Boy Banned from Wearing Obama Mask in Skit

[BuyingThyme]

Boy banned from wearing Obama mask in skit
by Michelle Roberts, The Oregonian
Friday March 13, 2009, 9:20 PM

A mask similar to one President Barack Obama himself wore in a "Saturday Night Live" skit prompted a Portland school principal to ban a boy from performing while wearing it at his elementary school talent show after deciding the rubber likeness of the 44th president was "inappropriate and potentially offensive."

Dru Lechert-Kelly, 11, a fifth-grader at Llewellyn Elementary School in Southeast Portland, decided to dress up like his role model and dance to a popular YouTube song that features an Obama look-alike dancing to a parody called "I Can Do Whatever I Like."

...

"I won't say why it's inappropriate," he (the principal) said. "I'm not saying anything to The Oregonian. Why? Because I don't want to."

...

When asked what he liked most about the new president, Dru said, "He said he would try to change the world and make the economy better."

Lechert pushed his son to tell the whole truth.

"Well, also because somebody told me he has a Wii all hooked up to a huge flatscreen in the White House. That's cool."




http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2009/03/obama_portland_student_talent.html

[Why Syzygy]

1. Shouldn't principals

be required to have a maturity level greater than those they rule?

[RC]

2. Apparently that's not a requirement in elementary schools.

[LisaL]

10. I am not saying anything because I don't want to?

Maybe he has been around six years old for too long.

[Lost in CT]

3. Maybe they considered it Blackface or Minstral?????

[TheDebbieDee]

4. That's what I'm thinking, too.

[madrchsod]

5. a white child putting on a "black mask"..

ya they probably did think that..

[BuyingThyme]

8. Maybe. But I would lean towards it having something to do

with the way some adults react to anything even tangentially political.

[Onceuponalife]

9. I thought "Tropic Thunder"

ended all that nonsense.

[Cronus Protagonist]

6. I bet cash money if she hadn't held it back, it would have been worse

I think she made the right decision. Best of two bad choices.

[pnwmom]

7. I tend to agree. I think there's a danger some parents might have thought

he was making fun of Obama.

[DRoseDARs]

11. So Pres. Obama was being "inappropriate and potentially offensive" by wearing a mask of ... himself?

Mr. President, make this kid's year: Call the principal and tell him to lighten up a little.

[Zywiec]

12. Wonderful suggestion!

It's amazing that there have been masks of all the presidents in the past, but now they are suddenly taboo.

:hi:

[Lost in CT]

13. People like us are to blame... to many would be offended by the wearing

of a mask of a black individual by a white person.... It is a silly double standard we need to stamp out.

[Lost in CT]

14. PresidentObama is considered black... It sis not okay for people considered white

to wear the same mask.... at least that is the PC stance (I know it is supposedly a right wing meme but if this isn't PC madness I don't know what is)