AUDIO: NC high school teacher angrily lectures student on “disrespecting” Obama

Apparently, according to this pro-Obama teacher at North Rowan High School in North Carolina, not only were people “arrested for saying bad things about President Bush” but Mitt Romney does not deserve the same respect as President Obama in terms of how discussions on him should go … because he is not the President:

After criticizing Mitt Romney, a North Carolina high school teacher yelled at a student for asking a question about Barack Obama, telling him that he could be arrested for criticizing Barack Obama.

Sarah Campbell wrote at theΒ Salisbury PostΒ Saturday that the heated exchange began “with a classroom conversation about a recent news story detailing Republican presidential candidate Mitt RomneyΒ allegedly bullying a classmate in prep school. It turns into a heated, sometimes confrontational debate.”

β€œDidn’t Obama bully someone though,” one student asked, referring to an incident in Obama’s memoir, β€œDreams from My Father,” in which Obama admitted pushing a girl when other students called him her boyfriend.

β€œStop, no, because there is no comparison,” the teacher said.

According to the teacher, Romney is β€œrunning for president,” and therefore does not deserve the same respect as Obama, who “is the president.”

β€œListen, let me tell you something, you will not disrespect the president of the United States in this classroom,” she said.

She went on to tell the student that he “will not” say what he wants about Obama, and asserted that it was a crime to “slander” the President.Β  The student responded by recalling that many spoke ill of George W. Bush while he was President, and such arrests would violate the Constitutional right to free speech.

The teacher asked: β€œDo you realize that people were arrested for saying things bad about Bush?”

But Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College, told the Post he had β€œno idea” what the teacher was talking about when she claimed people “were arrested for saying bad things about Bush.”

[…]

Bitzer went on to say the student was more correct than the teacher.

β€œHer point about not being able to say anything β€˜disrespectful’ about the president does fly in the face of the First Amendment, and while she may wish to enforce that edict about β€˜respecting’ the president, the issue seems to have gotten personal on her part,” he added, saying that her attempt to make a point seems to have been overshadowed by her personal feelings toward Obama.

“Granted, she apparently tried to ensure that a respectful conversation was had about the president, but she seems to have taken things a bit too personally β€” and it appears the student was set on making a confrontation in the guise of raising a question about β€˜who bullied who β€” both Romney and Obama’,” he wrote.

Bitzer said the teacher was a β€œbit overboard in being rude towards the student,” but added that the student “was also trying to pick a fight.”

The school system said it could not comment on the incident publicly, but said the social studies teacher – who was not identified – is still working for the district.

I listened to the audio. I think it’s pretty obvious the student was not “trying to pick a fight” nor was the teacher trying to encourage “respectful” conversation. It’s not very long into the audio after the student asks about Obama allegedly being a bully in response to the teacher’s assertion about the “Romney bullying” that the teacher gets extremely agitated and starts yelling about respecting the office of the Presidency, etc. Β  From that point on, it was a test of wills and clearly the teacher was determined it would only be a one-sided discussion. Her voice sounds far off to start with, but around the 3:13 mark it sounds like she has walked directly up to the student to confront him about how he will not “disrespect the President” – when all he was doing was offering counterpoints to what she was asserting about Romney.

But hey, don’t take my word for it. Listen for yourself:

A shorter version of her point: I can and will be critical of Republican presidential nominees, but if you counter my criticisms with similar criticisms about President Obama, it is “disrespectful” and you can “get arrested for it.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard liberals assert that public school teachers should be allowed to discuss current events, including political events, in the classroom in an effort to assist students with the “critical thinking skills” they will need later on in life. The point is understandable, yet at the same time I’ve always pushed back on it because of my concern that the political leanings of the teachers, who I assume are mostly liberal Democrats, will eventually come out in some way. It’s pretty clear from this audio that not only is the teacher a liberal Democrat and strongly supportive of Obama, but that the only “critical thinking” going on in the “discussion” is her being highly annoyed of any thinking that includes believing you have the right to criticize the current President of the United States without fear of being verbally beat down by a teacher you should feel you should be able to trust, much less being “arrested” by the feds.

Sound familiar in this state? It should.

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