Remember when you read in your high school history books about the wave of anti-German hysteria in America during the first World War, when publishers of German-language newspapers were hounded out of business, German street names were changed, some schools stopped teaching the German language, and idiots reportedly stoned dachshunds to death for being traitorous foreign doggies? Remember how quaint and provincial and xenophobic those people seemed?
So, yeah, in Pine Bush, New York, people had a Class-A Patriotic Freakout on Wednesday, March 18, 2015, straight out of your chapter on "victory cabbage":
An effort to celebrate national Foreign Language Week by reading the Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic Wednesday has polarized Pine Bush High School into angry factions.
The morning's regularly scheduled announcements included the Arabic reading of the pledge. According to students, the announcement was greeted by catcalls and angry denunciations in classrooms throughout the school by students who felt the reading was inappropriate.
School Superintendent Joan Carbone said that the controversy has "divided the school in half" between those who believe that the Prayer to America's Holy Flag must only be said in English and those who thought it was a'ight. She added that the Arabic pledge was "something that was supposed to be good but turned out not to be."
Later in the day, Principal Aaron Hopmayer got on the intercom and apologized to students who were offended and explained "the reading's context," which the local paper doesn't detail, although we guess he made some vague mention of it being "Foreign Language Week" and maybe even explained that Arabic is just a foreign language, not a secret code for ISIS infiltrators. Hey, maybe we should be glad that no actual Muslims were lynched.
Pine Bush, you may recall, is already a hotbed of ethnic tolerance, as it is also the home of face-swastika-ing anti-Semitism by some of the local bullies. At least this time it was the Jewish students who got to have a good snit over The Enemy's language being used to defile the sacred America Cloth Prayer.
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Ms. Carbone said that she also received angry calls from people who said they'd lost family members in Iraq and Afghanistan; we suppose she could have pointed out that the Arabic language in itself does not have the ability to kill anyone, or maybe that it is also used by the "good" Iraqis that we liberated, or even that the bad guys in Afghanistan probably speak Dari or Pashto when they're not reading the Koran -- and the good guys do, too! Hahaha, we are kidding of course, it is the Fucking Great War all over again and we need to freak out whenever anyone profanes the sacred worship words and the sacred beautiful flag that is the best flag of all the flags because it is our flag, our flag that patriots died for, you unappreciative liberal shits. And probably they should stop teaching Arabic at Pine Bush High.
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Then we should all have a good laugh over how those stupid barbaric Ay-rabs get all het up and start rioting if somebody draws a picture of Mohammed, because they are pagan idol-worshiping idiots.
Residents of Pine Bush who own Afghan hounds are advised to keep their dogs indoors for the next few weeks.
[ Times Herald-Record via TPM ]
New York School Profanes American Flag With Arabic Pledge, Burn It All Down!
"Freedom Fries XXL Baconator 1042a"
... and Kurdish in the north of Iraq.