Saturday, April 28, 2012

Anti-bullying hero bullies conference of school children « Hot Air

This story needed some warmth.


Anti-bullying hero bullies conference of school children « Hot Air:


Barack Obama and Joe Biden may be having second thoughts about assigning Dan Savage as their de facto “Anti-Bullying Czar” this year. According to Fox News, the sex advice columnist – Savage Love – and gay rights activist who founded It Gets Better seems to either have a hard time understanding the definition of bullying or has some serious issues with irony.

Really? So you picked a raunchy sex advice columnist who publishes a column called “Savage Love” as your ambassador to help out at risk children. What could possibly go wrong? Well, here’s what can possibly go wrong.

As many as 100 high school students walked out of a national journalism conference after an anti-bullying speaker began cursing, attacked the Bible and reportedly called those who refused to listen to his rant “pansy asses.” …

Savage was supposed to be delivering a speech about anti-bullying at the National High School Journalism Conference sponsored by the Journalism Education Association and the National Scholastic Press Association. But it turned into an episode of Christian-bashing.

Rick Tuttle, the journalism advisor for Sutter Union High School in California, was among several thousand people in the audience. He said they thought the speech was one thing – but it turned into something else.

“I thought this would be about anti-bullying,” Tuttle told Fox news. “It turned into a pointed attack on Christian beliefs.”

Tuttle said a number of his students were offended by Savage’s remarks – and some decided to leave the auditorium.

“It became hostile,” he said. “It felt hostile as we were sitting in the audience – especially towards Christians who espouse beliefs that he was literally taking on.”

The speaker, in a supposed attempt to encourage young people to behave in a civil fashion toward each other, immediately launches into a diatribe against Christian values. When some of the students – particularly a few of the young ladies – become offended, he berates them and engages in hostile name calling. This is the keystone of the anti-bullying campaign?

For anyone to be shocked by this outcome, you’d either have to be completely ignorant about the author’s history or … well… have a job at the White House, I suppose. For just one brief sample of the aforementioned “Savage Love” wisdom, click here. But before you do, I have to warn you… the language in this column is absolutely not safe for work and not appropriate for children to read. Also, if you are easily offended, don’t read it either. (Or at least don’t say I didn’t warn you.) I will not be reprinting any of the quotables here today.

UPDATE: (Jazz) I won’t embed it here because of the NSFW language, but if you want to watch Savage’s speech (along with all of the Christian students walking out) you can do so here. Link provided via Twitter by Ningrim.

But wait! We have located what is likely the primary source material Dan Savage used in developing this program. Watch the video and be amazed.


'via Blog this'