Because Words Fail

There really is nothing to say about this lout any more.

Q Toon: The Bully Pupil

It's Back To School time at Bergetoons Central!

From my vantage point as someone who remembers being bullied a couple of times in junior high school, anti-bullying policies in America's schools seem like a no-brainer. Kids have to go to school; they shouldn't have to put up with physical and mental abuse while they are there.

And yet, some people who call themselves Christians strongly disagree.

In Arizona, legislators had their anti-bullying bill teed up for passage in March [2012]. But then, Cathi Herrod, chief of a lobbying group associated with Focus on the Family, decided that the bill was really part of an effort to "force cultural acceptance and affirmation of homosexual lifestyles". Although the bill doesn't refer specifically to any one victimized group, Herrod successfully pressured lawmakers into rejecting it. Senate minority leader David Schapira, a sponsor of his Senate Bill 1462, called her a "legislative terrorist." "Cathi Herrod, an unelected lobbyist, killed a bill that would protect all Arizona kids purely because of her intolerance of gay kids," he said.
In Michigan [in 2011], the "anti-anti-bullying" lobby went on the offensive with some legislation of their own. In a bill dealing with the bullying issue, they inserted a provision that would have exempted bullies who acted out of "a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction". With an irony that seems more than usually cruel, the bill was named for a Michigan teen who had committed suicide after years of bullying.

Michigan ultimately cut the "Who Would Jesus Bully" exemption from its bill, but Christian groups continue to push other states to include it in theirs.

Senator Al Franken (D-MN) and Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) introduced the Student Non-Discrimination Act in the 111th Congress only to have it die in committee They have brought the bill back for consideration in the current Congress, but it appears doomed to the same fate.

Again, it's the Christian Right who came to the defense of bullies. Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, characterized the bill as an effort by then-Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools Kevin Jennings of to turn public schools in to NAMBLA orgy houses:

"When [Jennings] founded GLSEN, his idea of a safe school was one that pushed a radical homosexual agenda by even encouraging first and second-graders to engage in homosexual activity. So I think that's the impetus behind this bill. We have an administration that wants to push a radical social agenda."

To see what Safe Schools laws may be in effect in your state, see the Family Equality map.

Wouldn't an Infographic Have Been Just As Effective?

The Sioux City Journal printed a front page editorial and cartoon on bullying this Sunday. The cartoon, by Brian Duffy, shows a hand labeled "Community" reaching down to help a defensively crouching figure labeled "Bullied", as threatening shadows menace from the opposite side of the cartoon.

In a rare and forceful act of advocacy, an Iowa newspaper devoted the entire front page of its Sunday edition to an anti-bullying editorial after a gay teen committed suicide. Relatives have said 14-year-old Kenneth Weishuhn Jr. suffered intense harassment, including threatening cellphone calls and nasty comments posted online, after coming out to family and friends about a month ago. He died April 15 from what the local sheriff's office described only as a "self-inflicted injury." The Sioux City Journal's front-page opinion piece calls on the community to be pro-active in stopping bullying and urges members to learn more about the problem by seeing the acclaimed new film, "Bully," which documents the harassment of a Sioux City middle school student. It notes that while many students are targeted for being gay, "we have learned a bully needs no reason to strike."

Earlier in the week, somebody named Farhad Manjoo sniffed on Slate that editorial cartoonists don't deserve Pulitzer Prizes.

The backwardness of political cartoons is especially evident when you compare them to the bounty of new forms of graphical political commentary on the Web. My Facebook and Twitter feeds brim with a wide variety of political art—biting infographics, hilarious image macros, irresistible Tumblrs (e.g., Kim Jong-il Looking at Things), clever Web comics, and even poignant listicles.

If you haven't already, go check out the picture of the Sioux City Journal at the first link in this blog entry. Regardless of whether you think it's a great cartoon or not, it's a damn sight more effective than this:

This week's Q Syndicate cartoon

This Week's Q Cartoon

The school bus video behind this cartoon is one of those flash-in-the-pan stories, so the cartoon might be a little tardy. Rush Limbaugh, for one, seized on the incident to make some bizarre argument about how liberals or President Obama or Van Jones or ACORN or whatever have made it okay for black kids to beat up white kids on the way to school. (A detail that I saw only on CBS's Early Show was that it was a black student who broke up the fight.)

It's good to see that right wingers have finally come around on the topic of bullying. When gay or gay-perceived students and their parents have called for anything to be done, right wingers have sided with the bullies.