Secret Service questions 15 year old about political cartoons

"Hillary Israeli" wrote in message
...
In ,
Richard wrote:

*Having lived as an expatriot in a state controlled by a totalitarian
regime, I
*submit that the real fear, the real danger, is self-censorship. In
late-1997,

I would agree, self-censorship due to fear of government repercussions is
bad.

*If the OP's daughter's behavior is changed in any way that decreases the
free
*and open expression of her beliefs and ideas, she has been censored. She
has

Well, you mean she has censored herself. BIG difference.

*been censored even if the Secret Service never know that she even exists,
let
*alone show up at her front door to question her.

Not by the government. By her own fears, which may or may not (and I think
not, but obviously reasonable people can disagree) be well-grounded.

Like it or not, schools are very paranoid about anything related to
violence. Incidents like Columbine fueled that-and so have post 911 fears
that our children could be targets. As a result, a child drawing cartoons
showing ANYONE's head being blown up is going to garner attention, and not
good attention. Add that to the very "God Bless America" atmosphere that
many schools have had since 911, and its a climate where overreaction can
easily occur. Furthermore, it could be argued that drawing political
cartoons at school is trying to disrupt the class, since most children
parrot the political beliefs of their parents, until they develop those of
their own.

Either way, free speech has not been completely allowed at schools for
years, and now it is worse than ever. You can argue the moralities and
ethics of it all you want, but the fact remains that for her own safety, the
OP's daugther would be best to confine her cartooning to home, unless there
is a class project where it is appropriate-and then it would be wise to come
up with a non-violent satire.


h.
--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large

"Anonymous" wrote in message
...
This morning I read an article in the paper regarding a 15 year old boy
who the Secret Service questioned because he drew political cartoons that
were against the war and President Bush. The article is he
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...rosser27m.html
or http://tinyurl.com/2bhkj.

I found this article to be terrifying. I have an 11 year old who loves to
draw political cartoons.

My 9yo son loves to watch videos on www.toostupidtobepresident.com . I am
guessing this boy was "talked to" because of the dismembered head cartoon.
You can call the President an idiot or anything else which comes to mind but
when you say "I wish someone would kill the *******" or draw a cartoon of a
head on a stick, the Secret Service will come a'knocking. It's their job to
protect the life of the President and threatening death or portraying Bush
as dead is something they will always investigate.

It's still eerie, though, because of this boy's age.

Noreen

Anonymous wrote:
Now I wonder if that was such a great idea. Just the threat of the Secret
Service coming to question her makes my blood run cold.

I think it's important that you teach your child to be confident rather
than afraid. Like it or not, there ARE occasions on which children in
schools become violent, the teachers and staff may or may not be the
best qualified to judge the threat in a particular situation, and there
may come times when they need to refer such subjects outside the
school. In every such case, the probability that there's any real
problem is of course very low, but it's not realistic to expect teachers
and school administrators to have perfect identification of exactly the
"real" problem cases.

Here the outcome seems harmless (so they asked some questions and went
away---what's the big deal?). The real harm is if you let this make you
or your child afraid, when I really don't see anything to fear.

I do think that you can teach her that depictions of violence aren't
appropriate for school (not just because the Secret Service might show
up!). That still leaves plenty of room for political expression.

David desJardins

"Noreen" wrote in message
...
"Anonymous" wrote in message
...
This morning I read an article in the paper regarding a 15 year old boy
who the Secret Service questioned because he drew political cartoons
that
were against the war and President Bush. The article is he

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...rosser27m.html
or http://tinyurl.com/2bhkj.

I found this article to be terrifying. I have an 11 year old who loves
to
draw political cartoons.

My 9yo son loves to watch videos on www.toostupidtobepresident.com . I
am
guessing this boy was "talked to" because of the dismembered head cartoon.
You can call the President an idiot or anything else which comes to mind
but
when you say "I wish someone would kill the *******" or draw a cartoon of
a
head on a stick, the Secret Service will come a'knocking. It's their job
to
protect the life of the President and threatening death or portraying Bush
as dead is something they will always investigate.


Too true. When I was in college, the paper's editor wrote an incredibly
stupid column about the assassination attempt on President Reagan that was
sympathetic to Hinckley (and what he was trying to do - kill the President).
Needless to say, that boy (he was 20 at the time) remained on the FBI and
Secret Service watch list for the rest of Reagan's term.

If you threaten the life of the President, you're going to get watched -
that's what I got out of the incident.

It's still eerie, though, because of this boy's age.

Sad, but the Columbine killers weren't much older. And one of the DC
snipers was only two years older at time of the shootings. So, maybe the
boy isn't so young to the Secret Service.

Jeanne

In article , David desJardins wrote:
Here the outcome seems harmless (so they asked some questions and went
away---what's the big deal?). The real harm is if you let this make you
or your child afraid, when I really don't see anything to fear.

It was probably appropriate for the Secret Service to interview the
kid---their job is to investigate threats to the President, most of
which are not credible.

The article also said that the student was disciplined, though it is
not clear to me still what the student did that deserved discipline.
Did the school have a rule against artwork that depicted violence, or
was the discipline for expressing a political viewpoint in the
student's journal? There was no mention of threats of violence in the
article, only of a political cartoon with a graphic depiction of a
severed head (a very common motif in teen and preteen doodles, I believe).


--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

In article , David desJardins says...


Here the outcome seems harmless (so they asked some questions and went
away---what's the big deal?). The real harm is if you let this make you
or your child afraid, when I really don't see anything to fear.

I do think that you can teach her that depictions of violence aren't
appropriate for school (not just because the Secret Service might show
up!). That still leaves plenty of room for political expression.

David desJardins


I think David's outlook makes solid sense. It's the depiction of violence that
was the problem, not the anti-Bush sentiment per se. The feds came, asked some
questions as it's their job to investigate each possible threat, and they left
without taking any action. The school on the other hand, is mandated to take
some sort of disciplinary action concerning depictions of violence, political or
not.

Following that distinction, I would advise my child to avoid depictions of
violence (even outside all the hoopla about violence concerns in schools, I'd be
concerned by a depiction of violence that seemed directed against someone, other
than a factual depiction), but encourage political expression. If I were the
parent described in the post, hopefully I'd follow through with that even though
the feds showed up the first time.

I guess this is actually just a long "me too" post..

Banty