The Grimm Truth

Hold The Presses! Teacher Loves Beer

How appropriate, as the nation's investigative reporters convene in Miami Beach, that a South Florida newspaper uncovers such stunning behavior. A Palm Beach County kindergarten school teacher posted a photograph of herself on her Facebook page with the damning phrase: "P.S. I'm a beer girl."

The Sun-Sentinel Facebook school teacher expose named names. Now everyone knows the identity of the beer girl. Plus, the story Sunday named the music teacher who mused on his Facebook page that some of his students did him proud but "a few that make you think if they are worthy of having the government force us to pay for their educations."

A Broward teacher posted a photo of a "girlfriend in a skimpy outfit." Another teacher posted a Mardi Gras photo, though not the Mardi Gras photo you might expect of a front page investigative piece. There were revelations of a teacher posting "swear words." It was as if the Sun-Sentinel was channeling the Baptist Messenger.

The Sun-Sentinel story envisioned terrible consequences for its tepid findings. "The questionable material could cost them their jobs. While school districts in Palm Beach and Broward counties have no policies on online content, state education officials said they could yank a teacher's certification if his or her online content violated the state ethics code."

It occurred to me that as embarrassing as the story must have been for the teachers whose names were sullied like criminals, it was much more embarrassing for journalists.

I'll do the reporter a favor she didn't extend to the teachers. I won't name her.

No Matter How You Spin It, He Got What Was Coming To Him

The trial was in New York but the Manhattan jury decision Monday spoke, or perhaps grunted, to an oppressive issue that afflicts all Americans. After 10 hours of deliberations, the jury tossed assault charges against a local stockbroker. Christopher Carter had gone a little berserk, acting on an universal urge.

According to the New York Times, Carter, burning up calories in his spinning class, had been pushed over the edge by Stuart Sugarman, another spinner and a clamorous and obnoxious grunter -- we all know the type -- who would punctuate his workouts with very loud exclamations. "Burn it! You go girl!"  Carter, after begging him to muffled it, finally exploded, rushed across the room and tossed Sugarman's stationary bike.

The facts weren't much in dispute. But the jury acquitted Carter. The jurors understood. Sugarman's act of vigilantism was an heroic act. He did it for all of us.'

He did it for me. Last week, in my gym, some middle-aged fellow in a yellow head-band, iPod plugged into his ears, was performing an gyrating overzealous boogaloo dance, singing in that afflicting excessively loud manner prone epidemic among iPodians, while watching himself in the mirror. The dancing Narcissist was performing just a few feet from the weight machine where I was tugging away in quiet resignation, working a body that no one would suspect of steroid abuse.

I thought about assault. I know I wasn't alone. Loathing filled the gym. I know now that, at least in New York, a jury would understand.

One juror told the Times that Sugarman got what was coming to him. "I was like, 'Why must he be obnoxious and disrespectful to others?' "  Said aloud, it sounds like a manifesto for the new millennium.

Dancing With the Hits

    I have nothing new or interesting to say about Jason Taylor. I have no special insight into what's percolating inside the head of Bill Parcells. I've never watching Dancing With the Stars. And if I'm confronted with another Will-Parcells-trade-Taylor? story (with the requisite dancing analogy), I'm afraid my head will explode.

But I need the hits. So I'm asking the readers a question that has long nagged the great philosophers: Which dispute, if left to fester, most threatens the future of our republic: Parcells-versus-Taylor or Clinton-v-Obama?