Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?

They seem to be in South Jordan.

Senator Aaron Osmond gave a letter to the school board imploring them to apologize for putting on the play “Dead Man Walking”.  (More info here and here).  Larry Short, councilman for the city, asked them to apologize too.

The school board is in a frenzy trying to figure out how to prevent offending “anyone” again.

That “anyone” being Gayle Ruzicka. Period.

Because, only one (1, uno, amháin, eine, een, biri, jeden) comment out of the 700 the school district got was a complaint. Until over two month after the play ended and Gayle Ruzicka held a press conference.

Said some BS about it being because of violent undertones, unacceptable language and smoking cigarettes.

But the first thing the Jordan School District did when the controversy broke out was to “clarify it’s stance on the death penalty”, and 54” of newspaper space starting on the front page of the Salt Lake Tribune today was devoted to an article with the headline “Critical thinking was goal of controversial play at Bingham High Project requires schools to present well-rounded look at death penalty.”

So in my humble opinion, this is all because some group of teachers, parents and administrators wanted to get their students and patrons to really think about their beliefs about the death penalty.  And that’s a double-header boo-boo.  Getting people to think and questioning the death penalty.

So the Jordan School District apologized, every school play from here on in will have to be scrutinized through The Utah Eagle Forum’s eyes and never again shall the minions be forced to think on their own.

All is right in the land of Zion.

Eagle Forum trumps parents and common sense.

Salt Lake Tribune, Wednesday, July 11, 2012.  Utah section, page B3.

“Jordan school board to
apologize for school play”

I posted on this before, here, about Gayle and her cronies (allegedly) making up 5 parents (they never produced the letters or even names) that complained to them about the content in the high school production of “Dead Man Walking”.

Even though only one of the 700 comments to the school district by parents and patrons was a complaint, even though the school district received 100 calls complimenting the production, the Jordan School Board is thinking up ways to placate the bitchy few.

First, they are actually apologizing for putting on the play.  A very thought-provoking (oops, thought.  Bad word!) play that had already been watered-down for public school production.  If every school board across the country took the time and energy to publicly apologize to every group that chose to be offended by a school production, we’d have to pay for a second board to take care of the real business.  (NOTE: plays are re-written, with permission of the author, for “school productions”, with the specific intent to balance age appropriate content without diluting the story to the point of being meaningless).

Now the board wants to take it a step further:  change the process of how schools choose plays that they will produce.

Right now plays are picked by a school committee made up of parents and teachers, and then they have to clear it through a district committee.  But board member Carmen Freeman wants to hold open forums where the general public can comment on the choice of plays.

Now, generally I’m all for openness and public input, but parents already have input in the decision making.  Want to have a say in what plays get produced?  Get on the school committee that picks them.  Of course, you’ll have to be connected with that school somehow, someone from, say, 30 miles away in a completely different school district would have no say in what play your school puts on.

But shouldn’t the community the school serves have that power, not some wacko from Highland, Utah (unless it’s the high school in Highland)?

Two board members warned that they thought the public forum would make the process of producing plays too cumbersome, which would make it hard to recruit, and keep, good drama teachers.  I agree with them.

Singled out?

As I write this we have 8 large wildfires burning in the state of Utah, totaling just under 200,000 acres.

Open campfires are banned statewide.  Fireworks are banned in all unincorporated areas of the state.

Yet the headline in the Salt Lake Tribune today reads “Utah shooters fear they will be singled out.”

First off, “singled out” implies that you will be the only one, or group, that is asked to sacrifice.  This is not so.  Campers are being asked to sacrifice, so are people who like to set off their own fireworks.  At the very least, target shooters are being “tripled out”.

I watched the press conference where our governor announced that there may be a ban on target shooting outside of organized target ranges.  It was more of an apology than an announcement.  I was surprised as he hemmed and hawed around the Second Amendment, apologized for even thinking of it and seemed to be begging forgiveness from the gun lobby.  I really shouldn’t have been surprised, I know the influence these people have in our state.  Hell, we have an official state handgun.  But I thought this was a no-brainer.

We’re burning up, our resources are spread thin already.  90% of the state’s wildfires are human caused, a good portion of that because of situations by people who should have known better.  We need to do everything we can to keep it from getting even worse.

Everyone needs to do what they can to prevent any more fires, and if that means we have to give up one of our favorite recreational activities for the next few months, instead of bitching and moaning, we should willingly do so.