The new Moschino Barbie is a huge hit (currently sold-out!), and its commercial is breaking boundaries by featuring a young boy in it.
“Moschino Barbie is so fierce!” the boy screams as he and two female friends laud the doll, done up in designer Jeremy Scott’s sleek glamour.
(Read more from “‘Moschino Barbie Is so Fierce!’: Boy Stars in New Barbie Commercial” HERE)
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The husband of a cop killed on 9/11 returned his wife’s posthumous Woman of the Year award to Glamour after the magazine gave the same honor last week to Caitlyn Jenner.
James Smith told The Post he yanked the award off the shelf in his Long Island home dedicated to his wife, Moira, and FedExed it back to the magazine.
Moira, who died at the age of 38 after rushing into the south tower, was honored by the magazine a month after her death . . .
“I was shocked and saddened to learn that Glamour has just named Bruce Jenner ‘Woman of the Year,’ ” Smith wrote in his scathing missive of the former Olympic track star and Kardashian reality-show patriarch.
“Was there no woman in America, or the rest of the world, more deserving than this man?” Smith wrote. “At a time when we have women in the armed forces fighting and dying for our country, heroic doctors fighting deadly diseases, women police and firefighters putting their lives on the line for total strangers, brave women overcoming life threatening diseases … the list of possibilities goes on … is this the best you could do?” (Read more from “Husband of 9/11 Hero Sends Award Back Over Bruce Jenner” HERE)
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Georgetown University will rename two buildings named for school presidents who organized the sale of Jesuit-owned slaves to help pay off campus debt in the 1830s, the university’s president announced.
Mulledy Hall, a new student dormitory named for the president who authorized the sale of about 272 slaves to a Louisiana plantation owner in 1838, will be called Freedom Hall until a permanent name is chosen.
McSherry Hall, which houses a meditation center and was named for another university president who served as an adviser on the slave sale, will be called Remembrance Hall until it is renamed.
In a letter e-mailed to the Georgetown community Saturday evening, President John J. DeGioia said he was changing the names based on a recommendation he received Friday from his Working Group on Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation. DeGioia appointed the panel of 16 administrators, faculty and students in September to examine slavery-related sites on campus . . .
The announcement came amid weeks of heightened racial tensions at some U.S. universities, including a demonstration Thursday in Georgetown’s Red Square. A reported 250 Georgetown students and other activists gathered to show solidarity with students protesting the failure of administrators at the University of Missouri and Yale University to take complaints about racism and racial incidents on their campuses seriously. (Read more from “University to Rename Two Buildings That Reflect School’s Ties to Slavery” HERE)
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Starbucks announced Wednesday that its Seattle stores are officially “Safe Places” for members of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) community.
Partnering with the Seattle Police Department’s “Safe Place” program, 97 of Starbucks’ stores in the Seattle area will finish specific employee training early next week on “how to respond to and engage with LGBT victims of violence and effectively report hate crimes to police.”
“Safe Place,” started by openly gay Seattle Police Officer Jim Ritter, is a campaign against bias crimes. Since May, Officer Ritter has spoken with 650 businesses across Seattle, all of whom have supported the campaign, displaying rainbow-badge decals in their windows . . .
Starbucks may serve as precedent for other large companies to support the initiative as well. With 2,000 extra pairs of eyes, Ritter is convinced the program will help “put bullies on notice that they can’t get away with victimizing people.”
Starbucks has shown its support for the LGBT community in other ways recently, raising a gay pride flag at its Seattle headquarters and airing a commercial featuring contestants from “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Bianca Del Rio and Adore Delano. (Read more from “Starbucks to Become an LGBT ‘Safe Place'” HERE)
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Parental concerns about student privacy have been rising in recent years amid the growing use by schools, school districts and states use technology to collect mountains of detailed information on students. Last year, a controversial $100 million student data collection project funded by the Gates Foundation and operated by a specially created nonprofit organization called inBloom was forced to shut down because of these concerns, an episode that served as a warning to parents about just how much information about their children is being shared without their knowledge.
Here’s an important piece on the issue by Leonie Haimson and Cheri Kiesecker. Haimson was a leading advocate against the inBloom project who then, along with Rachael Stickland, created the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, a national alliance of parents and advocates defending the rights of parents and students to protect their data. Kiesecker is a member of the coalition.
Remember that ominous threat from your childhood, “This will go down on your permanent record?” Well, your children’s permanent record is a whole lot bigger today and it may be permanent. Information about your children’s behavior and nearly everything else that a school or state agency knows about them is being tracked, profiled and potentially shared.
During a February 2015 congressional hearing on “How Emerging Technology Affects Student Privacy,” Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin asked the panel to “provide a summary of all the information collected by the time a student reaches graduate school.” Joel Reidenberg, director of the Center on Law & Information Policy at Fordham Law School, responded:
“Just think George Orwell, and take it to the nth degree. We’re in an environment of surveillance, essentially. It will be an extraordinarily rich data set of your life.”
(Read more from “The Astonishing Amount of Data Being Collected About Your Children” HERE)
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Many of us remember passing a love note to our first crush, but for one Hillsborough fourth grader, a note had school administrators using phrases like “sexual harassment” . . .
“[He told his crush] how she wears the same uniform and how her eyes sparkled like diamonds,” his mother said.
But soon, she says other students found out about the note and started teasing her son about wanting to see the little girl naked.
“That’s when the principal proceeded to tell me that it wasn’t appropriate that he was writing the note and that if he writes another note, they are going to file sexual harassment charges on my 9-year-old,” the mom said.
Hillsborough school district said they did not threaten to involve authorities. But they did say the boy wrote more than one note and that the notes were unwanted, so that borders on harassment. (Read more from “‘Love Note’ Lands Fourth Grade Student in Principal’s Office” HERE)
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A federal discrimination complaint has been filed on behalf of a [Texas] educator who says she was wrongly terminated for refusing to address a 6-year-old girl as a transgender boy, the teacher’s attorneys said Tuesday.
Madeline Kirksey, of Houston, who worked at the Children’s Lighthouse Learning Center location on Clay Road, was fired Nov. 3 after she would not agree to treat the child as a male and call the child by a new male name, according to a copy of the filing with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Attorney Andy Taylor pointed to Kirksey’s protected class as a black female over 40 who holds religious convictions. “All of those rights were not vindicated but destroyed,” Taylor said.
Taylor represented the plaintiffs who challenged the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, which was originally passed by the city council but was repealed by Houston voters last week. Taylor is joined in Kirksey’s case by attorney Briscoe Cain. Kirksey’s pastor also attended and spoke at a morning news conference at a Galleria-area hotel.
Reached by phone Tuesday, Jamie Izaks, a spokesman for the Children’s Lighthouse Learning Centers, said Kirksey was not fired because of the matter relating to the transgender student. He said he could not comment on matters related to employment. (Read more from “Teacher Fired for Refusing to Address Girl, 6, as Transgender Boy” HERE)
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At least in Florida, they fire teachers for this kind of nonsense. In Los Angeles or New York, the school district would pay to have them binge-watch the reality show in case they get to run a classroom again. This time, a substitute teacher has been “banned” from working in the Collier County public school district for showing a class clips from a reality television show called “Naked and Afraid” . . .
Collier County Public Schools has banned a substitute teacher for showing a partially nude reality show to second graders.
Hours after the substitute showed Naked and Afraid in a computer lab class, she was told to go home. The incident is under investigation and the teacher is banned from working at every school in the district. …
That would be an interesting explanation, to be sure. What possible explanation could there be? The district refused to identify the teacher, so we may never get her side of the story, as WINK reporter Christina Lusby hoped to do. Any valid explanation would likely involve stupidity, chemical influence, or both … which may be another reason that the district would prefer to keep the press from finding the teacher. They might have to answer questions about their hiring practices. (Read more from “Great Moments in Public Education: Teacher Shows Nudist Show in Class… to Second Graders” HERE)
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On Oct. 4, 1924, at the dedication of the monument to the American Expeditionary Forces in Washington, D.C., President Calvin Coolidge stated: “They did not regard it as a national or personal opportunity for gain or fame or glory, but as a call to sacrifice for the support of humane principles and spiritual ideals. … If anyone doubts the depth and sincerity of the attachment of the American people to their institutions and Government, if anyone doubts the sacrifices which they have been willing to make in behalf of those institutions and for what they believe to be the welfare of other nations, let them gaze upon this monument and other like memorials that have been reared in every quarter of our broad land. Let them look upon the representative gatherings of our veterans, and let them remember that America has dedicated itself to the service of God and man.”
Armistice Day was changed to Veterans Day in 1954 to honor all who have served defending the United States. In 1958, President Eisenhower placed soldiers in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from WWII and the Korean War.
In 1984, President Ronald Reagan placed a soldier from the Vietnam War in the tomb. DNA test later identified him as pilot Michael Blassie, a graduate of St. Louis University High School, 1966, and the U.S. Air Force Academy, 1970. Flying an A-37B Dragonfly, he was shot down near An Loc, South Vietnam. In 1998, Michael Blassie was reburied at Jefferson Memorial Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.
On Nov. 11, 1921, President Harding stated: “On the threshold of eternity, many a soldier, I can well believe, wondered how his ebbing blood would color the stream of human life, flowing on after his sacrifice … I can sense the prayers of our people. … Let me join in that prayer. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come.” . . .
President Dwight Eisenhower broadcast from the White House for the American Legion’s Back-to-God Program, Feb. 7, 1954: “As a former soldier, I am delighted that our veterans are sponsoring a movement to increase our awareness of God in our daily lives. In battle, they learned a great truth – that there are no atheists in the foxholes. They know that in time of test and trial, we instinctively turn to God for new courage and peace of mind. All the history of America bears witness to this truth. Out of faith in God, and through faith in themselves as His children, our forefathers designed and built this Republic. …” (Read more from “Who Gave Us Freedom of Religion, Press, Speech?” HERE)
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President Obama has made history by becoming the first sitting U.S. president to pose for the cover of an LGBT magazine.
Obama is on the cover of Out magazine’s latest Out 100 issue as the publication’s “Ally of the Year.”
“The 44th President of the United States is our Ally of the Year—a president who came to office on a wave of euphoria, appeared to lose momentum halfway through, and has since rallied, helping us secure marriage equality, among other landmark initiatives that are transforming our place in America,” the editors of Out wrote in an article accompanying the cover.
Obama granted a wide-ranging interview to the LGBT publication, weighing in on his administration’s focus on LGBT rights, the “generational difference” in his daughters’ attitudes toward homosexuality and the role the United States could play in challenging the human rights records of more restrictive regimes in Middle Eastern countries.
Obama told the magazine his fight for equality began “from when I was a kid, because my mom instilled in me the strong belief that every person is of equal worth.” (Read more from “Obama ‘Proudly’ Made the Cover of This Disgusting Magazine” HERE)
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