Learning Curves

I'll make this quick, as it incenses me to the point of wanting to fly out to El Reno, Oklahoma and throw my laptop at the first person who looks at me the wrong way.

It's within that quaint, Midwestern town that a scandal is raging which has attracted the attention of hack news managers from coast to coast. It concerns a local school teacher who's under fire after a topless picture of her began circulating among students. Parents are of course calling for her immediate death by immolation, and school administrators are trying to decide how to judiciously handle the situation.

Did I mention that the topless picture was tucked away among the digital photos on her personal cell phone, and that the innocent and wholly unimpeachable lambs whom the parents are so desperate to shield from corruption never could've seen the offending image without taking -- or at least finding -- the phone and going through it? Or that upon discovering the picture, they then text messaged it to half the school?

A bunch of little angels those kids.

I admit that I'm giving the teacher -- a 41-year-old veteran whose name I won't disclose -- the benefit of the doubt in assuming that she didn't wander the halls wearing a sandwich board that read, "My Cell Number Spells BIG-TITS." From what I remember of my own youth though, kids have an almost supernatural way of finding out a teacher's weaknesses and exploiting them until there's nothing left of the poor fucker but a lifetime prescription to Lithium or the comforting taste of a gun barrel.

The fact that many parents are demanding that this woman be fired simply for having a private life is absurd. Certainly, the wisdom of bringing such an image anywhere near school can be argued, but it was still hidden away -- part of her private property. The last time I checked, teacher or not, she has every right to take all the naked pictures of herself she wants so long as she's not doing it at school and not getting a student to help her.

Worse is the lecherous reaction of the local news stations in the Oklahoma City area, particularly KOKH, FOX 25 -- who giddily asserted news-market dominance by boasting that this tawdry crap could be seen "First on Fox." Their reporter was more than happy to stick a microphone under the nose of redneck idiots like Ray Coat -- a name I will disclose; he's a parent who doesn't see anything the least bit foolish about proclaiming that anyone who takes a topless picture of herself "shouldn't be allowed around kids."

Bullshit.

What this woman does on her own time is none of his business -- and damn sure wasn't any business of his precious kids.

Here's a lesson for the parents of El Reno, Oklahoma: look up puritanical; you'll find it in the dictionary, right between private and putrid.