With all the ills going on in the world it’s good to see members of the Kansas governor’s staff are finding time to tackle the really important issues:
“Just made mean comments at gov. brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot,” she wrote to her 60 followers who tuned in to her sporadic updates about the Twilight films and Justin Bieber. In fact, Sullivan hadn’t said a word to the governor during his brief speech, and she now says the Twitter comment was just an “inside joke” among her high schol friends who were also on the Youth in Government field trip and disagreed with Brownback’s politics.
But the humor was lost on members of Brownback’s staff, who found the tweet while scouring social media sites for his name and alerted Sullivan’s high school principal. The principal reprimanded Sullivan and demanded she write an apology to the governor.
There’s so much stupid in the second paragraph that it almost physically hurts. First of all how the hell are members of Brownback’s staff finding the time to browse through social media sites looking for the governor’s name? If staff members have enough time to do that they either need more work or the size of the staff needs to be reduced. Remember that the people of Kansas are footing Brownback’s bill to pay his staff so if he has any decency (which he probably doesn’t being he’s a politician) he’d ensure his staff was as efficiently sized as possible.
Next we have the concern of staff members contacting the kid’s principle. Her tweet said she made mean comments at the governor, not that she was planning on committing any act of violence upon the man. Just for fun and in case anybody from Brownback’s staff is reading this site I’d like to say that Governor Brownback is a huge steaming pile of shit. Granted I don’t know the man but if he feels sending staff members out to browse social media sites for mentions of his name is a good use of taxpayer dollars then he is a piece of shit in my book.
The third point of stupid is the audacity of the principle to demand the kid write a letter of apology. Nobody should be made to apologize for their opinion, especially when that opinion is about a public official. There is a pesky amendment in the Constitution that says something about people have the freedom of speech. While I understand schools are actually more akin to prisons it is still disgusting to see students having their supposedly Constitutionally guaranteed rights stripped without actually doing any wrong. Don’t even both giving me that line of bullshit about the Bill of Rights only applying to adults, nowhere in the Bill of Rights does it contain any disclaimer that it is meant to apply only to adults. It appears as though the kid is pretty smart I must say:
And while Sullivan’s tweet is still rude, Brownback’s staff response makes him look thin-skinned and unable to take a joke. “I can’t believe they would prioritize that over other issues they have going on now,” Sullivan says. “I can’t believe they take time out of their day to look at social media and Twitter for his name.”
Exactly. The people of Kansas should be up in arms just for the fact that they’re paying idiots to sit around and browse Twitter all day. Let me also commend the kid for sticking to her guns and ultimately deciding not to write an apology letter:
Sullivan, who now has more than 9,000 Twitter followers and has begun quoting Gandhi, says she hopes the principal will accept her decision not write an apology letter. She says the incident has been a “reality check” to her and her friends that their comments on social media sites are not anonymous nor consequence-free.
You should only apologize when it’s sincere, which means you should never write a letter of apology for speaking the truth or your opinion. Too many people believe that apologies must be issued whenever you hurt somebody’s feelings but truth be told this simply creates a society that ends up giving a bunch of insincere apologies for everything and also ingrains people with the idea that they can get away with anything so long as they issue a phony apology afterwards.
Since the heat was turned up Governor Brownback did finally issue an apology of his own:
“My staff over-reacted to this tweet, and for that I apologize. Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms. I enjoyed speaking to the more than 100 students who participated in the Youth in Government Program at the Kansas Capitol. They are our future. I also want to thank the thousands of Kansas educators who remind us daily of our liberties, as well as the values of civility and decorum. Again, I apologize for our over-reaction”
How about you apologize to the people of Kansas for wasting their money by paying people to sit and browse the Internet?