Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Teacher facing ridiculous backlash, investigation for joke about her class pledging allegiance to Pride flag

Earlier this week, I posted a news brief about a ridiculous controversy regarding a teacher who joked about students pledging allegiance to the Pride flag. Since that time, unfortunately, the controversy has gotten worse:

From The Advocate:

A Southern California teacher is facing backlash online and removal from her classroom after posting a video on TikTok in which she appears to joke about suggesting that her students pledge allegiance to the Pride flag.

 (Kristen) Pitzen tells her story in the video, laughing throughout. 

 “During third period, we have announcements and they do the Pledge of Allegiance. I always tell my class, stand if you feel like it, don’t stand if you feel like it, say the words if you want, you don’t have to say the words So, my class decided to stand but not say the words. Totally fine,” she said. Pitzen then explained that there actually isn’t an American flag in the classroom because she took it down during the pandemic since it made her “uncomfortable.” When a student commented to Pitzen that it was weird they were pledging allegiance without an actual flag, she jokingly suggested they pledge to the flag they did have in the classroom.

As The Advocate pointed in the article, THAT was the story. No student pledged allegiance to the Pride flag.  Pitzen merely made a joke. But because of some right-wing post on Twitter, she got attacked

This post below:



According to Out magazine:

Conservative backlash was quick and fierce, with even out, former director of national intelligence Richard Grenell posting his disgust to Twitter. After questioning why parents would let their children be taught by "someone they don’t know," he went on to write he’d like to "talk to people who think this is good." . . . Another person posted to Facebook, saying that Pitzen "is an absolute disgrace to teachers" and warned the teacher to keep her own "views and political stances out of the classroom." 

Pitzen has now been removed as a teacher while the district is investigating the situation. Also, The Advocate said, she has deleted all of her social media accounts.

The irony is that at pretty much the same time, the Supreme Court of Virginia upheld a ruling by a lower court which reinstated a high school gym teacher after he was suspended for saying that he would not refer to trans students by their preferred pronouns. The lower court found that the school violated his free speech rights. 

This is probably the single most inane controversy happening thus yet in 2021  An idiotic conservative twitter posts a video making accusations and assertions which no one in their right mind would take seriously except for a bunch of homophobic kooks and the occasional Log Cabin Republican kiss ass. Because of that, what looks an affirming teacher has to deal with possible removal from her professional while dodging vulgarities uttered by fools who have nothing better to do in order to deal with their possible inner turmoil of sexual orientation  

If only certain people used their common sense and intellect with as much fervor as they pretend to be patriotic Americans. 

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