Ah, Jeremy…JEREMY!  What were you thinking, dude?  Well, we all know what you were thinking, but did you really have to say it?  Did you have to post it?  Did you have to keep the photos up on your Facebook page? Jer…e…my.  Jeremy, you, my friend, are what we would call an idjut here in my part of Georgia.

So, Mr. Spencer, a DOE Official (political favor by Mr. Woods for helping him with his campaign), put some pretty vitriolic posts about anyone who is not a straight white Protestant male on his Facebook Page.  I will give him credit for being an equal opportunity hater, but a hater all the same.  But here’s what I think (and since my salary from this blog seems to continually get lost in the mail, I can say what I think):  I think Mr. Spencer has the right to believe what he wants to believe, however distasteful those thoughts may be.  I believe he shouldn’t have gotten the job in the first place (so he passed around a lot of campaign ads for Woods, and he’s brothers with a Georgia Representative.  Those are not resume pieces that will get you hired where I live; just sayin). I also believe that we have become waaaayyyyy too politically correct here, there, and everywhere.

Where do we draw the line, though? At what point do we say, enough is enough, and let folks think what they want to think and say what they want to say? At what point does a company or an entity dismiss a person’s thoughts as just that:  thoughts?  I am of the philosophy that you can swing your arms around in a circle until you are blue in the face.  I may find it annoying, but you shouldn’t be arrested for swinging your arms around, even though you look stupid.  But the minute, the second, you hit me, we have a problem.  At that point, your arm swinging interfered with my right to go about my business.  At that point your annoying little arm swinging game turned into a hitting game, and I am the victim.

There are so many stories out there where some yahoo with too much angst spouts off about inappropriate (read: NOT ILLEGAL) stuff.  Recently, a teacher from Johns Creek High School was fired resigned from Fulton County because she posted about a student with an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) taking too long on a final exam (to which he had extra time by law).  She was pissy because she wanted to go home at noon with all her other teacher friends, but the student took his time on his exams entitled to him through his IEP.   A teacher in Winder, Georgia went to Germany and took a photo of herself with a beer in her hand at pretty much every stop she took (She sued and won, by the way).  Are these things illegal?  No.  Neither of them is illegal, and, although I am not a lawyer, the way I read the Professional Code of Ethics, not a one of them defies those ethics either.  Neither does Jeremy Spencer’s gross misperception of humanity.

So Jeremy Spencer is an idjut, and he should not have been hired…but should he have been fired resigned for having thoughts with which others disagree?  He was swinging his arms on his personal Facebook Page, and he did not take down a post that I would consider seriously offensive (I’m not easily offended by much), but his arms didn’t do any physical damage to anyone or to anyone’s property while swinging.  At what point does the old saying about words not hurting anyone begin to take hold in grown folks?

At what point do we simply say to those people and about those people, “Bless your heart” and keep it moving?