A Victory Against School Bureaucracies Run Amuck
Safford Middle School administrators had uncovered a problem involving the circulation of prescription strength ibuprofen. In questioning students caught with the drug, one of the kids identified a friend, Savana Redding, as her source. Savana denied the allegation. A male school official searched Savana's backpack but found nothing; he then had a female staffer take Savana into the school nurse's office and conduct a strip search, which also yielded no evidence.
I do not know further specifics. I'm inferring there weren't other witnesses; presumably the school official had reason to believe that the accusation wasn't self-serving, and the search was motivated by evidence beyond simply "she said, she said", e.g., if suspect's family had an existing prescription for ibuprofen. But putting ibuprofen, a common anti-inflammatory drug for general aches and pains available over-the-counter (Advil, Motrin), in the same class as, say, Ritalin? And doing a strip search for it? Imagine what they might do if you're caught with aspirin...
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday 8-1 in Safford Unified School District No. 1 v. April Redding that the Safford Middle School had violated Savanna Redding's Fourth Amendment rights against "unreasonable searches and seizures". Exactly right. I do applaud schools for being vigilant in the war on drugs, but one must exercise judgment and sensitivity and learn how to pick one's battles. Treating ibuprofen as an equal drug, in my view, undermines the legitimate case against prescription drug abuse. I also would like to see any strip search of a female minor to be a method of last resort, and ideally parents should be brought into the picture before it ever gets to that point.
The King of Pop is Dead
Safford Middle School administrators had uncovered a problem involving the circulation of prescription strength ibuprofen. In questioning students caught with the drug, one of the kids identified a friend, Savana Redding, as her source. Savana denied the allegation. A male school official searched Savana's backpack but found nothing; he then had a female staffer take Savana into the school nurse's office and conduct a strip search, which also yielded no evidence.
I do not know further specifics. I'm inferring there weren't other witnesses; presumably the school official had reason to believe that the accusation wasn't self-serving, and the search was motivated by evidence beyond simply "she said, she said", e.g., if suspect's family had an existing prescription for ibuprofen. But putting ibuprofen, a common anti-inflammatory drug for general aches and pains available over-the-counter (Advil, Motrin), in the same class as, say, Ritalin? And doing a strip search for it? Imagine what they might do if you're caught with aspirin...
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday 8-1 in Safford Unified School District No. 1 v. April Redding that the Safford Middle School had violated Savanna Redding's Fourth Amendment rights against "unreasonable searches and seizures". Exactly right. I do applaud schools for being vigilant in the war on drugs, but one must exercise judgment and sensitivity and learn how to pick one's battles. Treating ibuprofen as an equal drug, in my view, undermines the legitimate case against prescription drug abuse. I also would like to see any strip search of a female minor to be a method of last resort, and ideally parents should be brought into the picture before it ever gets to that point.
The King of Pop is Dead
I am not doing a tribute post for Michael Jackson like I did for Farrah Fawcett. There are just too many troubling allegations involving Michael Jackson, as a grown man, befriending unrelated young teenager boys (instead of more normal adult relationships) and those multiple baffling national TV interviews where he insisted that sharing his own bed with unrelated children was a natural, beautiful thing. There were rumors concerning a settlement Jackson made with a young man's family years before the infamous child molestation trial. In the latter case, he was found not guilty by a jury of his peers, and I have to respect the verdict, because I didn't hear all the court testimony and I did not review the evidence. Jackson could not deny knowing the boy because he had appeared with him during a televised interview. My understanding is that the main accuser's fingerprints were found on pornographic materials found in the Jackson's home, something consistent with child grooming behaviors. There's no doubt that the motives of the accuser's mother were called into question, especially the fact that she pleaded the Fifth Amendment with respect to a question concerning welfare fraud (the defense's primary argument was that the allegations were initially made to extort Jackson).
There will be plenty of people to sing Michael Jackson's praises. In fact, I have a very large pop music collection, and I own copies of a Jackson 5 anthology and a greatest hits album over his solo career, not to mention a copy of Thriller given to me by a brother-in-law. "Never Can Say Goodbye", "I'll Be There", and "Ben" were earlier hits I liked; "Billie Jean" was a brilliantly crafted pop song, and "Man in the Mirror" is on my Ipod Shuffle. There is little doubt of Jackson's musical genius. I think, however, Jackson set an unrealistic goal of trying to top the prodigious commercial success of Thriller.
I personally didn't like Jackson for a couple of other incidents. The first dealt with the supergroup USA for Africa song "We Are the World". John Denver, probably (along with Barry Manilow) the iconic male vocalist of the 1970's, wanted to be part of the project and was rejected; this was particularly egregious is because no other American performer was as identified with world hunger as John Denver:
John called himself a "concerned citizen of the earth". He was asked to serve on the Presidential Commission on World and Domestic Hunger. He was one of the founders of The Hunger Project, an organization committed to the sustainable end of chronic hunger.
It seems the excuse was that John Denver's record sales were sagging, and they had to make room for other, then prolific, chart-topping pop singers like Dan Aykroyd, Jackie Jackson, Harry Belafonte, Bette Midler, Sheila E, and Lindsey Buckingham. The intentional snub of John Denver was unconscionable. Let's put it this way: there are more John Denver songs on my Ipod Shuffle than Michael Jackson songs.John Denver toured African countries devastated by drought and starvation as a representative of UNICEF. He performed benefit concerts for global hunger and environmental efforts, and was even awarded the Presidential "World Without Hunger" award.
The second thing I didn't like was the fact that Michael Jackson refused the sell the rights of Beatles songs, which he had acquired, back to Paul McCartney. My hope is that in the disposal of Jackson's estate (from what I've heard, Jackson was technically insolvent) McCartney will get a fair opportunity to regain rights to his own songs.
I feel more sadness than anything else. I don't think he ever got to grow up as a normal boy, he lived life in a bubble, and I wonder if some of his bizarre behavior was an unrealistic desire to recover his lost youth. I think that he got incredibly wealthy and powerful at an early age and probably surrounded himself with yes men, whom didn't push back when his behavior started deviating social norms (e.g., the infamous dangling of his child over the balcony so the fans could see the baby better? However, on other occasions, he zealously insisted on privacy for his children, even having them wear masks in public.)
My thoughts and prayers are with his grieving, surviving family members and his children. I have no doubt about Michael's love for his children.
Should South Carolina Governor Sanford Resign? No
Some people are making invalid comparisons with other political figures caught in sex scandals. Let's consider Bill Clinton. The issue with Clinton was not his adultery per se; it had to do with infidelity with employee subordinates, which is why he was required to testify in an Arkansas court while President. Former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer had sex with a call girl, and he was the former state attorney general whom, in fact, was supposed to prosecute these organizations. Gerry Studds, a gay Congressman from Massachusetts, was repeatedly reelected after news surfaced in 1983 over having had sex with a 17-year-old page a decade earlier, a minor and a subordinate. (To be fair, the House did censure him.) Former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey had adulterous gay sex with a man whom he had appointed as homeland security head. There's a qualitative difference between these cases and a private consensual affair.
This does not excuse Governor Sanford's lapse of moral and political judgment. The moral lapse is particularly unconscionable given his focus on traditional family values. Why, especially after Governor Palin's experience last year with her private email account being compromised, Sanford would have put into writing his feelings about this Argentinian woman, something which would have played right into the hands of his political enemies? Sanford also went on to unnecessary detail on his personal life in the press conference, where, most notably, his wife was absent. If he felt a need to discuss the affair, he should have simply said, "My wife and I are separated. I made a decision to save my marriage and went to Argentina to break things off in person with the other woman."
But the real lapse in judgment was leaving the state without a clear point of contact and shutting off his cell phone. For all we know, he could have had a catastrophic health problem while in Argentina, and also the state could have faced some major natural disaster in the interim. I don't think there was anything wrong which the governor's vacationing in Argentina; I do think there's a problem with how he did it. I'm not sure whether it was simply a case of forgetting to put his cellphone back on or whether he simply didn't want to draw press attention as to why he was in Argentina.
Is it an impeachable offense or one demanding the governor's resignation? No. In a country where, unfortunately, half of marriages end in divorce, we don't ask breadwinners in the private sector to resign from a job because of marital problems, and these relationships don't have the additional stress of living a politician's life in a fish bowl. I believe that Mark Sanford is an outstanding politician making principled stands on behalf of fiscal conservatism. (I am aware that he has his own political enemies, including Republican leaders in the South Carolina legislature.) I'm willing to give the governor the benefit of a doubt in making a simple mistake in judgment, because he reportedly seemed surprised about the uproar over his absence when he checked back with his office. No harm was done during his absence, except perhaps to his political future. I think the reaction you are seeing in South Carolina from both Democrats and Republicans is simply political opportunism. The public humiliation he has gone through, mostly self-inflicted, is punishment enough.
