One 15-year-old turned in a sketch showing President Bush, dressed as a devil, launching a missile.
Well within the tradition of hardball political cartooning. Didn’t raise a wiggle on my Offendometer.
*Another of his drawings was of a Middle Eastern-looking guy holding a rifle in one hand, while in the other hand was a pole with an oversized head of President Bush stuck on it. *
Yikes! Still clearly protected speech, I think, but it definitely goosed the Offendometer. Hell, I don’t like to see gleeful artist-renderings of the prospective corpses even of obviously malignant and hostile enemies like Usama bin Laden, and I surely don’t care for them when depicting the President, however much I may dislike or disapprove of his actions.
Not clear to me why the police would need to be involved in this, though, much less the Secret Service. I don’t mind if the school has a rule restricting what art students can put in their homework, but it seems rather paranoid to me to treat this as a potential serious threat to the President’s safety.
Side issue: Why were these art students being “told to keep a notebook of drawings depicting the war in Iraq”, anyway? Representations of war are certainly a very important and powerful theme in the history of art, but is it that helpful for students to do lots of drawings of something they never actually see? They’re not in Iraq and they’ve probably never been in Iraq; what visual image do they have of the war that wasn’t previously constructed for them by another artist or journalist?
Holy biased article batman!
I can’t think of any situation where a drawing with a oversized head on a pole is appropiate for school. It was probably unessecary for the school to turn it over to the police or the police to turn it over to the secret service. I blame it on the times we live in. No one wants to seem neglegent in hindsite so they take every imaginible precaution. If the school sat on this picture and the kid actually tried to kill Bush they would be in deep shit.
Has to do with a trend in school policies these days.
Y’see, if it can be determined that a teacher had some clue… ANY clue… that a student was about to do something weird/harmful/dangerous, and DID NOT REPORT IT, that teacher/school official/whatever can be sued into purple oblivion after the fact. Many school board policies in recent years allow for instant firing of teachers and school officials if this comes about.
Consequently, if a child makes any kind of remark that could be construed as a whim, desire, or intent to cause harm to him/herself or anyone else, any school official who hears this must IMMEDIATELY report it – not only to his/her superiors, but often to the school district, AND local law enforcement, and in some cases – Texas, for example – directly to specific State authorities. NOTHING is left up to the teacher’s judgment.
If one of MY kids drew a picture of someone with George W. Bush’s head on a stick, I would not conclude that he wished to harm the President. I’d probably be amazed he could draw a decent caricature of G.W. Bush.
But if I could recognize it as Bush, I would not hesitate to report the little bugger. Better his ass than mine.