A reader over at HalfTermSenator.org had this interesting (and more concerning) take on the @CrazyKhazei debacle. This is about more than just dirty campaign tactics, it’s about dangerous behavior and examples. Cross-posted with the author’s permission:
As a high school teacher and a member of our school’s anti-bullying group, I am appalled at Eric Fehrnstrom’s malicious and sophomoric slams. I find it the height of hypocrisy that teachers and administrators are mandated to put in place anti-bullying measures that grown men disregard and mock. Eric Fehrnstrom’s “CrazyKhazei’ tweets, especially the ones that question Mr. Khazei’s manliness, are clearly disrespectful and abusive.
And if Eric were a student, his actions would be against the law.
Eric’s tweets meet the definition of cyberbullying stated in our Bullying Prevention and Intervention Plan (pg 7) and MGL c71 37O. If Mr. Fehrnstrom was a student at any Massachusetts public high school, his parents would be notified and he would face serious consequences.
We’re entrusting Scott Brown to pass national legislation, while his team mocks a rival as a wimpy ‘water boy‘ Are you kidding me? Boys will be boys is an unacceptable response from my high school students.
Meanwhile, Brown’s comment “Eric was seeking to inject a little levity into politics on his own time, I wasn’t aware of what he was doing,” is disturbingly similar to responses I’ve heard from thirteen your olds shirking responsibility for their actions.
Who is going to act like an adult and provide a just consequence for this unacceptable behavior? Scott Brown needs to act like a US senator and hold his employees accountable to the same basic standards to which we hold our teenagers.
-Lori Hodin
High School Teacher
it has to meet the following definition:
As juvenile and distasteful as Fehrnstrom’s conduct was, I’m not sure it meets the definition. Certainly, it doesn’t seem to me as though the real Khazei was thrown off his game or suffered any “emotional harm” while CrazyKhazei was in full swing.
I do agree, however, that Brown’s response to the whole thing was childish, as I said in this post.
It seems to me that this material falls rather clearly into item (iii) “creates a hostile environment at school for the victim”.
Such behavior would be illegal in the high schools my children attend.
I’m not saying anybody committed a crime (politics is not school, nobody is compelled to be in politics), but I think the point is very well taken.
“Crazy Khazei” said things reinforcing RW smears of Khazei’s opponents, as well as criticizing Brown in a way that actually reinforces the message that Brown is independent, hard working and focused on jobs.
As such, Eric used images that negatively characterized not just Kahzei, but Warren and others.
The premeditated strategic purpose of stunts like crazykhazei is to change the political climate, trivializing important things and allowing personality smears to take center stage.
Elections re then decided on things like swagger and camera angles and barn coats.
The analogy with what bullies do is not 100% but seem pretty obvious to me.
If kids get hooked on gambling, they will forget about bullying.
Note: this post has a hint of sarcasm in it. I still can’t believe the teacher’s union is in favor of gambling.
Right. This would constitute bullying…if things were totally different.
He’s a candidate for senator. People get to make jokes about you if you’re running for senator. Only the most humorless among us would call that “dangerous.”
Agreed, joking about a candidate’s policies or record in a campaign is fair game. But the joker should not be afraid to stand up and identify himself, his affiliation, and, if the joke is spread via a pricey mass media campaign, who is funding it.
Anonymously impersonating one’s opponents is a deliberate attempt to confuse the public and should not be condoned by any campaign.
While I appreciate that we’ve downgraded the offense from “bullying” to “confusing the public”–confusing how? Are people really going to think that Al Khazei is running a Twitter account called “CrazyKhazei”, thanking California elitists for donating to his campaign?
It’s a harmless bit of fun.
After all, Senator Brown’s refusal — and outright dismissal — of participating in the It Gets Better campaign ad with the rest of the Massachusetts delegation, a campaign solely based on helping kids who are bullied, spoke volumes.
I would second what Ms. Hodin says; what Senator Scott Brown’s highly-paid consultant did is absolutely the sort of thing we’re trying to stamp out of our schools today.
Obviously, Scott Brown is not a student at a Massachusetts public school. However, as a United States Senator he should serve with the sort of distinction that would ensure that he and his entire staff treats residents of Massachusetts with the respect and dignity we expect those in our public schools to treat each other with.
Thanks to Ms. Hodin for raising this point, a teacher I was lucky enough to have when I was in high school. Small world and all that.
…about the sexual possibilites of Scott Brown action figures ALSO be bullying? Or just harassment?
is while he can get pretty down and dirty when it comes to what he says about certain members of the GOP (Santorum in particular), it’s only after they go out of their way to dehumanize others, particularly gay people in Savage’s case. Is that bullying or defending his community? I’m certainly willing to admit maybe a little bit of both, but if people like Savage aren’t willing to fight fire with fire, then there’s little to no consequence whenever a politician, like Rick Santorum, compares gay relationships to bestiality and other assorted dehumanizing things from various members of the national GOP.
Here’s the thing, though. If Brown didn’t want to be a part of “It Gets Better” because of Savage, fine — though I will say at this point that It Gets Better has grown far beyond Savage and into its own thing. But if that’s how Brown feels, he should have made his own video in support of gay youth and bullied teens, without saying “it gets better,” instead of trying to dismiss the It Gets Better one — and allowing his staff to call it ‘that gay thing,’ using the word gay in a dehumanizing way like many a teenager will do.
I would have applauded Brown if he had done something like that — how hard is it to simply go out in public, make a video, and say that “it’s okay to be gay.” Apparently, with the extreme base in the GOP and quite possibly homophobia by the politicians themselves, it’s very hard.
Yet, if he said that on public and made a video, it would have been a powerful thing for gay teens to hear, particularly those who are more conservatively bent and maybe don’t care so much what John Kerry says. Instead, he refused, tried to make it sound like making such a video was wasting time (by saying politicians should be focused on “jobs,” even though it takes only an hour or so of a politician’s time to do one of these kinds of videos) and he’s allowed his staffer to use the word gay as a slur without any consequences.
Working to elect Rich Tisei first gay Lt. Gov. wasn’t enough? Taking a vote to repeal DADT against the wishes of his more conservative base wasn’t enough?
Dan Savage is a bullying creep.
Dan Savage, who abuses others by COMISSION, get a bye from you. Scott Brown, whose alleged sin is of OMISSION, is condemned. That a double standard at best, Ryan.
…and her “alleged” family.
George W. Bush
*Dan Savage is not an elected official, Scott Brown is — mine, in fact. I have higher standards for politicians, and I especially have higher standards for my own politicians.
*Having a gay friend does not mean one can’t be homophobic or at least not sensitive to homophobia. History is littered with these sorts of disconnects and hypocrisy — just ask one of our fathers of American Democracy, Thomas Jefferson. That Brown, a republican, stumped for Tisei, a republican, does not impress me much.
*Scott Brown took that vote after holding most everything that was important at that moment hostage. Let’s not forget the fact that he voted it down until he got his tax cuts for the rich, even after he said he supported repeal. Furthermore, that he held out so long leads me to believe that this was not a matter of principal for him; this was pure political calculus. He extracted something very valuable to him for the price of a vote that would have been toxic had he made it. He gets credit for being a skilled politician there, but not for being a good person or doing the right thing.
*It’s very easy for straight people to go on about their lives worrying about little, then get upset when someone who’s gay makes a stir and gets “uppity,” perhaps even overreacting to others’ misdeeds. Does Rick Santorum deserve to be known by a Savage-coined term that grosses even me out? Probably not, but perhaps he should have thought about that before he tried to do everything in his power to deny gay people their humanity.
If these straight people were reading gay blogs everyday, about all the gay teens who’ve committed suicide or were murdered, then maybe they’d understand why we get so angry at politicians who aren’t willing to stand up there and say that it’s not okay for kids to get bullied. Maybe they’d understand why we may react in the way we do when there are issues that concern us.
I’ve been reading all week about the Lawrence King tragedy and how the fucking bastard that killed him — who shot him twice in the back of the head in his school and told people ahead of time that he was going to do it — is quite likely to get off with the “gay panic” defense and get manslaughter instead of murder in the first degree. When that’s the stuff people like Dan Savage read all day, understand that when a politician compares their relationships to “man on dog sex” they’re going to get freaking pissed. When a politician refuses to join in a short video telling gay and other bullied kids that things will get better, and that they shouldn’t jump off a bridge or slit their wrists, understand that it’s going to make a lot of us very, very angry.
What is the “gay panic” defense?
Oddly lost in all of this was the dismissive nature of Ferhn’s tweets about It Gets Better. To diminish the whole thing as “gay videos” or taking the NRC tactic of equating its “vile” founder with the project only makes it sound like Ferhn and maybe Brown, too, doesn’t give a firm piece of dog doo about gay teens committing suicide. As much as Brown wavered on DADT, I assumed we could take for granted that he was against teen suicide and therefore would support efforts like “It Get’s Better.”
By the way, right wingers, I am NOT saying Scott Brown approves of teen suicide. Of all the things I believe Brown to be, inhuman is not one of them. The false assumption was that he would support any effort to curtail teen suicide.
is directing profanity, including using the “F-word” at least twice, at high school students “loudly and pretty angrily.” That would certainly seem to constitute a “verbal expression” that “created a hostile environment,” and, arguably, “materially and substantially disrupted the education process or the orderly operation of a school.”
Of course, our Scott would never do that. Oh wait…
Are they children? If so, let’s just hope Alan sticks it out, and knows that it’ll get better when he grows up, there won’t be any mean people making fun of him and if there are, cops will come and put the mean people in jail.
Are all the candidates going to make it gets better videos as a group, or will they each make their own?
Scott Brown’s parents should no doubt also be notified, just in case the authorities decide to pursue anti-bullying charges against the Senator. 😉 Here is Wikipedia on Brown’s family: