This was as predictable as the sun rising in the east. The New York elementary school principal who decided not to have kindergarten students sing the most vile song ever written, Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA, is getting a dose of that famous Christian love and compassion via racist letters and death threats.
Hawkins scrapping of the patriotic song has resulted in nasty hate mail aimed at the principal that’s being investigated by the schools and N.Y.P.D.
One letter says, “You are a filthy, dirty, ugly subhuman gorilla,” another says, “Lets hope that AIDS will do what sickle cell anemia failed to do, exterminate your whole simian race.”
And there’s this one “N——- and their Jew commie bosses are the scum of the earth.”
And you’ll know they are Christians by their love, by their love.
26 comments
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StevoR
June 15, 2012 at 12:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well bless. How chya-arrming of them.
Sure is no love quite like forgiving Christian love and compassion to their neighbours who the good Christian folks always remember to never ever judge, c’est ne pas!
StevoR
June 15, 2012 at 12:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Isn’t there?
dingojack
June 15, 2012 at 12:18 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Has Sickle-cell anemia ever been found in Gorillas? I thought it was a human adaptation to Malaria.
Dingo
StevoR
June 15, 2012 at 12:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
#3. Dingojack : Me too. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle_cell_anemia
No mention of gorillas there that I could spot.
Course I and wikipedia could be mistaken ..
jamessweet
June 15, 2012 at 12:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, “Hawkins” rhymes with “Dawkins”, so you know this guy must be evil..
Abby Normal
June 15, 2012 at 12:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What’s the link between the people leaving those nasty comments and Christians? Are there no proud American Muslims or Scientologists? Pehaps there’s even a jingoistic athiest or two out there.
What, why are you laughing?
harold
June 15, 2012 at 12:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Nice of the “liberal” media to claim that she “banned” the song.
Not having it sung at a school ceremony is “banning” it, right.
Who Knows?
June 15, 2012 at 12:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That’s about what I would expect from a bunch of flag waving morons.
The Lorax
June 15, 2012 at 12:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hey now, we don’t know for sure that they’re Christians…
… they could just be really crazy about Lee Greenwood. /snark
So I wonder what happens now. Will she fold under public pressure? Will anyone raise any frivolous lawsuits which will waste time and taxpayer money for no reason? Or will this become water under the bridge?
Michael Heath
June 15, 2012 at 12:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed concludes:
While nearly all the other conservative Christians will blithely claim those bigots are, ‘no true Christians’ as they advocate and vote for the very behavior supported by those who write such vile things. As blithely as they abstractly criticize bullying of gays while being the sole voice in the public square which protects the environment for bullies.
These two assertions aren’t merely anecdotal, but instead illustrative of conservative Christians’ systemic behavior. We also see this with their ‘no true Christian’ claim of Germans who allowed the rise of Nazism while German-Americans who are conservative Christians behave in the very same manner now as those in the late-1920s through WWII.
slc1
June 15, 2012 at 12:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re dingojack @ #3
The condition sickle cell anemia is caused by a particular gene which is recessive so that one must inherit it from both parents in order to develop the disorder. It persists because the recessive gene provides resistance to malaria when inherited from one parent.
I may be wrong here but it is my information that the gene in humans is a mutation of the same gene in apes so that the sickle cell condition is not present in our cousins.
MikeMa
June 15, 2012 at 12:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As much as I loathe religion this letter would seem to be more about entitlement than religion. Rather than harping on the (obvious) lack of christian love, I think more emphasis ought to made to point out the writer’s complete lack of self-awareness.
His desire for the extermination of ‘the other’, whether by divine or man-made means, is a never ending process. First he wants the blacks & jews gone. Sadly, lots of folks would agree to that. Once that ethnic cleansing was complete, the next steps might be muslims, latinos & asians. Again, sadly, many support this kind of thing. After that it gets tricky. Mormons? Splinter christian sects?
When the moron is finished, he’s killed or exiled nearly everyone and will probably die a lonely death because he couldn’t feed himself.
The ever-tightening ring of us vs them is what needs the exposure. The awareness that by his stance, he condemns so many and himself as well.
Lord Elmo Bringer Of Death
June 15, 2012 at 12:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Most vile song ever”? I mean it is just as shitty as every other god fearin’ country song and I am definitely against blind patriotism and references to god in schools. But I don’t think it is vile. Or maybe I looked up the wrong lyrics where they say kill all foreigners and atheists and crush all dissenters…
zekehoskin
June 15, 2012 at 2:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Lord Elmo got there before me. I’m a songwriter and I know about lots of truly vile songs. This one is certainly one-sided and chauvinistic, but it doesn’t rate anywhere on the vile scale. Of course it is perfectly proper to choose not to sing it, and I’d back people who opposed the principal if he HAD decided to have the kindergarten class sing it.
ArtK
June 15, 2012 at 2:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ Lord Elmo & zekehoskin
As a piece of songwriting, the song itself is merely dreck. It’s what it represents that is vile. Prima facie evidence are the responses to the principal deciding it wasn’t appropriate. Mere dreck doesn’t inspire death threats and racial hatred.
What’s truly vile about it is that it encourages an emotional response that completely negates what the US is (or should be) about — in a way, the song is anti-patriotic, because the America it honors eliminates the very freedoms it supposedly honors America for. (Geez, that was an awful sentence — I hope it made sense!)
There’s an extreme hypocrisy in issuing issuing racially/religiously flavored death threats over a song that celebrates freedoms that (supposedly) include freedom of religion and freedom from racial discrimination. I find that hypocrisy to be vile.
Phillip IV
June 15, 2012 at 3:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, the original story didn’t mention the principal’s race, so it wasn’t clear whether she’d be receiving racist letters and death threats or misogynistic/homophobic letters and death threats. But that’s about the whole scope of potential outcomes.
And now that she’s canned the Bieber song as well, she’ll also have to deal with letters from aggravated ten-year old beliebers. At least those will be a bit more mature. And have better grammar.
keithb
June 15, 2012 at 4:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Phillip IV:
Except the ones with lots of LOL’s, OMG’s and 11111Elevnty-one!
WMDKitty
June 15, 2012 at 5:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
*annoyed ear-twitch*
The kids aren’t suffering any harm for not performing it, and now the ADULTS are threatening to harm other adults over this decision, and that is affecting the kids, ‘cuz kids? They’re smart. They pick up on a lot more than we give ‘em credit for. I’ve no doubt some of these kids are feeling pretty rotten right now, thanks to their parents being complete fucking idjits over a SONG.
What the HELL?
Pinky
June 15, 2012 at 7:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The letter writers must want this to be the new patriotic song.
I once thought patriotism was a condition of loving your country enough to want it to improve, of desiring free speech for all. Now it seems patriotism means keeping your mouth shut, never disagreeing, kissing the man’s ass. Now I keep hearing the word “asshole” whenever someone says “patriotic.”
ttch
June 15, 2012 at 7:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
MikeMa wrote:
I’ve read that once you’ve eliminated the Jews (say), the next step is eliminating people with “Jewish attitudes”.
caseloweraz
June 15, 2012 at 7:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Hawkins scrapping of the patriotic song has resulted in nasty hate mail aimed at the principal that’s being investigated by the schools and N.Y.P.D.”
Sure, because the best way to show that America is the land of the free is to threaten to harm anybody who does something you disagree with.
caseloweraz
June 15, 2012 at 7:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
BTW: There’s a country song that seems somewhat relevant to this matter: “Home of the Brave” by Jody Miller.
http://www.lyricstime.com/jody-miller-home-of-the-brave-lyrics.html
ttch
June 15, 2012 at 7:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed wrote:
Ed, I know you’re writing a book on this theme but according to one of your newest Freethought bloggers, Zinnia Jones, trying to show the hypocrisy of Christians by citing Jesus as a moral example doesn’t change anyone’s mind but rather has the unintended effect of reinforcing the “authority” of Jesus:
Let’s stop appropriating Jesus
dan4
June 15, 2012 at 9:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@14:”…opposed the principal in this case if he…”
Zeke, the principal is a woman.
andrewlephong
June 16, 2012 at 4:07 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Simian race?” Humans are simians, by definition. Oh, but then again, we might well be dealing with a Creationist here who thinks humans are somehow above biological classifications.
birgerjohansson
June 18, 2012 at 9:10 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Lets hope that AIDS will do what sickle cell anemia failed to do, exterminate your whole simian race.”
There are so many things wrong with this sentence, it is like parsing a speech by Sarah Palin.
— — — — — — — — — —
A pathogen able to kill a huge percentage of the human population is more likely to kill caucasian and asian people than people of African descent, as the latter have greater genetic diversity.
— — — — — — — —
N*ggers being bossed around by jews?
Jews / communists overlapping ?
-We have found Borat’s even dumber cousin!