Friday, July 09, 2004
Dickhead
California’s Secretary of Education is leading by misdirection, it seems. At a recent event in Santa Barbara to promote a book club he’s wielding this summer, a schoolgirl in the audience mentioned to him that her name was the same as that of an Egyptian goddess. That’s good, right? Impressionable youth meeting paternal figure from the state government, taking pride in herself and in her ancestry, embracing literacy, and maybe even polity? What could go wrong?
Apparently, the thing that went wrong was that the Secretary misunderstood the girl’s comment. In fact, he misunderstood her so grievously that he responded by telling her that her name means “stupid, dirty girl." The girl seems to have dealt with the incident with more equanimity than I would have, calmly correcting him and letting the stupid, cruel geezer off the hook. But I gotta tell you, Mr. Secretary, you should not be making fun of anybody’s name. Not just because you’re the Secretary of Education and you should know better, should be setting an example of probity and propriety for the children under your jurisdiction, whose lives you shape by your words as well as your deeds. No, there’s a simpler reason. You should not be making fun of people’s names, Mr. Secretary, because your name is Dick Reardon. Dude, we don’t even have to say it wrong to be making fun of you!
