White Teacher Fired for displaying Image of Obama 'with bullet hole in his head' Wants Job Back
/‘I did not see the element of racism,’ social studies teacher Mark Selzer told CNN. From [HERE] and [MORE] With all the racist images of the Obama family (not withstanding the Muslim-garbed fist-bump New Yorker cover and picture of Curious George holding a banana with ‘Obama In ’08′ written underneath) running rampant, is it any surprise that kids are now getting in on the frenzy?
After getting fired for displaying students’ offensive pictures of Barack Obama, including one with a bullethole (pictured) and another implying it’s “Obama Hunting Season,” former junior high school teacher Robert Duncan (in bottom photo - middle) is fighting to get his job back after losing it earlier this month.
The drawings originated from a lesson Duncan was giving on political cartoons. When a worried parent noticed them hanging in the classroom, she snapped photos of them and sent them to media outlets.
Secret Service agents soon visited with two of the students behind the images and Louisiana’s Boyet Junior High School placed Duncan on administrative leave for six months. On August 6th, St. Tammany Parish public school superintendent Trey Folse terminated Duncan, ending his 13-year tenure at the school, according to Daily Mail.com
Now Duncan is fighting back. At a wrongful termination hearing last Wednesday, many of his colleagues argued the cartoons served a political purpose. Social Studies teacher Mark Seltzer claimed the cartoons carried no racial intent, arguing that he “saw political points of view being expressed, whether pro-Obama or anti-Obama, and that’s what the lesson was designed to do.”
Duncan’s lawyers also noted that St.Tammany’s School Board Parish promoted the use of political cartoons in classrooms.
In regards to the bullet hole, Duncan said it wasn’t there when he initially displayed it in the hallway outside his classroom, a defense seven other Boyet teachers supported.
That mark was not on that poster; I swear to God. Nobody could have missed that. There would have been hundreds of students saying things about that,’ long-time Boyet teacher Beth Kurz tearfully testified.
However, the amateur artist responsible for the poster claimed that the alleged entry wound in the president’s right temple was the result of a marker that had been inadvertently dropped.
The mishap took place the night before the assignment was due, and she had no time to fix it, the unnamed eighth-grader wrote in a letter read during the hearing, so she submitted it as is.
The last day of the three-day hearing was re-scheduled Monday as a pre-caution against the impending Tropical Storm Issac.