Friday, October 2, 2009

The Dumbest "Gotcha" Ever!

Via Memeorandum:

Are there editors at Media Matters who read the posts before they're put out there for the world to see? Exhibit A: EXCLUSIVE: Media Matters confirms student at center of Fox fueled Jennings controversy was of legal age

Right-wing media have claimed that 21 years ago, when Jennings was a 24-year-old
teacher at ConFor several days now conservatives in the media have been on a witch-hunt for Kevin Jennings, the U.S. Department of Education's director of the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. Led by Fox News, the cord Academy in Massachusetts, he "cover[ed] up statutory rape" by not reporting to authorities a conversation he had with a student who told him about being involved with an "older man."

They have attacked Jennings with homophobic, anti-gay rhetoric,
falsely accused him of covering up or encouraging "statutory rape" and asked for his
resignation or firing.

Media Matters for America has exclusively obtained the Massachusetts drivers' license of the student confirming that at the time of the incident, he was at least
sixteen years of age -- the legal age of consent in Massachusetts.


Gotcha! He was sixteen! Ha! Except..

Wasn't it Jennings himself who said that the boy was fifteen? Sooooo? Let's take the boy's age out of it and look at the review of Jennings from Nice Deb:

•Jennings failed to report a case of statutory rape of a *15 year old who confided in him that he had had sex with a much older man at a train station. Jennings’ did express concern that the boy use a condom.
•Jennings wrote the forward to a book called “Queering Elementary Education”. Bonus: Another familiar face wrote one of the endorsements on the book jacket—Bill Ayers. Ayers, of course, is the former Weather Underground bomber, an
Obama pal, and ghostwriter, who worked with him on school related boards in Chicago during the nineties.
•Jennings and his organization, GLSEN sponsored conferences where homosexual activists instructed children age 14 and up on how to perform homosexual acts. How bad was it? When a recording from one of these conferences became public, the firestorm that ensued became known as “fistgate”.
•Jennings in 1997 reportedly praised Harry Hay of the North American Association for Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which promotes the legalization of sexual abuse of young boys by older men. You can read the transcript of Jennings asserting that “one of the people that’s always inspired me is Harry Hay”, here.
•Jennings has a history of ridiculing and demeaning Christians: Reportedly said of Christians—“ F___ ‘em” while speaking at Marble Collegiate Church in March of 2000.

So, when Media Matters can debunk the above I'll give Jennings another look. For now, he doesn't belong anywhere near schoolchildren.

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