these were former teachers, but there was…
The guy who skyped to random girls during his planning hours and jerked off in the classroom (now in jail).
The guy who got busted for transporting 25 pounds of weed in his pickup truck
The guy who got busted for meeting boys in the hotel room, getting high, and trying to have sex with them.
The gay dude who died of AIDS. This is not a problem by today’s standards, but back then it was unmentionable. I can tell you that he kept his private life private, and professionally he had the highest moral conduct, was a good personal friend & mentor to me, and I’d trust him with my own children. And still I had to hear it secondhand after he died.
My high school seemed totally normal at the time. I’m still friends with the 25 pounds of weed guy.
1st grade phys ed teacher came from a military background. He was tough but fair, however he would smack kids on the back of the head when they were fucking around in class. These days he’d have been fired but back then we kept in line. They gave him a desk job rather than fire him, so he got a bit lucky there.
8th grade French teacher of Italian extraction with MASSIVE yabbos and copious amounts of cleavage in class. Totally inappropriate attire but ask us if we cared? The guys, anyway. She was incredibly beautiful, too.
Our high-school art teacher was an obvious but not publically “out” lesbian who I found out a decade later trolled the classes for girls to get busy with. Reprehensible behavior from either sex.
My 7th grade science teacher insisted that all rivers run north to south. When shown otherwise like the Nile he said the book was wrong.
Anybody ever show him a map of thr Rio Grande?
Sure, now, I suppose. Had you done so as a 6th-grade teacher in the waning days of March, 1968, I’m dubious about the likelihood of you being aware of them.
I’ll gladly accept evidence to the contrary, should you be in a position to provide it.
Had a PE teacher in high school who read a newspaper throughout class. I was beaten rather seriously, repeatedly, with him in the room at the time. But, he never saw anything, you know, because of the newspaper.
Had a PE teacher in college who told all kinds of blatant untruths. I would say “lies”, but that predicates that he knew that it was incorrect. Here’s an example - he said that if you removed all of the water from whiskey, what you would have left is diethyl ether. As a chemistry undergrad, I knew that this was absolutely bonkers. I actually met with him to ask how he wanted me to fill out the exams. If I put the answer that I knew to be correct, he would say that it didn’t match the information presented in class & call my answer incorrect. If I put down the answer he gave in class, he could (rightly) say that it was factually incorrect. So, either way, I was doomed. The guy got really, really angry with me. But, ultimately, we agreed on what answers would be “correct” on the exams. When the class was over, on his teacher evaluation form, I listed a dozen or so of the stupid things he’d said in class. Another that I remember is that the US government had developed cures for several strains of AIDS, but wasn’t releasing them until they’d found cures for all of the strains. Otherwise, it would just be unfair. Sure. That’s pretty likely. Not an evil guy, but someone DESPERATELY in need of his own class.
