You're not a gang of bullies trying to start a fight.

Context again.

You're not a gang of bullies trying to start a fight.

Has that been firmly established that's what was happening at Live Oak High School, Mike?

As I've written, such conjecture fills in the gaps of the story-behind-the-story and helps this episode to make better sense, but apart from a couple of speculative blogs I haven't seen a media report stating these kids are bullies or known troublemakers. (And I have looked, with a number of different search engines and phrases.)

But for the sake of argument, let's say these guys ARE troublemakers, and they wore those clothes for all the wrong reasons. Are such clothes really bait? And if so, do the other students have to rise to it?

We are supposed to be teaching tolerance and understanding, after all, and the principle should be extended to tolerating -- assuming this is the case -- disrespectful idiot thugs who are otherwise causing no harm.

And, just for sake of argument, let's assume I show up at school that day and find myself surrounded by 300 kids decked out in the Mexican flag. If this is indeed a politically charged topic at that school and a powder keg of violence -- otherwise, why would we be concerned about four punks and their gringo t-shirts? -- might I not find such an exhibition to be unnerving, uncomfortable, and possibly even a little threatening? Could I be subjected to peer pressure as to why I'm not wearing green, white and red? And is any of that the school's responsibility to address?

This leaves me to wonder if there's something wrong with me that I'm not outraged more often, if the word is just overused by journalists, or if there are people who are indeed so easily outraged.

Thom, I actually find the situation to be quite often the opposite.

There are great injustices that occur all around us, greeted only by the metaphorical sound of crickets, and I wonder WHERE'S the outrage?

I made an observation years ago when I worked for the City of Edmonton. City Council could seemingly spend hours arguing over the cost of $700 lawn mowers, but pass budget documents for $2.1 million public works without batting an eye. I concluded they could understand the lawn mowers: it was a recognizable price point, a tangible object that could be imagined. Other massive projects with their complexity and sky-high costs became abstractions and statistics. They exist beyond the realm of understanding.

I can only conclude that outrage today for much of society works on a similar scale. Small things we can get our heads and hands around, yeah, let's march! The big stuff, the huge stuff, the things that REALLY matter, white noise and our eyes gloss over.

Thankfully, there are a few guys on the board, like Victor and Mike O'B among others, who are not prone to that failing.

And congratulatons on your 2500th post!

It's because funeral services are usually left alone out of decency is the reason why those pieces of trash are staging protests at them - in order to garner the most attention.

So turn off the cameras. Close the notebooks. Ignore them. Eventually they'll realize their efforts at being provocative are failing to provoke and they will decamp to other means to deliver their message.

Matthew, why are you whispering?? :0)

Am I?

I've gone back to edit a couple of messages on this thread -- there' s always a typo or a extra word that gets missed, or a phrase that can be made clearer -- and the font came up huge when I reposted, so I zapped it back to what looked like normal on this screen.

Too much zap?

Editing Note: I edited this one to see if it happened again.

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I find it unlikely that five kids, who all sit together during break, coincidentally decided to all wear US flag clothing on Cinco de Mayo. Five kids throughout the school wearing US flag clothing on the same day? Sure, I can see that. Five kids who all hang out together? I don't think it is inappropriate to suspect that it was coordinated.

Can the others say that?

Randy,

I say we appoint Mike O'B an honorary Canadian and get him something nice to wear from the HBC.

Maybe we can get Al Cook and the rest of the north of the border gang to help put together a proper CARE package with some Smarties, a couple of Coffee Crisps, some Tim Hortons coffee, etc.