Any Day Now, Kids Will Be Sipping Martinis in Math Class
Once a week for two months, a Vermont school kid sported a shirt depicting President Bush's head superimposed on the body of a chicken. Just in case the message was unclear, words below the shirt read "Chicken Hawk In Chief." A razor blade, a straw, three lines of cocaine, and a martini were thrown in for good measure. What did school authorities object to? Apparently, the martini and cocaine images were way out of line. Seventh grader Zachery Guiles was undeterred:
After the school official ordered Guiles to turn the shirt inside out, tape over the shirt's images of drugs and alcohol or change into another shirt, he returned to school another day with duct tape covering the offending images and "Censored" scrawled on the tape.
After a one-day suspension, he sued. As a three-judge panel noted Wednesday, portraying President Bush as a cocaine addict with a chicken's body is not a pro-drug message. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan says the school can't censor the Bush chicken or even the offending martini.