Let the overreactions begin

From The Chicago Sun-Times:

One violent, profanity-laced English essay later and Allen Lee's future with the Marine Corps appears to be over.

Because of pending criminal charges stemming from his essay, Lee's recruiter told him Friday evening that the Marine Corps has discharged him from his contract, said Sgt. Luis R. Agostini, spokesman for the Marine Corps Recruiting Station Chicago.

''Basically he is no longer an applicant to become a Marine,'' Agostini said.

Police Thursday released portions of an essay used to charge a Cary-Grove High School student with disorderly conduct, leaving several experts puzzled at an arrest based on such schoolwork.

Asked to write about whatever he wanted in a creative writing class, would-be Marine and honors student Lee, 18, described a violent dream in which he shot people and then "had sex with the dead bodies.''

But then he immediately dismissed the idea as a mere joke, writing, "not really, but it would be funny if I did.''

A second disorderly count accuses Lee of alarming first-year teacher Nora Capron by writing that "as a teacher, don't be surprised on [sic] inspiring the first CG shooting,'' an apparent reference to Cary-Grove High.

Lee said Thursday he was "completely shocked'' to be arrested Tuesday for his essay, especially because written instructions told kids not to "censor'' what they wrote.

"In creative writing, you're told to exaggerate,'' said Lee. "It was supposed to be just junk. . . .

"There definitely is violent content, but they're taking it out of context and making it something it isn't.''

"I have no intention of harming anyone,'' said Lee, who has been transferred to an alternative school setting. "I miss school.''

A kid grows up in modern America being fed a steady diet of violent and sexually supercharged movies, television shows, music and video games and then you turn him lose on a creative writing assignment and tell him to be outrageous and what do you expect him to write?

Before Virginia Tech this would have hardly raised an eyebrow, but now it becomes a criminal case and threatens to destroy this kid's future. Educrats displayed a similar inability to distinguish babies from bathwater after the Columbine Massacre when all across the country any young man who had ever come to school in a trench coat was asked to explore the world of homeschooling or distance learning.

I also can't let this tidbit pass without comment:

Bernardine Dohrn, director of Northwestern University's Children and Family Justice Center, laughed when she heard the charge.

"You might want to talk to him, talk to his parents, but the criminal justice system seems to be the last thing you'd want,'' said Dohrn, a former Weatherman leader who lived for years as a fugitive.

For those of you who aren't as old as I am Bernardine Dohrn was a real-life bomb planting, murdering terrorist back in the 1970s. That she gets to sit in an office and be "director of Northwestern University's Children and Family Justice Center" rather than sit on death row and wait for her appointment with a lethal injection is another giant 500 lb. gorilla of a clue that the educational system is seriously fraked up.

A kid whose only crime is regurgitating some of the imagery which he has been steeped in his entire life of reading Frank Miller comic books (sorry, graphic novels) and watching Tales From the Crypt and whose life goal is to serve his country in the Marines gets shafted while an honest-to-goodness terrorist murderess gets tenure and a six-figure salary.

The inmates really are running the asylum.