A school board in Pennsylvania voted unanimously Monday to cancel a speaking event featuring actor Maulik Pancholy — Jack Donaghy’s assistant Jonathan in “30 Rock” — who had been scheduled to speak at a middle school next month about bullying and what can be done to stop it. Mr. Pancholy is gay, you see, and the Cumberland Valley School District board was just really, really worried that he might accidentally spread his “lifestyle” all over Mechanicsburg’s Mountain View Middle School. After all, speaking against bullying might, ummmm, violate a district policy against “political” events at schools, yeah, that’s it.
You will be glad to know that sane folks in the community are up in arms, or at least petitions, over the cancellation, and the New York Times reports (gift link) that about 1,000 people so far have signed on to a drive to reinstate the event. Pretty good in a town of 9,000 souls.
I didn’t immediately recognize Pancholy by name, but the Times reminds us that he
played the obsequious assistant to Alec Baldwin’s character on the TV show “30 Rock” and voiced Baljeet in the cartoon “Phineas and Ferb.” He is also an author who has written children’s books, including one called The Best at It [Wonkette-gets-a-cut-link] about a gay Indian American boy named Rahul and his experience dealing with bullying in a small Midwest town.
It sounds like a pretty neat book, with inspiration from a wise grandfather and a good ol’ all-American plot about giving it your all and overcoming adversity, so of course the Moms For Christofascism members of the school board would be upset.
At the school board meeting Monday, board member Bud Schaffner explained why Pancholy shouldn’t speak to middle schoolers about the dangers of bullying and how to address it: “He labels himself as an activist who is proud of his lifestyle and I don’t think that should be imposed on our students,” said Schaffner, an alleged adult.
And then there’s this bold fresh sample of Murrican decency:
Kelly Potteiger, a newly elected board member and a member of the local chapter of the right-wing activist group Moms for Liberty, voiced concerns that Mr. Pancholy would discuss his children’s books, which deal with the bullying faced by its L.G.B.T.Q. characters, or his own experience with “anti-bullying and empathy and inclusion.”
Well those are all clearly very divisive things these days! Empathy can lead you astray if you emphasize with evil people, like fascists. And inclusion makes bridges fall down, as any fool or Fox News viewer (ah, but we repeat ourselves) knows. Ms. Potteiger went on to explain that
“Again, it’s not discriminating against his lifestyle, that’s his choice, but it’s him speaking about it. He did say that that’s not the topic, but that’s what his books are about.”
Well sure, your gay lifestyle people may say they won’t talk to middle schoolers about Judy Garland, Subaru Outback cars (hmmm, Outback?), dressing well, or other dangerous aspects of their lifestyle, but there’s just no telling. Maybe a gay person might start out explaining that bullying is a harmful expression of dominance, and sometimes rooted in the bully’s anxiety and irrational fears which they project onto the object of their bullying. But before you know it, they’ might also start explaining ANAL FISTING, with explicit sex diagrams on the dry-erase board. Best to be safe.
Lest you get the impression these homophobic bigots are some sort of bigots, the bigots clarified that they aren’t trying to protect kids from the gay; they’re protecting kids from politics.
Bigoted Bud Schaffner the bigot told the Times that heavens no, everyone misunderstood what he’d said about Pancholy’s “lifestyle,” because he really meant he was worried about Pancholy’s activism, yeah, that’s what he meant.
“The fact that he is a self-proclaimed political activist is what we object to,” Mr. Shaffner said.
On his website, Mr. Pancholy calls himself an “activist” who works on social justice causes. But Mr. Shaffner and other board members cast his work as political and said they worried his speech could violate a district policy barring political events.
You know how it is — you let someone saying bully is bad, and before you know it the kids have seized the means of production and established a dictatorship of the proletariat, plus pronouns.
Happily, Trisha Comstock, who has two kiddos in the district and started the online petition, knows when someone’s pissing on her boots and telling her it’s an attempt to avoid political indoctrination.
She scoffed at the notion Pancholy’s presentation would break any rules by turning into a big Biden rally or anything.
“There is no political agenda,” Ms. Comstock said in a phone interview. “He is not trying to pass policies or change minds or anything like that.”
“They cloaked it as ‘We want to keep politics out of school’ when they clearly knew it had nothing to do with politics,” she added.
Ms. Comstock added that if you took that logic any more broadly, you might as well ban Mothers Against Drunk Driving, because isn’t fighting drunk driving also a kind of activism?
She added that the board’s views don’t reflect those of the community, “And that’s why our community is outraged right now. This isn’t who we are.”
Or rather, it’s who the people who voted in low-turnout elections and took control of the school board are. Given the record of Pennsylvania voters telling Moms Vs. Liberty to GTFO in recent elections, we’d like to suggest that Ms. Comstock and her friends check out the grassroots organizing tools at Run for Something, for tips on how to run for local office. That school board needs them.
And hey, how about YOUR school board?
[NYT (gift link) / Run For Something]
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