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High school tweeter Emma Sullivan, citing free speech and Gandhi, will defy her high school principal and not apologize to Governor Sam Brownback for the supposedly hurtful things she twittered to her (then-60) Twitter followers, implying she spoke back harshly to the governor, called him out publicly for his views, and suggested he blows — a lot.
None of which, we suppose, is true. Or (until the governor’s director of communications demanded an apology) widely known — whether true or not.
The Kansas senior was instructed by her high school principal, Karl Krawitz, to turn into him — by MONDAY, young lady!!! — an apology to the governor, to the group that organized the Capitol tour, to her high school district, and to her high school.
Not gonna happen, Karl.
She will not apologize, Ms Sullivan tells the Associated Press as quoted in the NY Daily News.
Over the weekend, Sullivan received a huge swell of support. Her Twitter account grew from a few dozen followers (and updates about the movie ‘Twilight’) to more than 3200 followers as of Sunday night and a quote from Gandhi.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win,” she wrote.
Your move, Principal Krawitz. There’s still (barely) time to salvage your reputation here, with a contrite “I think we’ve all learned something from this…” message to the governor’s office. Or you continue your current embarrassing behavior by assigning detention or something. We’re waiting.
(support Emma Sullivan on Twitter at @emmakate988)
55 Comments
Proud of Emma Sullivan. This type of stepping on our freedom of speech must stop. Let this be the start of it. BTW, I detest Brownback.
Still time for the principal to be a hero here, although the grains are running through the hourglass pretty quickly.
I left this on your FB post, but I will repeat here. Brave young lady! Good for her! I will be really eager to hear the principal’s reaction.
What the Frack! I may have found the internet bully who snitched on Emma. “Brownback hires $150,000 information technology chief from Florida, but questions arise about qualifications”. Obviously Sherienne being a teabag bitch is too dumb to “search the Internet”, herself. The Governor and his fellow teabags hired an out of state teabagger for a $150K.
Jim Mann is the new State Information Technology Architect. This IT Architect is also incompetent, apparently with some previous teabag problems. Hey Mr. Jim Mann, Remember what they say in school. “Snitches get stitches”.
Emma claims a threat against her regarding her college application. We will see.
Brownback should apologize. He’s the one who sucks.
sorry for posting this on multiple blogs but all should be aware
The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.
The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday. The bill was drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing.
Go Emma!
Applauding Emma!
And Teddy, what a great and humiliating call out of a write up aimed at the principal. Embarrassing these authoritarian bullies will be their undoing. They bring it on to themselves. We bring it!
Frank33: Thanks for the info about Jim Mann. If the governor of my state hired a dimwit with lousy credentials from OUT OF STATE to work for the state, especially at an inflated salary, he’d get called on it, quick!
Regards Emma: Brownback could prove himself more than a trite twit by apologizing for the childish behavior of his staff and demanding that the principal apologize to her. But wait, he’s Tea Party GOP. He can’t be other than trite. Glad I don’t live there.
For what it’s worth, this Michigander will call Senator Levin’s office tomorrow morning. Again, for what it’s worth.
Just when you think Capitol Hill Democrats can’t get any more craven, they do. History will render a harsh judgment upon them.
emmakate988 Emma Sullivan
I’ve decided not to write the letter but I hope this opens the door for average citizens to voice their opinion & to be heard! #goingstrong
Crap-ass school administrators like Karl Krawitz were the reason why, some 40 years ago, I decided to go to law school.
Right on Emma!!!
You tell those assholes that you’ll apologize right after they apologize for all their policies that cause real harm to real people every day.
Until then, call them out for what they are.
Young folks like this and those at the #Occupy sites give me so much hope for the future. Thank you for that.
What the Frack 2.0 Apparently this moron was fired the day after he was hired. I am confused. This may require some investigatin’. I may have to watch an episode of “The Rockford Files”.
What I haven’t figured out here is why Krawitz thinks he has jurisdiction or authority to force an apology. The courts have made it clear that students have free speech rights, even on school grounds, except perhaps if the operation of the school is disrupted. That would not seem to apply here, so Krawitz looks like he’s just begging for a civil-liberties lawsuit that could only end in a well-earned shameful embarrassment for him.
Plus, the governor owes her a direct apology for snooping on her tweets. What kind of governor does that anyway??? WTF??? It’s hard to imagine how anyone that thin skinned could move up the political ranks to governor. I’m sure he’s heard, and dished out, much much worse than what Emma did.
Especially when she’s a legal adult, which she is.
Yeah, that’s the thing I’ve been having a hard time figuring out too. The only thing I can think of is that they’re making it a part of her “curriculum” where if she doesn’t do it, then her grade suffers.
(support Emma Sullivan on Twitter at @emmakate988)
Should’ve added though; if that is how they’re legitimizing it, that’s not right either. That’s singling out one student and giving her different standards upon which to receive her grade.
I’m like you EDP, I just don’t get how he has any authority to force her to do this.
Good for her! Thanks for the update Teddy.
I’m just bet that Krawitz’s claim is either (a) “student free speech is too disruptive to tolerate” or (b) “Columbine changed everything.”
The idea that adolescents are human beings entitled to at least some constitutional standing, and are neither animal companions nor property, has never been fully accepted in this country. Over the years, I’ve run across a number of otherwise intelligent and highly-educated men and women who have gone into a spluttering rage over Tinker v. Des Moines School District.
The pricipal should read Tinker v. Des Moines, 393 US 503 [1969]. In this landmark case the Supreme Court found that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
It’s always the teacher’s fault if government disapproves of anything in a mile radius around a school event. Obviously, the governor wanted the principle to do something and at least he didn’t blame the teacher. What’s the principle suppose to do when the governor calls him on the rug.
I think all the blame goes on the governor. What kind of political blow hard demands some little school girl get hers because she didn’t bow to him like a king.
Good for the Miss Sullivan for her strength of character and her bravery in standing up to the cruel hand of the Republican party that exclusively serves the One Percent. Good for her.
There is no distinction between the two parties. Congresspersons of both parties are corrupt to the core. Anyone who feels otherwise is delusional and not worth giving the time of day.
Where are the graphic artists on this?
We need t-shirts and caps, pronto!
The governor owes the people of Kansas an apology for snooping on the private communication of young students. It almost sounds like he’s a sexual pervert.
Exactly. Of course, that may not have occurred to him, being as he seems to be a fascist bully-boy.
OT. Just back from Occupy City of Brotherly Love. As of 7 pm, there had been no police action to enforce the 5 pm deadline for eviction.
Following the Philadelphia Quaker pacifist tradition as exemplified by William Penn, the decision was made not to be confrontational with Mayor Nutter’s Gestapo when they enter Dilworth Plaza to dismantle the encampment. The decision was also made not to assist the Gestapo as they do their dirty work.
Derrick Sontag is State Teabag Director and husband of Sherienne Jones-Sontag-Kubler-Ross-Teabagger-Bitch. Derrick is an art lover. He loved that Governor Brownbutt looted the State’s Arts budget, so the KochRoaches can pay less taxes.
Derrick prefers paintings of Dogs Playing Poker, rather than Picasso. Look out Kansas Public Broadcasting. You are on Derrick’s list.
Emma may be an adult but she’s a Vaginal-American. My understanding is that Penile-Kansans believe they can tell women what to do about anything, anytime, anywhere.
What ever happened to the GOP’s fear of Big Government? I bet the MSM won’t ask what the GOP Presidential candidates think about this big government intrusion on personal liberty.
Emma Sullivan has 4,430 followers on Twitter as I type this.
But they should, and it should be framed exactly that way.
4,431 as of right now!!1
Teddy, I appreciate this post and all you do, but I just don’t like this ‘Vaginal-American’ business. What’s the point of it? Why do you want to identify women by their private parts? I think it would be extremely rude to refer to her that way to her face and she may well be a reader of FDL. Why not think of her person as a whole being, a woman?
Goes to show you how just one person can make a difference in other peoples lives.
Yee Haa! for Emma!
I was kind of hoping for one of those non-apology apologies, something like ‘I’m sorry you’re a thin-skinned, self-centered, mean-spirited excuse for a human being’.
If Brownback doesn’t want to come out of this looking really bad, he needs to apologize to Emma for reading her mail, and then give the principal a good chewing out for not observing her 1st amendment rights. It would also be a good idea to “accept the resignation” of Sherienne Jones-Sontag, but since she’s the wife of the head of the Kansas Americans for Prosperity and the Koch bros. are headquartered in KS, that won’t happen.
In addition to putting it in other posts, please put it up as a diary mswinkle. This is critically important and should get it’s own space. From my perspective, this should dominate FDL tomorrow.
Ummm, texas… twitter is a public accomodation, like a blog. If you put it out there, it’s available for the world to read. It’s exactly as if she wrote that out and put it up on a public bulletin board, except that Twitter is more easily searched.
Governor Brownbush comes out of this looking bad because he’s expending State resources to monitor internet communications about himself. Okay, having his communications chief demand an apology or leak the posting back to her school authorities makes him look like a douche, too. But I knew Sam when he was a student at K-State, and he was an ambitious douche then, too. So, there’s nothing new to see here.
@emmakate988 now over 5,020 followers. Take that, M’r F’n Brownback
Why aren’t you upset by the “Penile-American” designation?
Anyway – Teddy is expressing the ‘viewpoint’ of the teabagger/evangelical male in this country as regards to our womenfolk and their “proper place” which is barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen with their mouths shut. You should be able to understand that from the way the comment is written.
Teddy himself, OTOH, is a decent human being who believes that every person is a whole being – whoever they are.
I was going to write, “Well, he’s a school principal, after all.” but my own high school principal (60 years ago) was a decent, humane, honorable man. That was during the McCarthy years, and I’ve always wondered why our library had a copy of Mein Kampf, but not one book that explained what socialism was nor what Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, or Stalin actually said about anything. Guess they figured fascism was not a threat.
WTF? Is she supposed to sit in the corner and think about what she’s done? Who the fuck is the governor to tell her so anyway? Damn!
Tweet beats twit any day. :-)
Once upon a time in America:
Constitution
Bill of Rights
First Amendment
“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech….”
What quaint, obsolete ideas which have outlived their political usefulness.
Now:
One people!
One country!
One leader!
One mind!
Sieg heil, mein Fuhrer!
When that pill-popping gasbag Rush Limbaugh starts trashing her on his show, then she will have really won. I give it a few hours….
If she was not already an activist, she is now. Good on her!
Emma Sullivan’s sister Olivia is also awesome.
http://www.kansascity.com/2011/11/27/3289010/brownback-tweet-lessons-learned.html
I keep hearing about these new laws when it nearly too late or already too late. They sure are busy beavers up there, taking away our rights.
Makes me wonder how many have already become law that we’ve never heard of at all. They’ve completely changed parliamentary procedure esp since Oilbomber got in there on his lies.
He makes Nixon look like a wide-eyed innocent as far as secrecy. Of course, since we don’t have a free press anymore………
Like Ellsberg said, “All the stuff Nixon was impeached for would be legal today”
Its’ OK, GMA has the latest on the Kim Kardashian breakup
There is an epidemic of bullying in schools and in society, much of it from Teabaggers. Shawnee Mission East High School does not tolerate this behavior. Governor Brownbutt has been reported to the authorities for his very inappropriate behavior. However his Press Spokesperson, Sherienne Jones-Sontag-Malkin-Coulter-Cruella-Deville should also be reported.
http://twitpic.com/7l0zrg
I’m loving this young woman. I hope she has 1,000,000 Twitter followers by the weekend.
Your Deep Concern is duly noted.
I think Emma Sullivan’s tweet was sort of dumb and gratuitous, but I sure am glad she won’t be writing a letter of apology for it. I hope she won’t get a lot of hostility from people over this, but she seems like a person who wouldn’t let that bother her anyway. Congratulations, Emma.
Brownback apologizes to teen tweeter: ‘My staff over-reacted’
news.yahoo.com
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is apologizing to the teen who insulted him over Twitter last week. “My staff over-reacted to this tweet, and for that I apologize. Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms,” Brownback said in a statement to Yahoo! News on Monday.
Heh. If you can’t get a demanded apology, better waste no time in giving one. Why can’t we deposit all these fascist bastards on an island and force them to deal only with each other?