Tag Archives: facepalm

School Students Claim Teacher Organized a 'Slave/Slave Catcher Game'

Posted on January 26, 2012 by | 6 Comments

Come on, now.

Students at an elementary school in Gwinnett, Georgia have claimed that a teacher organized a tag-like game of slave/slave catcher during recess.

The school admits that the students played “slave/slave catcher,” but deny that a teacher participated.

Some children at a Gwinnett elementary school played a tag-like game as slaves and slave catchers at recess, and a teacher allegedly participated, Channel 2 Action News reported.

The incident happened at Camp Creek Elementary School in Lilburn last week, the report said.

Three children and their parents told Channel 2 that a teacher organized and participated in the game.

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Posted in Now That's Some Racist Bullsh*t, What the Crap!?

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Using Slavery on Elementary Math Worksheets? Seriously?!

Posted on January 7, 2012 by | 14 Comments

What year is this?

Put this in your WTF pipe and smoke it:

A math worksheet for third graders that used examples of slavery in word problems has angered some parents at a Norcross elementary school, Channel 2 Action News reports.

One word problem stated, “Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?” Another said, “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?”

Such questions can evoke bitter memories in Georgia, where African Americans were enslaved for generations until the Civil War and the elimination of slavery.

“It kind of blew me away,” Christopher Braxton, a parent of a child at Beaver Ridge Elementary School, told Channel 2. “I was furious. … Something like this shouldn’t be embedded into a kid of the third, fourth, fifth, any grade.” Continue reading →

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Naomi Wolf's "Rebuttal" is Pure Nonsense

Posted on December 2, 2011 by | 10 Comments

The sound of journalistic credibility gasping its last breath.

NLN Naomi WolfNaomi Wolf’s rebuttal to the criticism she has garnered in response to her rant in the Guardian last week is non-responsive, and frankly, bizarre.  She writes specifically in response to Josh Holland of Alternet, but Holland’s criticism mirrors my criticism, as well as karoli (Crooks and Liars), Scott Lemieux (Lawyers, Guns, and Money), Corey Robin (Al Jazeera English), and Will Wilkinson (The Economist) among others.

Josh Holland’s article “Naomi Wolf’s Response to my Critique Largely Evades the Issues at Hand,” is a must read.  Holland writes,

It’s disappointing that Naomi Wolf’s response to my criticism of her November 25 Guardian column – and earlier blog-post — doesn’t address the many misstatements of fact, logical leaps and baseless assertions which I highlighted.

Wolf instead spends much time on a general discussion of heightened federal surveillance and the increased coordination between federal and local law enforcement agencies, which she says I am naïve not to acknowledge, and devotes an enormous amount of space to establishing that federal law enforcement agencies have had some sort of role in at least monitoring the Occupy Movement and offering some guidance to local law enforcement agencies.

Holland’s assessment is spot on.  Wolf’s article rambles on for eight pages, and ultimately, doesn’t say anything relevant.

Wolf leads off by criticizing a claim that neither Holland nor any of her critics has never made: that DHS had no involvement with the crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street locations: Continue reading →

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Posted in Balloon Juice Cross-Posts, Occupy Wall Street, Our Pundits of Perpetual Disappointment

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Naomi Wolf's 'Shocking Truths' on #OWS Crackdowns are False

Posted on November 27, 2011 by | 49 Comments

I called bullshit and Bullshit finally responded: “It’s bullshit.”

Naomi Wolf’s feverish article charging that the crackdowns of  occupy locations were being coordinated by federal law enforcement agencies has captured the #OWS collective consciousness.

And, as it turns out, the sole basis for her article — Rick Ellis’s article in Examiner.com — was debunked by Ellis himself nine days before Wolf decided to feed her feverish fact-free article to the frenzied masses.

But let’s back up.

Naomi Wolf: Hunting for a scandal

As you may recall, Michael Moore tweeted on November 15 that the occupy crackdowns were being coordinated by DHS and greenlit by President Obama. When challenged, he pointed to journalist Rick Ellis’s article in Examiner.com.  Moore then appeared on Current TV and ran with the crackdown rumor.

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Posted in Balloon Juice Cross-Posts, Occupy Wall Street, Our Pundits of Perpetual Disappointment, What the Crap!?

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#OWS: The Shocking Truth about Naomi Wolf's Journalistic Hackery [updated]

Posted on November 25, 2011 by | 65 Comments

Rumormongering at its most despicable.

Two weeks ago, a rumor circulated that the Department of Homeland Security was “behind” the crackdown at Zuccotti Park. The rumor originated with Michael Moore who got it from a thinly-sourced article in Examiner.com. I wrote about it here and here.

The author of the Examiner.com article, Rick Ellis, published multiple updates to his thinly-sourced post, and promised that he would provide more information once he had it. That was on November 15. No further information has been provided.

I figured it had been settled.  As Joshua Holland, writing for Alternet noted, “There’s a lot of speculation, but very little substance to the tale of the “nationwide” crackdown on the Occupy movement. ”

So I figured this rumor would be put to bed.  I was wrong.

Today — ten days after the rumor had been debunked — Naomi Wolf saw fit to write an article so fraught with hyperbole — “what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war” — and so utterly fact-free that its publication should hang like an albatross around Naomi Wolf’s neck for the rest of her career.  It is Judith Miller-style hackery, and it is shameless.

Karoli has the story in a post aptly titled “How Bullshit Magically Turns into Fact“:

Naomi Wolf wrote a nonsensical piece today that’s being spammed all over Twitter. It asserts that there is a deliberate plot afoot via collusion by the United States Congress, the Department of Homeland Security and our oligarchical overlords to undermine the very populist, leaderless Occupy Wall Street movement. One of her key pieces of evidence is an unsupported and unverified report that 18 mayors coordinated their crackdowns with the Department of Homeland Security. There’s only one problem with that: It’s nothing more than innuendo. Here, let me show you. Continue reading →

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Posted in Balloon Juice Cross-Posts, Occupy Wall Street, Our Pundits of Perpetual Disappointment, What the Crap!?

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More on that #OWS/DHS Coordination Thing: We've Been Had

Posted on November 16, 2011 by | 35 Comments

C’mon, ya’ll. REALLY!?

 Just to add to my post about federal coordination of the raid, the “Obama DOJ DHS coordinated the raid” narrative has taken off.  Here’s Wonkette with a post about DHS and coordination. (And here’s Juan Cole citing Wonkette.)  Wonkette acknowledges the Examiner as a disreputable source, but then points to an AP report which Wonkette claims verifies everything ”except the specific mention of DHS coordination.”

::blink blink::

The “DHS coordination” aspect is the aspect that is supported solely by the Examiner!  Get it? The Wonkette headline reads “Surprise, Homeland Security Coordinates #OWS Crackdowns” but the only citation for Homeland Security involvement comes from the fucking Examiner.  The AP report is a generic article about coordination by police chiefs in the various cities (which doesn’t strike me as all that out of the ordinary, by the way.)  The AP report says absolutely nothing about FBI or Homeland Security involvement.  NOTHING.

Again, the Examiner claimed the following: Continue reading →

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Posted in Balloon Juice Cross-Posts, Occupy Wall Street, What the Crap!?

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After Distracting You with Birther Nonsense, Rick Perry is Irritated the Media is Trying to Distract You With Birther Nonsense

Posted on October 25, 2011 by | 2 Comments

He’s in ur braynez, killin’ ur cells.

Rick Perry is trying to drive you insane. And by “you,” I mean “me.”

So, remember how Rick Perry brought up this birther nonsense, destiny farted, and all seemed as it should be?  It was only — oh — like — TWO DAYS AGO.

Here’s a refresher:

SATURDAY: Rick Perry says he doesn’t know if he has seen President Obama’s birth certificate.  ”I don’t know. Have I?” he coyly purrs to a reporter for PARADE “magazine.”

MONDAY: Rick Perry, apparently blind to the fact that this birther shit is about as racist as it gets (it’s a fuzzy standard given the racist coating that surrounds the Tea Party’s gooey white center), says “It’s fun to poke at [Obama] a bit and say “Hey how about let’s see your grades and your birth certificate.” (Just as his ancestors thought it was fun to go huntin’ at Niggerhead.)

MINUTES LATER THAT MONDAY: Rick Perry calls the birther issue “a great distraction” but then says “I’m not distracted by it.”

TUESDAY: In response to a reporter questioning him about birther nonsense — the very same nonsense that he himself raised merely two days prior — Rick Perry says:

“You know, I’ll cut you off right there. That is one of the biggest distractions that there is going. We need to be talking about jobs. Somebody wants to see my birth certificate, I’d be happy to show it to ‘em. But the fact is, that is a distraction, and Americans really don’t care about that, if you want to know the truth of the matter. What Americans want to talk about is jobs. Who is going to lay out a plan, which will get America working again.”

[video after the jump]

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Posted in Balloon Juice Cross-Posts, Now That's Some Racist Bullsh*t, Rick Perry Presents "Rick Perry"

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