Principal is whipped to punish two teens By ZAZ HOLLANDER
Anchorage Daily News November 13, 2004
WASILLA -- Matanuska Christian School's principal has been fired and a teacher has quit over a disciplinary incident in which the principal had himself whipped in front of two students.
Principal Steve Unfreid, who said he was inspired in his choice of disciplinary tactics by the actions of Jesus, asked teacher Joe Brost to whip him in front of two male students in the school's basement last month after the boys were caught kissing girls in the locker room for the second time in a week.
Unfreid, in an interview Friday at his home, acknowledged he should have called the boys' parents first but expressed no regret for his behavior.
The school's board of directors unanimously decided in a closed door session Sunday to fire Unfreid.
Brost resigned Monday night at a crowded meeting in the school's chapel. He did not want to comment for this story.
Roughly 120 students now attend the Palmer school. About 20 students have left in the incident's aftermath, school officials said. It could not be learned whether the departing youths were motivated to leave by their support of Unfreid.
In a letter sent to the school's board Wednesday, Unfreid said he would not fight his dismissal. He also apologized for "outbursts at the school board meeting" on Monday.
Unfreid violated school policy by not notifying parents before going ahead with discipline, particularly with "anything that unusual," school board president and acting administrator Scott Richardson said Friday.
The decision to take the boys' punishment on himself showed a form of Christianity that was too radical for some members of the school community, Unfreid said, sitting cross-legged on a leather couch in his Wasilla living room Friday afternoon.
Since coming to the school as a teacher several years ago, he said, he pushed for the school to admit a married student, laid on hands in an effort to heal a girl basketball player's injured ankle, and has taken troubled students into his family's home.
"The vision I had is the love of God can change everything," Unfreid said.
When the two seniors, 17 and 18, got caught kissing girls in front of younger students in late October, Unfreid said that while contemplating what discipline to hand out, he woke at 3 a.m. and prayed how to avoid expelling them. He said that was when he remembered years ago he had cured his son of chronic lying by telling his son to hit him with a wooden ladle instead of spanking the youngster. ...
It's hard to know what to say about this. On the one hand, there's the self-imposed flagellation of a religious nutjob. On the other hand...dammit. Okay. There's basically just the self-imposed. Flogging.
Then I looked at my friend's own blog, and noticed that he is promoting a bumper sticker with the initials "TGWW" -- a special discreet code that stands for, "Thank God W Won," a subtle indicator like the Skull and Bones handshake, so fellow supporters can notice each other without calling undue attention to themselves in hostile environments. ("It's a big 'hell yeah!' that will impress your friends and confound your enemies.") How is it that, if Bush's mandate is so clear, his supporters still feel the need to operate as if they were early Christians in the catacombs? Yes, it's true that my friend lives in a "blue state," but it's not exactly the East Village. He is represented by a reelected Republican member of Congress, his state has a Republican governor, and he lives in a municipality where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats 2:1, the kind of place where Robert Lowell's lines seem fitting: "even the man scavenging filth in the back alley trash cans,/ has two children, a beach wagon, a helpmate,/ and is 'a young Republican.'" So why the secret handshake?
Your friend or lover may be a secret supporter of the Treacherous Little Freak! But now (thanks to Salto) you can crack the code. Baby.
At least two influential members of the small-media left are talking about abolishing the NEA "as one way Democrats could appease cultural conservatives."
President Bush's election victory, combined with GOP gains in Congress have given America's Christian conservatives, well, whatever it is they get instead of boners.
Diligent readers will remember that Salto has recently moved to a new place in the heart of the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.
Salto has a number of roommates. He heard today that one of his roommates, the one who occupies the room next to his, will be leaving for a week. In his place, a friend of another roommate is coming to stay, and she's -- wait for it -- a model. Not only that, but she's a model for car shows. And she's coming to SF to work.
Salto will keep you abreast of the sure-to-ensue hijinx, including a trip to the car show, digital camera in tow.
Stay tuned.
FUCK CONDI RICE
Figure we'll make it three-for-three with the nasty invective. Safire and Powell first.
Besides the serious weirdness involved with her relationship with the Treacherous Little Freak, Bob Somerby explains how Condi lied under oath far better than I ever could.
FALLUJAH, Iraq — The U.S. military is investigating the killing of a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner inside a mosque during combat operations here, the Defense Department told NBC News on Monday.
NBC’s Kevin Sites, who witnessed the incident Saturday while assigned to represent a pool of news organizations, reported Monday that the man was shot by a Marine who appeared to be unaware that the Iraqi was a wounded prisoner and did not pose a threat.
Bryan Whitman, a spokesman for the Defense Department, told NBC News that the military was investigating the incident observed by Sites. “We’re confident it will be a thorough investigation,” he said.
It would be disingenuous of me to argue that it's further alienated Sunni Arab opinion (either in Iraq or elsewhere) from the United States, since that would hardly be possible.
Matt may be referencing something else here, and he's got the snark on, but the problem is that when shit like this hits Al-Jazeera, more until-now-peaceful Sunni Arabs might consider picking up guns.
(We're hosed in Iraq, you know. Watch this boulder pick up steam as it rolls downhill.)
The Army has encountered resistance from more than 2,000 former soldiers it has ordered back to military work, complicating its efforts to fill gaps in the regular troops.
Many of these former soldiers - some of whom say they have not trained, held a gun, worn a uniform or even gone for a jog in years - object to being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan now, after they thought they were through with life on active duty.
They are seeking exemptions, filing court cases or simply failing to report for duty, moves that will be watched closely by approximately 110,000 other members of the Individual Ready Reserve, a corps of soldiers who are no longer on active duty but still are eligible for call-up.
The draft is not coming. Repeat.
"I consider myself a civilian," said Rick Howell, a major from Tuscaloosa, Ala., who said he thought he had left the Army behind in 1997 after more than a decade flying helicopters. "I've done my time. I've got a brand new baby and a wife, and I haven't touched the controls of an aircraft in seven years. I'm 47 years old. How could they be calling me? How could they even want me?"
FUCK COLIN POWELL
Except for maybe Gary Hart, a serious man whose political career was derailed by an affair that looks positively straightedge nowadays, there is no sadder story in politics than Colin Powell's.
He probably could have been President if he had run. He brought so many things to the table when Bush picked him: substantial popularity and credibility in the US, equally substantial prestige abroad, and, of course, he was black, which helped to moderate Bush's southern drawl and Texas roots. At least it did for me.
But then he became Bush's bitch. He got cold conned by Cheney's office and Stephen Hadley (remember that name: someone said he's gonna be National Security Advisor after Condi gets the bump), who were fucking with the CIA's raw intelligence -- "stovepiping," Seymour Hersh called it -- to bolster their fake-ass war in Iraq.
[And for those of us just joining us, you really should read that Hersh piece. It's a primer on how this administration lied us to war. It is incredible journalism.]
They used Powell. When Powell went before the UN, charts and graphs in hand, big fake-ass photos lookin' highly, highly serious, Cheney and Wolfowitz and the PNACzealots were calculating that Powell, and his cred, might make the difference between tacit acceptance of their stanky lil' war and serious international condemnation. They won. The world gave us a dirty look, shrugged, and looked away.
Colin got used. It's gotta fuckin' hurt. But don't feel sorry for the man. He could have resigned at any time. And he goddamned well should have. So this is why Salto's position on Colin Powell is this: FUCK COLIN POWELL.
The very next day, at the Grammy Awards (where the Wu had been nominated for Best Rap Album), there followed the incident that truly established the Ol' Dirty legend. During Shawn Colvin's acceptance speech for her Song of the Year award, ODB rushed the stage seemingly out of nowhere, clad in a bright red suit. He took over the microphone and launched into a rambling complaint about buying an expensive new outfit but losing the Grammy to Puff Daddy, whom he described as "good" but not as good as his own group, because "Wu-Tang is for the children." Hustled off-stage after this puzzling, oddly timed outburst, ODB was the talk of the next day's news reports, and many mainstream outlets had to find ways of avoiding the "bastard" portion of his name. He further confounded the public by announcing in April that he was scrapping his Ol' Dirty Bastard alias (which headed up a long list that included Osirus [sic], Joe Bannanas [sic], Dirt McGirt, Dirt Dog, and Unique Ason) and calling himself Big Baby Jesus. None of his explanations in interviews even verged on coherence, and the press never took the switch all that seriously; even the erstwhile Big Baby Jesus himself seemed to forget about the idea after a short time.
"I think they're ready for some old shit," said a leather-clad Method Man, facing the crowd alongside Raekwon and U-God. The exclamatory response assured the crowd that it was time to bring it back to where it all started -- back to a time when you could find the entire Wu-Tang Clan on stage together at once; a time when the whole crew could form like Voltron at the drop of a beat; a time when Ol' Dirty Bastard wasn't AWOL. When the luring piano licks of the classic ODB single "Shimmy Shimmy Yaw" tingled the spines of a readily frenzied multitude, a baggy-outfitted man wearing a fluffy orange coat emerged from the background of on-stage spectators and began dropping the infectious hook, "Oh baby, I like it raw." It took but one moment for the entire crowd to realize that the gritty voice belonged to none other than Ol' Dirty Bastard; therefore, it took no time at all for the foundation to shake relentlessly.
Unfortunately, it could only last so long. After spitting only one verse, the music stopped and Ol' Dirty Bastard was ready to flee the scene of the crime, but not before pardoning himself.
"I can't stay up here much longer, y'all . . . you know they had ODB on lock-down," he said, his voice basically drowning from the crowd's hysterical feedback during his dialogue. "The whole fuckin' world was after me. But I'm survivin', y'know what I'm sayin'? Dirt Dog had to come through . . . y'know what I'm sayin'? Just like a fly on your window pane, I'm here lookin' right at you. The cops is after me, so I gotta get outta here."
Bill Safire, the New York Times' conservative op-ed guy, wasn't always a lying piece of shit. But Josh is right: the last two years or so have seen him take an ugly turn towards hack-dom. It's not always that he lies; more often than not, lately, his factual statements are sly half-untruths, seemingly sourced by the darker parts of our intelligence services.
I never thought he was such a chump in the 90s. He didn't much like Bush the Elder much, if I remember correctly. So what happened? Maybe somebody finally got his number.
But, if I make speak a moment for all who think the truth should retain some importance in politics: good fuckin' riddance!
Thank you.
GUEST BLOGGERS?
First question: Do you think Salto should have more bloggers?
Second question, to regular readers: Would you like to fill that role on an semi-occasional basis?
If you would be interested, let me know. Privately.
At least you can say you lived in interesting times.
Diligent readers will remember that Salto has recently moved to a new place in the heart of the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.
Figure we'll make it three-for-three with the nasty invective. Safire and Powell first.
Except for maybe Gary Hart, 
