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You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Racial Justice / This Week In Blackness / It’s Not Always About Gay Sex

It’s Not Always About Gay Sex

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There is a worry that our nation is becoming less intelligent. And then things like this happen to confirm it: Tim Torkildson, a social media specialist for Utah ESL school Nomen Global Language Center, was fired because he put up a blog post about homophones:

Owner Clarke Woodger complained “now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality. I had to look up the word,” Woodger said, according to the account Torkildson published on his personal blog, “because I didn’t know what the hell you were talking about. We don’t teach this kind of advanced stuff to our students, and it’s extremely inappropriate. Can you have your desk cleaned out by eleven this morning?”

That’s right. Torkildson was fired for writing about homophones, which is the definition of words that sound like other words, like “right” and “write.” Totally gay.

Team Blackness also discussed new ignorance from Woody Allen, “rape insurance” in Michigan, and body cameras for NYC cops.

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69Comments

  2. 2.

    satby

    That was my last two lessons for my ESL student from Brazil. They would have had to fire me twice.

    What a stupid country we are becoming….

  3. 3.

    Roger Moore

    It may not always be about gay sex, but that’s always where the wingnuts’ minds will go when presented with the lamest opportunity. It’s almost as if they spend most of their time thinking about gay sex for some reason.

  5. 5.

    Roger Moore

    @satby:

    What a stupid country we are becoming….

    We’re not becoming stupid. We’ve always been stupid this way; the net just makes the stupidity harder to hide.

  7. 7.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Roger Moore:

    We’re not becoming stupid. We’ve always been stupid this way; the net just makes the stupidity harder to hide.

    Correct. People have been bitching about decline since language was first invented.

  8. 8.

    Mandalay

    Both sides do it!!!

    Stephanie Bell, a fourth-grade teacher at Williams Elementary School, taught the word “niggardly” to her class last week in an effort to improve her students’ vocabularies.

    Now, a parent wants her fired.

    Although the word means stingy, Akwana Walker said it was inappropriate to use it because it sounds similar to a racial slur. She said she doesn’t think fourth-graders can distinguish between the two words.

  9. 9.

    Roger Moore

    @Xantar:

    Has anybody pointed out to them that they’re drinking homogenized milk?

    Are you sure about that? I thought they were drinking only grain alcohol and rain water. They wouldn’t want anyone to sap and impurify their precious bodily fluids.

  10. 10.

    danah gaz

    Watch out for that “homogenized milk!”

    ETA: Looks like someone beat me to it. Apologies.

  14. 14.

    El Caganer

    @Mandalay: Didn’t some government official in DC get fired 10 or 15 years ago for using that same word? I know it was a long time back, so details have become a little hazy.

  15. 15.

    brantl

    How can the owner not be fired, for being this stupid? Shouldn’t the people that run our schools know more than the kids that they are teaching? Just sayin’…..

  16. 16.

    Anoniminous

    In a way I derived humor from their attempts to restrict Reality to fit the dribble-&-goo in their heads. In another way I pity them for it is not their fault their family tree is a straight line and, so, they are carriers of the Virulent Stupidity Gene.

  18. 18.

    Tommy

    @Cervantes:

    Deep, entrenched stupidity is a serious problem.

    Yeah no shit. Nobody has ever confused my parents with being liberal. In the late 70s I got bullied a lot by kids in public school that thought I was a “homo.” I wasn’t. Just short and fat. Socially awkward. A military brat that moved around a lot. Plus sometimes my mom didn’t think it was wrong to wear pink.

    Me being treated that way got my mother involved. The three men currently in my family (my father, me and my brother) call her the “Little General’ (out of both love and fear if her — you don’t FUCK with mom). She rolled over that school district like they were five year olds. And I did say this was the 70s didn’t I :).

    I grew not to be fat, if still short. And the learning experience has fared well for me ….

    It would be at least a decade more in college before I meat a “gay” person and I felt I knew them :).

  21. 21.

    Eric U.

    @Mandalay: I suspect that “niggardly” is going to go away except among those that are trying to offend

    there is some question about the homophone issue, follow the link

  23. 23.

    Mike G

    How can the owner of a LANGUAGE SCHOOL, for pete’s sake, not know what a homophone is?

    This reminds me of the doctor in the UK whose practice identified her as a “pediatrician”, and she started getting threats from locals who misidentified it as “pedophile”.

  27. 27.

    Cervantes

    @Eric U.:

    I suspect that “niggardly” is going to go away except among those that are trying to offend.

    That would be a shame. “Niggardly” is entirely innocent, coming as it does from old Scandinavian words for “over-precise” or “stingy.” Nothing to do with color.

  34. 34.

    Hungry Joe

    Somebody once said that the golden age of every language is always 50-100 years ago. Languages are constantly changing, and not for the worse — it just seems that way. (If that were true, we’d all be talking like Sarah Palin, a linguistic outlier and then some.)

  36. 36.

    low-tech cyclist

    Maybe they thought a homophone was a special model of the Obamaphone that the gays were given.

  42. 42.

    Roger Moore

    @danah gaz:

    He spent his formative years flashing his epidermis at everyone and postulating in the back of his English class.

    I somehow doubt he ever postulated in his life. He assumed and went on his merry way without ever stopping to postulate.

  47. 47.

    Tommy

    @Mandalay: There were just not a lot of openly gay people running around at that time. Even less when I was the Polo wearing straight Frat kid.

    I met an openly transgender person before I met an openly gay person ….

    I had worked on the college’s suicide hotline since the first semester there. I was now a senior and running it. Conducing interviews for the next semester for staff. Denise walked in, formerly Dennis. At first it appeared to me a person large enough (and fit enough) to be a linebacker for the Bears was standing in front of me in a sun dress.

    We did the the interview.

    After they were all done and the committee where decided who to ask to join everybody was stunned Denise was at the top of my list.

    I was like was she the best we had wasn’t she? (pretty sure I said he). They are like she is …. insert terrible words.

    Think I said something like deal with it. Again this is the late 80s. A few folks quit. Most didn’t cause we were a misfit bunch.

    I lost touch with her about 7 years ago, but never will forget that day she walked into that room/interview in 1989 in that sun dress and said, “I’d like to help people!” She helped a lot of people in the short time I worked with her!!!!!!!!!!!!

  49. 49.

    boatboy_srq

    There is mounting evidence our nation is becoming less intelligent

    That’s more like it.

    We don’t teach this kind of advanced stuff to our students

    And that’s one good reason why the US is becoming less intelligent. Especially given that that line is from the owner (NB this is an “owner” and not the “principal” – curious, that) of the school.

    That’s right. Torkildson was fired for writing about homophones, which is the definition of words that sound like other words, like “right” and “write.” Totally gay.

    English spellings can be very queer sometimes.

    @Kyle: He’s not a Homo sapien: he’s a Man. Homo sapiens is what those unGawdly IslamoFascoSoshulist Secular Humanists call Mankind. It’s the same as seismologists calling God’s Righteous Wrath an earthquake.

    @Roger Moore: Truly not a new phenomenon. I recall an urban legend about a candidate many years ago who (successfully) smeared his opponent for being a practicing philatelist. In that case, I do think that our grade of pol is declining: that one probably knew the joke and counted on the rubes not to understand, and today’s might actually believe it’s somehow evil.

    @brantl: Item One: he’s the owner (see above). Owners don’t get fired (though they occasionally lose their schools and/or face fines and sentences for fraud). Item Two: Charter Schools. This is feature-not-bug territory.

    @Mandalay: Beet me to it. ,-)

  53. 53.

    Mike G

    Owner Clarke Woodger complained “now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality. I had to look up the word,”

    And now your school is going to be associated with the owner being dumber than dirt every time someone Googles it. Congratulations.

  54. 54.

    Xantar

    @Hungry Joe:

    Perhaps, but damnit if I’m going to allow people to use “literally” in the figurative sense or say “I could care less” to mean the exact opposite.

  56. 56.

    Roger Moore

    @boatboy_srq:

    could some FPer please explain why my last comment is in moderation?

    Too many notes links. FYWP automatically puts any comment with more than 3 links into moderation, even if they’re links to other comments in the same post.

  58. 58.

    Tommy

    @Paul in KY: I have no reason to think she isn’t the happiest person in the world. Just a shock to my world. We became if not good friends, friends. A lot of people didn’t want her apart of the program and I didn’t care so much. Honestly at the time I didn’t think it was a civil right issue or anything that important. She just seemed to care. I got people that need help and you will help ……..

  59. 59.

    JGabriel

    Headline: It’s Not Always About Gay Sex

    IAAGSIYAR – It’s Always About Gay Sex If You’re A Republican

    We clearly need an acronym for that.

  61. 61.

    lol

    Owner is a homophonic moron but the teacher is also a bit of a creeper. I suspect the owner had been looking for excuse to fire him for a while and managed to pick the dumbest one possible.

  64. 64.

    PurpleGirl

    Maybe another teacher wouldn’t use the term homophone(s) but I do think it would be an early lesson to teach the differences between “to, too, and two” or “write and right” and lots of other words simply because those it’s those small words in English that will do you in. A word like antidisestablishmentarianism has only one meaning.

  67. 67.

    r€nato

    I bet the health ed teacher is going to think twice about that lecture she had planned on proper mastication.

  68. 68.

    mclaren

    There is a worry that our nation is becoming less intelligent.

    Given the comments on this forum, many of us suspect that’s not possible.

    Biologists currently believe that life on earth evolved from the primordial slime.

    But what did the primordial slime evolve from?

    Balloon-Juice commenters.

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