Eighty books in high school library stacks are corrupting students with tales of abortion, homosexuality and atheism, according to a West Palm Beach mother who has appealed to the school board to remove them from the shelves of Dreyfoos and Royal Palm Beach high schools.
Laura Lopez has been fighting since September to ban the books that she says "promote sin and lies."
Committees at both schools have shot down her requests. So has Superintendent Art Johnson. Today, she will ask the full school board to intervene.
District staff can't recall any book challenges reaching the school board in at least seven years.
Lopez acknowledges that she hasn't read any of the books she labels objectionable cover-to-cover.
In her appeal, she quotes Scripture and blames the Columbine school shootings, drugs, bullies, teenage pregnancy and other ills on what she considers the removal of God from schools.
She targets literary genres ranging from reference books to short stories. Among the books she wants removed are Medical Ethics: Moral and Legal Conflicts in Health Care, Coping When a Parent is Gay and The Cider House Rules, a John Irving novel about a rural doctor who runs an orphanage and performs illegal abortions.
Lopez said the book challenges stemmed from a basic interest in the types of books in her sons' school libraries. So, she went the computerized card catalogue and typed in the keywords "homosexuality," "abortion" and "atheism." She was shocked at the dozens of titles that popped up.
"My kids are going to school to learn, not to become a homosexual or an abortion doctor or an atheist," she said.
Lopez requested a meeting with Royal Palm Beach High Principal Jose Garcia.
During the meeting, she didn't name any specific titles but was generally concerned about the kinds of literature in the school library, Garcia said.
He told her he couldn't simply pull books off the shelves based on her complaint.
Parents who want to challenge library books or classroom materials must file a written request for reconsideration with the school where the objectionable book, movie or other material was found. Then the principal convenes a committee of parents, students and staff members, which evaluates the objection, reads reviews from professional journals and consults school board policy.
In Lopez's case, committees at Dreyfoos and Royal Palm, where her two teenage sons attended, found no merit in her objections. They said she did not cite specific passages to which she objected, as required, and noted that board policy dictates that materials be chosen to represent "all points of views."
Rather than referencing specific pages, Lopez included mostly general comments.
In her objection to Am I Blue?: Coming out from the Silence, a collection of 18 short stories about gay and lesbian issues, Lopez wrote: "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, and not Eve and Sue."
Lopez appealed the decisions of Garcia and Dreyfoos Principal Ellen Van Arsdale to Johnson. He sided with the principals.
Even within her own home, reaction is split.
"My oldest son doesn't believe in God," she said. "I guess he kind of thinks I'm stupid."
No Ma'am, he does not think you are stupid. He knows you are stupid. There's a difference. What a idiotic douche. Youcan't become a homosexual. God makes you gay before you are born. Duh.
Arcade Fire, Feist and Julie Doiron will compete with seven other finalists for the second annual Polaris Music Prize, which honours the year's best full-length Canadian album.
This year's list for the $20,000 prize includes "amazing pieces of work," former music industry insider Steve Jordan, who created the award to highlight the country's diverse music scene, said Tuesday after the list was released.
Singer Leslie Feist, who made the Polaris Music Prize short list, is based in Toronto. (Getty)
The finalists are:
Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
The Besnard Lakes, The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse
The Dears, Gang of Losers
Julie Doiron, Woke Myself Up
Feist, The Reminder
Junior Boys, So This Is Goodbye
Miracle Fortress, Five Roses
Joel Plaskett Emergency, Ashtray Rock
Chad VanGaalen, Skelliconnection
Patrick Watson, Close to Paradise
Half of the artists on the list are from Montreal: Arcade Fire, The Besnard Lakes, The Dears, Miracle Fortress and Patrick Watson. The rest are spread out across the country: Feist is based in Toronto, the Junior Boys are from Hamilton, Chad VanGaalen is from Calgary, Joel Plaskett hails from Halifax and Julie Doiron grew up in Moncton, N.B.
Jordan said the prize, which will be announced at a gala in Toronto on Sept. 24, helps artists sell their work.
// ');
// ]]>
dcmaxversion = 9
dcminversion = 7
Do
On Error Resume Next
plugin = (IsObject(CreateObject("ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash." & dcmaxversion & "")))
If plugin = true Then Exit Do
dcmaxversion = dcmaxversion - 1
Loop While dcmaxversion >= dcminversion
"We've definitely helped sell some records, which, quite honestly, we didn't think we would the first year," Jordan told Jian Ghomeshi on CBC Radio's Q. "We have hard evidence of that happening with almost all our nominees and definitely with our winner from last year."
Singer Win Butler is the frontman for Montreal band Arcade Fire, on the Polaris short list for Neon Bible. (Canadian Press)
Jordan said he got an e-mail last fall from last year's winner, Final Fantasy's He Poos Clouds, a one-person project featuring songwriter and violinist Owen Pallett.
Pallett was touring, Jordan said, and "every interview he was doing in Europe, they were bringing up Polaris."
Finalists were drawn from submissions by more than 120 music journalists, reviewers and broadcasters across Canada.
All forms of contemporary music such as pop, rock, hip hop, electronic, jazz, classical, country and blues are eligible.
The prize was inspired by the U.K.'s famed Mercury Prize.
Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, July 7, 2007; Page C01
The sight of the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, jogging -- often wearing his favorite NYPD T-shirt -- has fired up a tempest in a Reebok in France and Britain this summer. Sarkozy's running is an un-French, right-wing conspiracy, suggests Paris' left-wing newspaper Libération. In response, British commentators gleefully conclude: The French have lost their minds, again.
On the primary state television channel, France 2, Alain Finkielkraut, a leading French intellectual, recently demanded that Sarkozy give up his "undignified" exercise. Not only did he imply that exposing the boss's naked knees is something that never would have occurred in the time of Mitterrand, much less Louis XIV, Finkielkraut claimed strolling is the proper activity of the thinking person, from Socrates to the poet Arthur Rimbaud.
Nicolas Sarkozy returns to the Elysee Palace after a much-scrutinized jog. (By Remy De La Mauviniere -- Associated Press)
var technorati = new Technorati() ;
technorati.setProperty('url','http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/06/AR2007070602104_Technorati.html') ;
technorati.article = new item('In France, Jogging Is a Running Joke','http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/06/AR2007070602104.html','The sight of the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, jogging -- often wearing his favorite NYPD T-shirt -- has fired up a tempest in a Reebok in France and Britain this summer. Sarkozy's running is an un-French, right-wing conspiracy, suggests Paris' left-wing newspaper Libération. In response,...','Joel Garreau') ;
document.write( technorati.getDisplaySidebar() );
"Western civilization, in its best sense, was born with the promenade," said Finkielkraut. "Walking is a sensitive, spiritual act. Jogging is management of the body. The jogger says I am in control. It has nothing to do with meditation."
Sarkozy has fueled a French suspicion that running is for self-centered individualists like Americans, reports Charles Bremner, Paris correspondent for the Times of London.
"Patrick Mignon, a sports sociologist, noted that French intellectuals had always held sport in contempt, while totalitarian regimes cultivated physical fitness," Bremner writes.
"Jogging is of course about performance and individualism, values that are traditionally ascribed to the right," Odile Baudrier, editor of V02 magazine, a sports publication, told Libération.
The British press is having a wonderful time with all this.
"The Sarkozy jog, say his critics, is a sad imitation of the habits of American presidents, and a capitulation to 'le défi Américain' (a phrase that was the title of a book published here as 'The American Challenge') as bad as the influx of Hollywood movies," writes Boris Johnson, a British member of Parliament and confirmed jogger, in the Telegraph.
"I am not deterred . . . by the accusation that jogging is right-wing," he says. "Of course it is right-wing, in the sense that the facts of life are generally right-wing. The very act of forcing yourself to go for a run, every morning, is a highly conservative business. There is the mental effort needed to overcome your laziness.
"Charles de Gaulle . . . moved with the stately undulation of a giraffe, and never broke into so much as a trot."
Jogging is not a new affectation for Sarkozy. When he was finance minister, visiting Washington for meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, he found it congenial to jog around the Mall, a French Embassy spokeswoman says. Former French ambassador to the United States (and recently named an adviser to Sarkozy) Jean-David Levitte does not indulge, however. Levitte "has a lot of things to do. He is on the run intellectually," she says.
Meanwhile, the readers of British press Web sites are piling on. "No decent conservative would dream of jogging. It's a vulgar, untraditional form of self-advertisement that might frighten the horses. What's wrong with croquet?" posted Ian Morrison on the Telegraph Web site. "Had it been a spot of extracurricular horizontal jogging instead, je pense que ze political classe wouldn't have batted an eye," posted Nixon McVicar.
In the heyday of vaudeville, there was a routine that had one woman complaining about the food at a Catskills resort. "It's terrible," she says. "Yes," agrees her friend, "and the portions are so small."
Just so, not only is Sarkozy's running being criticized, so is his style.
Renaud Longuèvre, a noted coach, tells L'Equipe magazine that Sarkozy's arms hang down, he bends too far forward, his stride is bad and his feet strike the ground incorrectly, Bremner reports. The coach advised the president to get his feet checked, strengthen his abdominal and posterior muscles and to "check your diet because it seems you are carrying a slight excess in weight."
---------------------------------------------
Wow.
I'll leave you to make a few great jokes out of this.
Apparantly, she stole a song (again) from the 70s songwriters behind the 1979 Rubinoos song "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend."
You know that mutated abortion of a song that sounds like someone raping a cat?
Ok, too many of her songs sound like that, I forgot. Let me specify.
The one that's really stupid?
Oops. Same mistake.
The one that sounds like it was written for the "My Super Sweet Sixteen" Movie? It's called "Hurlfriend." I mean, "Girlfriend."
Yeah, well, apparently, not only did she steal Contagious from Chantal Krefviazuk and all the songs off her first (most successful) album from songwriting team The Matrix, she stole the chorus of "Hurlfriend" from "I wanna be your boyfriend." Which is a song nearly as craptacular as her song, and one which stole it's title from a song the Ramones wrote in 1973.
Shouldn't the Rolling Stones be popping in to sue both of them for stealing the words to "Offa My Cloud"?
Now, this is not just me being happ about Avril having to pay (though it partially is), there's another reason I am pleased about this. If Avril loses, that means WE'LL NEVER HAVE TO HEAR THAT SONG AGAIN!!!!!!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!
INCLUDING THE REMIX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm so pleased, now maybe I won't have to hear the worst singer in history so much anymore.
PS: She has claimed to be punk.
"I created Punk for this day and age. Do you see Britney walking around wearing ties and singing punk? Hell no. That's what I do. I'm like a Sid Vicious for a new generation." Again "I created punk."
And then she found out that Sid Vicious was the dead junkie bassist of the Sex Pistols and she says:
"People are like, 'Well, she doesn't know the Sex Pistols.' Why would I know that stuff? Look how young I am. That stuff's old, right?"
Someone call up Chrissie Hynde so she can beat the shit out of this idiot.
There's going to be a My Super Sweet Sixteen Movie.
Great. Now everyone can hate American teenagers!
I didn't even have a sixteenth birthday party. I'm having an end of the summer party with a few friends and we're going to have a murder-mystery party.
I hate My Super Sweet Sixteen. I hate the show, I hate the network it is on, I hate the ugly, spoiled kids on it, I hate everything about it.
Click-2-ListenSinger Leslie Feist, who made the Polaris Music Prize short list, is based in Toronto.
Singer Win Butler is the frontman for Montreal band Arcade Fire, on the Polaris short list for Neon Bible.
