Quote of the Week

"A big hand grabs you by the back of the neck, and you hear a voice saying, "You want to see the books? Okay, here are the books." And it pushes your face right down into all of your cruelties and all of your meanness, all the times that you have been insensitive, intolerant, racist, sexist. It's all there, and you read it. You can't take your nose up off the books. You hate them. You hate who you are. You hate the fact that somebody has been keeping track, just as you feared."

--Ken Kesey
interview, Paris Review, 1994

Anarchy Club

Speaking of anarchy, here's a news item I stumbled on. From the AP wire service --

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A judge ruled yesterday that a 15-year-old sophomore cannot form an anarchy club or wear T-shirts opposing the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan because it would disrupt school.

Katie Sierra was suspended from Sissonville High School for three days for promoting the club. She was also told she could not wear T-shirts with messages such as: "When I saw the dead and dying Afghani children on TV, I felt a newly recovered sense of national security. God Bless America."

In a complaint filed with her mother, Sierra argued her right to free speech was being denied.

Circuit Court Judge James Stucky agreed that free speech is "sacred" but he found that such rights are "tempered by the limitations that they ... not disrupt the educational process."

Sierra said she would pursue the dispute.

"I don't want war. I'm not for Afghanistan," Sierra said. "I think that what we're doing to them is just as bad as what they did to us, and I think it needs to be stopped."

Uh, maybe it's just me, but isn't an anarchy club a contradiction in terms?