Maybe he should have thrown in Park Place, too.    We here at the BrokenCountry don’t get it.  Politicians spend our money like its Monopoly money all day long.  Perhaps this guy intended to run for office.

A man discovered bleeding from the head at a routine traffic stop in Witchita, Kansas, told police he was the victim of an angry drug dealer – upset that he paid for a hundred dollars worth of crack cocaine using Monopoly money weeks before, St. Louis‘ KSDK NewsChannel 5 reported.

“The man from whom he had bought the drugs was upset and invited him over to his house, and upon arrival struck him in the head several times with a handgun, and other people jumped into the fray,” Gordon Bassham, a spokesman for the police department, told NBC.

The man’s injuries were not life-threatening, and he has since stopped cooperating, but Witchita police are still determined to find the dealer and put him in the big house – without passing go and collecting $200.

“That was not a get out-of-jail-free card,” Bassham told NBC.

Tweet This Post 

A simple early morning disturbance call ended with the death of a gay-porn actor.

And it was all captured on video.

Deputies with the Bay County Sheriff’s Department in Florida arrived at the Executive Inn after Andrew Grande (known professionally as Dustin Michaels), 23, allegedly got into a fight with a female friend, according to Panama City Beach’s WJHG.

Police attempted to handcuff Grande, who had reportedly swallowed a bag of marijuana. When he resisted, police Tasered him.

A camera crew from Zoo Productions was at the scene and captured the moments before the incident, as well as after.

Once he was struck by the powerful electrical jolt, Grande yanked the wires from his chest but showed signs of choking. Police tried to help, with one performing the Heimlich maneuver.

Every effort by police to remove the object from Grande’s throat failed. Paramedics later arrived and removed the bag, but it was too late.

Grande was pronounced dead at Bay Medical Center.

“It’s a tragic situation for our officers,” said Sheriff Frank McKeithen, and “a tragic situation for this young man and his family.”

However, he said, it never would have happened had Grande co-operated with police.

“If he’d … allowed them to handcuff him, it would have been over,” the sheriff said. “This would not have happened.”

Tweet This Post 

Two people were stabbed outside a midtown subway station Wednesday when they were attacked by two high school students, cops said.

Devon Baldwin, 18, of the Bronx, was stabbed twice in the torso, and Kalimah Tresdale, 20, was slashed in the hand in the 3p.m. incident in the underground walkway of the Columbus Circle subway station, cops said.

Both victims were taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell, where Baldwin was in stable condition.

Tresdale was treated and released.

Nathaniel Flores, 17, and Rafael Anderson, 17, both students at Independence High School on 10th Ave. at 56th St., were arrested in the stabbing.

Police sources said the victims know the suspects and that the fight apparently stemmed from an earlier incident at Independence High.

It was not immediately clear if Baldwin and Tresdale are also students at Independence High.

Tweet This Post 

GLENDALE, CA – Police say a member of the pop group Girlicious was arrested after Glendale officers found more than a dozen plastic bags of cocaine in her Gucci purse during a traffic stop.

Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz says 21-year-old Natalie Mejia was being held Wednesday in jail in the Los Angeles suburb on suspicion of cocaine for sale or distribution, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Lorenz says Mejia was a passenger in a car driven by 28-year-old Peter Asencio Tuesday night when Asencio was pulled over for speeding.

Police say Mejia had just dined at a restaurant in Burbank and was heading to the airport and late for a flight. Lorenz says Asencio was arrested on the same drug charge. Police determined that Asencio also was driving with a suspended license.

Tweet This Post 

Lancaster CA- First of all, for those of you that don’t know it, Lancaster is the new Compton of Southern California. Its a desert community in Los Angeles County, and it has a rather large criminal element that moved from south central Los Angeles after the Rodney King riots.

What I want to know is why a person would bring a meat thermometer to a movie theater in the first place.

The woman who was talking on a cell phone during a movie didn’t take to kindly to being ’shushed’ by another moviegoer. Or at least her boyfriend didn’t.

In a drama that turned more lively than the one on screen, the boyfriend allegedly attacked and stabbed the ’shusher’ in the neck. With a meat thermometer.

According to KTLA:

The stabbing occurred last Saturday at the Cinemark 22 theater at 2600 West Avenue I in Lancaster, according to Detective Richard Cartmill of the Lancaster sheriff’s station.

Deputies say that while the movie was playing, a woman was talking on her phone and the victim asked her to turn it off.

The victim was attacked by the woman’s boyfriend and another man. Deputies say he was stabbed in the neck with a meat thermometer.

The stabbing victim is expected to survive and is recovering at a local hospital. Two others who tried to help the victim were also injured, according to KTLA.

According to Sheriff’s officials, the suspects were described as black males. One man was wearing an orange hat with an orange jersey and the other man was dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt.

Tweet This Post 

SHAMED Macmillan nurse Sara Dale cared for cancer-stricken wives – then bedded their husbands after they died.

The attractive divorcee, 39, has been fired by hospital bosses over allegations she had THREE such romances.

And she has been “debadged” by the Macmillan cancer support charity.

Dale, who worked as a community Macmillan nurse for nearly 13 years, met the men through her job at Queen Elizabeth NHS Hospital in King’s Lynn, Norfolk.

Their terminally-ill wives were being treated there.

And following their deaths, she embarked on relationships with the grieving widowers.

She currently lives with Stephen Ellis, 50, whose long-term partner Mel died of cancer last year.

An NHS source said: “Sara was a very popular member of the team at the hospital. When the allegations surfaced people were genuinely shocked.

“She has been off work for some time but her colleagues were only told she had been dismissed a couple of weeks ago.

Advertisement
Quantcast

“It has been kept quite hush-hush although word quickly got round about the allegations against her.

“Macmillan nurses do an amazing job in supporting cancer patients day in day out. And this is a really unfortunate episode.”

Dale, who had two children with her ex-husband, was first hauled before hospital bosses last year.

They were alerted when a number of NHS Trust top brass – including the Head of Cancer Services, Director of Nursing and Chief Executive – were tipped off in anonymous letters.

Dale went off sick – and was fired in January following a hearing over her “professional conduct”.

Her case is expected to be referred to the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

Dale, who is still free to work as a nurse, could be struck off if found guilty of bringing her profession into disrepute.

Her relationships came after her divorce and were not conducted at the same time.

She began one more than a year after her lover’s partner died.

She started dating Steve months after Mel passed away – and now lives with him in South Wootton, Norfolk.

No details are known about the third alleged romance.

Speaking to The Sun at her detached home yesterday, she denied the third fling.

She said: “The hospital was told I’d had three relationships with men who had lost their partners to cancer. But I have had two.

“One of them was long-term and we were together for nearly ten years. And the other is the one I am in now, who I love.”

She added: “I have never had an affair with a patient’s partner.” Last night a spokeswoman for the NHS Trust confirmed a nurse had been sacked.

She said: “A Macmillan nurse has been dismissed following an investigation into allegations made regarding her professional conduct.

“A hearing took place under the Trust’s disciplinary policy and procedure at which one of the allegations was upheld and she was dismissed with immediate effect.

“The matter will now be referred to the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s conduct committee.

“As a result of the hearing this individual is no longer a Macmillan nurse or entitled to hold the Macmillan name in her job title.”

Steve Richards, Macmillan director for London, East Anglia and the South East, said: “This individual was employed by the Trust as a palliative care nurse in 1998 and Macmillan funded the post until 2000.

“After that date no charity funds were used to pay for the post. We support the Trust’s decision and the nurse no longer holds the Macmillan name.”

Mr Richards added: “There are over 4,500 Macmillan health professionals in the UK who give much-needed support and care to hundreds of thousands of cancer patients and their families.

“This is an isolated incident and all our nurses are expected to maintain the highest standards of care and professional conduct.” There was no mention of the sacking on Dale’s Facebook page last night – and she was still listed as working at the hospital.

Under her personal details she has written: “I have worked as a Macmillan Nurse for the last 13 years and love it – except the NHS is a challenge.

“Oh i also have a mad labrador who sheds lots of hair and speaks. I am hoping to start writing as i need a new challenge.”

Tweet This Post 

KURT GORMAN had no idea that his Texas girlfriend of four years was on the Internet calling herself JihadJane.

Colleen R. LaRose, whom he met in Ennis, Texas, left the couple’s Montgomery County apartment Aug. 23, the day after his father’s funeral, without telling him, he said.

“I came home and she’s gone. She packed up and left. Didn’t see it coming, didn’t know,” Gorman told the Daily News last night. “I was upset, worried. Maybe something happened to her. You don’t know.”

Yesterday, Gorman, of Pennsburg, 48 miles northwest of Philadelphia, said he finally found out – by reading about her on the Internet.

A federal grand jury indicted LaRose, who also called herself Fatima Rose, allegedly for providing material support for terrorists and for plotting with others to kill a Swedish artist who had depicted the pro-phet Muhammad as a dog.

“I don’t know the details. I don’t want to know them,” said Gorman, who appears to be an easygoing guy with a mustache and beard. Interviewed at his office in Quaker-town, he was dressed in a green and black plaid shirt, black jeans and work boots, and was holding a half-smoked cigarette.

“She never talked about international events, about Muslims, anything,” he said. “It’s very strange. I still can’t believe it.

“The whole thing is crazy.”

A few weeks after LaRose, 5-foot-2 with dirty-blond hair, disappeared, taking most of her clothes, two FBI agents visited him. He said they questioned him, including what she did during the day and whether she used the computer. Nothing to tip him off, he added.

In November or December, Gorman said, he was subpoenaed by a federal grand jury to testify. He said he had been asked about his passport, whether he had given it to her. He said he told the jury no. She was charged with stealing the passport in the indictment.

Prosecutors and agents told him that they were in the middle of an investigation and could not share the details.

He said he figured: “Let them do their job. I don’t want anything to do with it.

“She seemed normal to me. She got mad about some things and happy about others,” he said. Asked what she would get mad about, he replied: “If I was not home when I was supposed to be, that I don’t spend enough time with her, that I work too much.”

As owner of a company that manufactures custom parts for radio towers, he said, “I work until the job gets done.”

The couple lived with his father in a second-floor apartment in a four-unit building on Main Street in Pennsburg. “She was a good person, taking care of my Dad, taking him to the doctor.”

His father sat in a lawn chair on the balcony, said neighbors. “He asked me to go for a cup of coffee,” said Joan Noon, 66, a next-door neighbor.

LaRose didn’t work, and had not graduated from college, but, he said, she was fun to be with.

“I wouldn’t have stayed with her if she was not nice,” he added.

“That’s why when I came home and she was gone, it was a shock to the system.”

Tweet This Post 

Two women suing Dr. Phil McGraw and CBS Television alleging they suffered trauma when they were exposed to a naked man during an episode of the television psychologist’s program can move forward with their suit, a judge ruled today.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Allen White rejected a motion by attorneys for “Dr. Phil” McGraw and the network that maintained the suit by Shirley Rae Dieu and Crystal Matchett infringed on their First Amendment right to air a topic of public interest.

“There is no discernible public interest in these two plaintiffs,” White said, adding that their complaint focuses on their treatment by the show’s staff and not on statements made by anyone.

Dieu, 56, of Irvine, and Matchett, 26, of Westland, Mich., filed separate suits last year that were later consolidated by White into one complaint. The allegations include fraud, negligent misrepresentation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Dieu and Matchett agreed to take part in a 2007 episode of the show in which they spent a week in a residence called “The Dr. Phil House,” which was wired with cameras and microphones, according to the defense’s court papers. The women participated with four other people and the show’s topic was the difficulties they all had in interacting with other people.

At one point a nudist came to the house to join the others for dinner, defense court papers state.

“This incident was part and parcel of the scenarios being used at the house
Advertisement
to focus each of the participants on their ability to tolerate unique individuals and situations, and to resist their own judgmental character,” the defense court papers state.

The claims of both women also are barred by releases they signed agreeing to appear on the show, McGraw’s attorneys contend.

But in a sworn declaration, Matchett said she was offended by the nude man’s appearance.

“As a naked man ran into the house, I was in shock and total disbelief of what was happening, feeling violated and disgusted,” Matchett stated. “I heard … Dieu scream, ‘How dare you’ while covering her eyes and running into the bedroom.” Matchett also says she was pressured by a show staff member to sign the release and never had the chance to read it.

Dieu says in her declaration that after she and Matchett retreated to a bedroom “horrified and crying,” a show staff member banged on the door yelling, “Come out, come out Shirley and see the naked man.”

The location for “The Dr. Phil House” was a “cramped, windowless … house on a sound stage in a bad neighborhood,” according to Matchett.

Kelli L. Sager, a lawyer for McGraw and CBS, declined to comment on the ruling.

Tweet This Post 

First Amendment be damned . . . If Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn had his way, any journalist who called Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a dictator would quickly find himself behind bars.

Penn, appearing on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday, defended Chavez during a segment in which he detailed his work with the JP Haitian Relief Organization, which he co-founded.

“Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it” said Penn, winner of two Best Actor Academy Awards. “And this is mainstream media, who should — truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.”

It was just the beginning of a busy weekend for Penn. When asked on CBS’ “Sunday Morning” about those who question his motives for his humanitarian work in Haiti, he said:

“Do I hope that those people die screaming of rectal cancer? Yeah. You know, but I’m not going to spend a lot of energy on it.”

Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox News’ senior judicial analyst, said the same constitutional protection that applies to journalists also applies to Penn, who can say pretty much anything he wants in the “political arena” — aside from an immediate incitement of violence.

“What he is saying is protected, as wacky and weird as it is,” Napolitano told FoxNews.com. “But the substance of what he’s saying would be absolutely contrary to the First Amendment, which fully protects all political opinions. So if a journalist says Dick Cheney should go to jail, the journalist is privileged to say that.”

“Mr. Penn is calling for a communist-like regime in which journalists who criticize the government are sent to jail because of that criticism,” Napolitano added. “That is utterly un-American and hasn’t happened here since the Civil War.”

Lis Wiehl, a former federal prosecutor and Fox News legal analyst, echoed Napolitano’s comments, saying Penn’s statement is “completely counter” to First Amendment protections.

“Unless you’re yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre, i.e. stirring up immediate violence, you have the right as an American to voice your opinion, even if others (including Penn) disagree,” she wrote FoxNews.com. “And, yes, Penn has the right to voice his opinion as well — that’s the beauty of the First Amendment. And, don’t forget, truth is an absolute defense to any defamation or slander lawsuit.”

According to a study by the Business and Media Institute, news coverage pertaining to Chavez from 1998 to 2006 found the Venezuelan president’s human rights record was mentioned in only 10 percent of stories, and he was described as a leftist in 12 percent of stories.

Napolitano, meanwhile, said Penn apparently prefers “thuggery” to democracy.

“In light of his ignorance of freedom of speech, his wishing rectal cancer on his detractors, and his embracing tyrants, Mr. Penn obviously prefers thuggery to democracy,” he continued. “Were he free to do so, he’d be a tyrant. Now we’ll see if he can get me jailed for saying that!”

Tweet This Post 

Now here is one I just could not pass on. Women went to a to an alleged doctor to get ass implants, and this alleged doctor comes at them with a caulking gun, and they thought that this was normal?

Listen ladies, there are a lot of crazy ways that licensed doctors change a persons appearance, but using DAP caulking is not one of them.

The only logical conclusion one can make is that these are six of the dumbest women on the planet.

The women checked into hospitals in the county after their procedures, apparently administered by unlicensed providers, went horribly wrong, state health officials said. The women underwent surgery and were given antibiotics. No arrests have been made.

Different from medical-grade silicone, the substance used in the botched procedures was believed to be a diluted version of nonmedical-grade silicone.

“The same stuff you use to put caulk around the bathtub,” said Steven M. Marcus, executive and medical director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System, who learned about the bizarre procedures through a committee he sits on that monitors outbreaks in the metropolitan area.

“What a tragedy,” said Gregory Borah, chief of plastic surgery at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick.

Using over-the-counter silicone can cause abscesses that he said resemble “a big zit.”

Borah, also president of the New Jersey Society of Plastic Surgeons, said the botched procedures underscore the need for patients who seek augmentation to have it administered by a licensed professional in a sterile setting.

A plastic surgeon doing buttocks augmentation would make an incision to develop a pocket underneath the muscle and shape the buttocks with inert medical-grade silicone, Borah said. He noted it is a relatively uncommon procedure in most practices and that he has done only two in his 24-year career.

By the time he tells patients of the potential risks — from anesthesia, scarring and silicone shifting when patients sit down — they often change their minds.

Breast and cheek augmentations are the most common procedures, he noted. Borah said buttock augmentation is more popular in some cultures than others.

The state Department of Health and Senior Services did not identify the women or release any details about their ethnicity. It also did not say where the “unlicensed medical provider or providers” performed their procedures.

“Fortunately, these women are being treated and are recovering,” said Tina Tan, the state epidemiologist. “But there is the potential for more serious complications if these infections are not treated early and properly.”

Investigators have not determined if the six cases, which began to be reported in mid-February, are related, but they have stoked concern among officials that such injuries are more common than previously thought.

Health officials issued an alert to state hospitals and doctors about the cases and the potential for more victims.

Marcus said there have been other incidents over the past couple years of providers providing implants of nonmedical-grade silicone, then getting put out of business — only for other shady providers to surface.

“Caveat emptor: Buyer beware,” Marcus said. “If it looks too cheap, there’s probably a reason it’s too cheap.”

Tweet This Post 

Zachary Tucker, left, and Sean Fitzgerald were arrested Tuesday night on suspicion of second-degree tampering.

COLUMBIA, MO. — Two students on Friday apologized for scattering cotton balls outside the black culture center at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

Zachary E. Tucker, 21, who is from the St. Louis area, and Sean D. Fitzgerald, 19, used “inexcusable judgment,” according to a joint statement issued by their attorneys.

The incident was part of a series of foolish acts last Friday that included riding a tiger statue and hoisting a pirate flag at the ROTC building, the statement said.

The two were arrested Tuesday evening on suspicion of a felony hate crime and were released on bond. Neither has been charged, and prosecutors are not likely to decide what, if any, charges will be filed until Monday, said Ryan Haigh, an assistant Boone County prosecutor.

Both students have been suspended from the university.

Police said that between 1:30 and 2 a.m. on Feb. 26, cotton balls were scattered across the front lawn and sidewalk at the front door of the Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center.

The incident offended students who felt it harkened to days of slavery on cotton plantations.

Police arrested Tucker, a senior majoring in psychology, and Fitzgerald, a freshman majoring in political science, after receiving an anonymous tip.

The statement from the attorneys notes that neither man has a criminal record.

“This type of behavior is totally out of character for these young men, and they hope for the opportunity to prove this to the community,” the statement said. “Fitzgerald and Tucker apologize to each and every person who was hurt and offended by their actions.”

Marcus Mayes, a graduate assistant with the culture center, said he had not seen the statement but based on what he heard, he felt it was “a start.”

“It’s good they acknowledged what they did was wrong,” he said.

Tucker’s attorney, Christopher A. Slusher, said his client wants to continue attending school but declined to discuss what university officials told him about that possibility.

Tucker has met with Nathan Stephens, director of the Black Culture Center, to personally apologize. Stephens said he accepted the apology and offered to help mentor Tucker in cultural sensitivity.

“My desire for him is to learn and grow from this and to become a better person,” Stephens said.

Tweet This Post 

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s furious, final push to get a health care bill passed threatens to shove aside the message he promised would top his list this year: creating jobs.

Even as the White House juggles several enormous issues at once, the public takes its cues about the president’s chief concern from how he spends his time, energy and capital. As Obama himself put it on Wednesday, from now until Congress takes a final vote on a health care overhaul, “I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform.”

That kind of now-or-never campaign means America can expect a debate consumed by health care, again, for weeks.

The White House is trying mightily to focus it on real people and the human cost of inaction. But there will be no escaping the same slog that turned off so many people in 2009 — congressional process, arm-twisting and doomsday rhetoric.

So what unfolds over the next few weeks will affect millions of Americans and alter the course of Obama’s presidency. He has a shrinking window in which to find enough votes within his party to pass health care legislation so he can free himself to spend more bully pulpit time on the single issue that has stoked the public ire since he became president — disappearing jobs.

Polling shows the economy remains a bigger personal worry to people than the cost, access and coverage problems endemic to the health care system.

There is a huge economic element to health care as people struggle to pay premiums or keep their insurance. Yet to many, the astounding loss of jobs is a singular issue that demands constant, bold attention.

It is just this competition — the economy versus health care — that helped define Obama’s grueling first year in office and prompted howls within his own party for a recalibrated jobs-first agenda.

Obama responded with a State of the Union speech on Jan. 27 that was remarkably focused on the economy, dwarfing all other issues. “Creating jobs has to be our number one priority in 2010,” Obama emphasized the next day at a stop in Tampa, Florida.

Yet it was always the reality that Obama would consolidate his attention on health care again, at least for one last blitz. Beyond all the policy implications, Obama has spent a year on it and never intended to let that effort go to waste.

The White House’s political calculation is that the next few weeks are their last chance to push through an overhaul of health coverage. But aides also know it cannot drag on, as every day focused on process overshadows their message.

There is no expectation within the West Wing that voters’ moods will change until they see their lives improving. Senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said the plan is to keep plugging away on an agenda to shore up the economy for the long haul.

“We’re going to still be out there on jobs,” Axelrod said, dismissing any worry that the economy-first message will be obscured. “We’re going to be focused on health care for the next few weeks, but we’re still going to be doing jobs.”

To get votes, Obama is lobbying lawmakers, many of whom are teetering in this election year. He’s calling on his 2008 campaign supporters to push Congress for a vote. He’s staging health care events in Philadelphia and St. Louis this coming week.

“They are looking at the election in November, and they need to have one big victory that they can claim,” said Michael Lind, policy director of the economic growth program at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. “This is not the victory they would have chosen, because even if it does help the economy, it won’t help most people for years to come. The problem is, there just doesn’t seem to be the ability to do anything significant about jobs this year.”

The House and Senate have passed versions of a $35 billion bill that offers a tax break to companies that hire workers and extends federal highway programs, but even supporters doubt it will create many jobs. By comparison, the economic stimulus bill enacted last year — and not nearly spent out yet — was an $862 billion measure.

Lawmakers plan more steps this year. But there is less political will to keep spending on big jolts to the economy.

Obama has always argued that overhauling health care is not just about health, but also an economic imperative for families who will suffer “if we let this opportunity pass for another year or another decade or another generation” — a message he conveyed Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address.

Part of Obama’s final argument to Democratic lawmakers is that getting health care done will give them momentum on other issues. It’s possible that the opposite is true, and a defeat now could undermine him on other fronts.

Maryland’s Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley said Obama understands that the rising costs of health care are hurting U.S. economic interests long term. Still, he urged Obama to finish up this priority and pivot back to a heavier jobs message.

“If we wrap this up, if we get this passed, it will become clear that health care was always about jobs,” he said.

Tweet This Post 

Tweet This Post 

You read it here first. Burt Reynolds, who is recovering from heart bypass surgery, had a new helmet of hair surgically screwed into his skull.

That’s right. Reynolds figured while in the hospital for bypass surgery, that he may as well lose the “Coon Skin Cap” look of that old road kill on his head, and instead have a custom made hair helmet installed.

“The hair helmet operation was a complete success” said Dr. James Rosenblat, chief surgeon of hair helmet technology.

Rosenblat said “These new hair helmets serve a dual purpose. They look and feel like real hair and they will protect Mr. Reynolds in the event that he falls like doddering old codgers sometimes do.”

Burt sees his new look as a real woman attractor and hope to get out on the prowl as soon as his heart will allow it.

Its not as if anyone will notice that Burt is an old man, what with his wrinkled up pruned face and his new hair helmet, he will be the new stud of West Palm Beach.

Reynolds also went out and bought some new wheels. It is rumored that Reynolds called “The Scooter Store” and got a super charged scooter to get about town on. Bob

Tweet This Post 

Teachers in trouble after honoring O.J. Simpson, Dennis Rodman and RuPaul for Black History Month

Black history month

I don’t get why these teachers are in trouble. Didn’t the black community defend O.J. Simpson and claim he was innocent in the murders of Ron Goldman and Nicole Simpson? O.J. was portrayed as a hero in the black community after he beat the rap.

The same with Dennis Rodman. Rodman has drug and alcohol problems. Is this not what the people of the black community call a hero? I am just curious here. I see these people portrayed as hero’s all day long on BET and MTV.

RuPaul is just pure comedy. There is clearly something wrong with that . . . um . . . whatever it is. Anyway, I think its kinda funny that these teachers decided to point this out to the black community. Bob

LOS ANGELES – Three Los Angeles elementary school teachers accused of giving children portraits of O.J. Simpson, Dennis Rodman and RuPaul to carry in a Black History Month parade have been removed from their classrooms, a school district spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Children from other classes at the school displayed photos of more appropriate black role models, such as Nelson Mandela, Harriet Tubman and President Obama, Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman Gayle Pollard-Terry said.

The incident occurred Friday at Wadsworth Avenue Elementary School in South Los Angeles, where the student body is more than 90 percent Latino.

District Superintendent Ramon Cortines placed the teachers – all white men who teach first, second and fourth grades – on administrative leave on Tuesday while an investigation is conducted, Pollard-Terry said.

“The superintendent will not let anyone make a mockery out of Black History Month,” she said.

The issue was brought to district officials’ attention by the Los Angeles chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People after the organization received a complaint early Monday, chapter President Leon Jenkins said.

Jenkins said he felt the teachers acted in concert to mock black heroes and children’s innocence.

“These are not the people we want our young people to emulate or believe these people represent the best of the African-American community,” Jenkins said. “It’s hard for the NAACP to believe this was a mistake.”

Simpson, a former American football star, is serving a nine-year prison sentence for robbery and kidnapping. He was famously acquitted in 1995 of murdering his ex-wife and her friend.

RuPaul is a drag queen performer. Rodman, a former basketball star, has gained notoriety for bad boy behavior on and off the basketball court.

Some parents at the school on Wednesday said the issue was overblown.

Sharon Tinson, who has two daughters at the school and attended Friday’s celebration, said she had been surprised to see Simpson displayed in the parade. But she noted that Simpson, like Rodman, was a great athlete before falling from grace. RuPaul simply has an alternative lifestyle, she added.

She noted the event also included a tribute to pop singer Michael Jackson, who has also had a checkered career.

“I kind of laughed at it,” Tinson said. “I wasn’t offended.”

Gabriel Blackson, whose son attends the school, said he also took a larger view of the ruckus.

“These guys were heroes before. People make mistakes,” he said. “I think they show kids they can be somebody, to push them to be somebody.”

Jenkins said he is calling for the teachers to be fired.

Tweet This Post