You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Zero tolerance in schools.
Because of the tragedies in New Town and Columbine and Virginia Tech, school systems are not willing to take chances when it comes to safety.
When it comes to fire arms in schools I’m all about safety.
Zero tolerance for guns is one thing. Zero tolerance for pizza and toy figurines, that’s another.
I covered a story where a boy got in-school suspension because he turned his pizza into a gun.
That’s right. He literally ate a bite of his pizza. That bite made a right angle in his pizza slice, which sort of kind of made it look a little like a gun. It’s a pizza mind you so a little like a gun takes a great deal of imagination. It could also have looked like a Tee Pee or the letter V. But he’s a kid and he’s goofy so he points his pizza at another kid at the lunch table and says “look at my pizza gun.”
That’s a lot more fun than pointing a half eaten piece of food at a friend and saying “look at my Tee Pee.”
A teacher over hears him and he gets suspended.
When food kills. It’s just excessive.
Now more nonsense.
A Michigan elementary school principal has taken all the plastic army men off a 3rd grader’s cupcakes.
It was a birthday party. The boy and his mom decorated the cupcakes and she brings 30 cupcakes to school. Each cupcake has a tiny green plastic army man.
The principal said the army men, era WWII, were offensive, and the principal made the birthday boy remove the figurines from each cupcake.
The class still ate the cupcakes, with the army men in a plastic bag.
The mother was furious.
Maybe she has a right to be.
The principal reportedly called the cupcakes insensitive in light of the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary.
Cupcake Mom said that statement disgusted her. “It’s vile that they lump true American heroes with psychopathic killers.”
And there it is. Two very different viewpoints on birthday cupcakes with little army men.
It’s not like the cupcakes were baked with crack, or contained a hand grenade or were inscribed with the lyrics of an NWA rap song.
They simply had plastic green army men on them, the same army men that millions of us played with as children.
The principal had less problems with the army men than she did that the army men were carrying guns.
Imagine that, army men holding tiny green plastic guns. What kind of army man isn’t holding a gun? Don’t ask don’t tell.
I wonder if rainbow unicorns would have been pulled off the cupcakes for being too sexually liberal?
I wonder if tiny replicas of the 10 commandments would have been pulled off the cupcakes because they were too religious.
I wonder if little statues of Abe Lincoln would have been pulled off the cupcakes because nobody knows what four score and seven years means?
How about little figurines of Martin Luther King because someone doesn’t appreciate that he had a dream?
How about Mick Jagger figurines? He can’t get no satisfaction so you don’t get no cupcakes.
Where does it end.
Zero tolerance is not always a good policy. It’s like fishing with a long line. You want tuna fish, but you end up catching dolphin and whales and old discarded refrigerators.
When a kid punches you in the face unprovoked and you defend yourself and punch him back and you get suspended too? Well there is just something wrong with the system.
But that’s zero tolerance. Because Americans can’t find a better way. It’s like a poker tournament where you have to push your entire pile into the middle of the table and you scream “all in” while wearing reflective sunglasses.
We need to slow down America. We need to look at what we are doing. Is it a cupcake or an AR 15?
Is it little green army men or a 3-D pornographic image?
Common sense America. Common sense.
And that is crazy.™