Want to send your kid to ; school with a healthy salad you picked up from a deli? Maybe a brownie from your neighbor's bake sale? Too bad, hippie. Your "food" has no place in the public schools.
;According to guidelines Orange County Public Schools put out Sept. 16, you can't send "foods not sealed in [a] manufacturer container or prepared locally" to school. Anything without ingredient labeling, or that needs refrigeration, is out. If the food is in a manufacturer's container, a school district employee has to open it and pass it out. You can still pack your children a turkey sandwich and apple, provided your child doesn't trade it for another kid's cookie, thus endangering that kid's life.
;Sharing is now frowned upon, probably because the cookies could be laced with cyanide. You never know these days. Feel free, however, to pack Twinkies in your kid's lunchbox, because they are hermetically sealed and bear a list of ingredients. And they'll help make your kid fat so he/she will fit in with the other kids.
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;Speaking of OCPS, have you been following the auspicious career of Evans High School alum Charles Emmanuel, aka Charles "Chuckie" Taylor Jr., the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor and the first civilian in American history to be charged with committing torture abroad? Well, you should be, because he's set to go on trial next week in Miami, and he's got a new record out! In your face, Biteboy!
;Rolling Stone just did a piece on Chuckie titled "American Warlord," and it paints him as a friggin' monster who liked to speed through crowds in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, in a Land Cruiser with license plates that read "Demon." He was in charge of an anti-terrorist squad whose job it was to protect his father. Chuckie's boys used tactics like shocking victims in the genitals and pressing hot irons into their flesh.
;Here's a quote from retired Brig. Gen. John Tarnue regarding how Chuckie would conduct his interrogations as an anti-terrorist military leader in Liberia: "I want to see blood," Tarnue recalls Chuckie saying. "In my presence he tortured people. He didn't touch them, but he gave the order."
;"Chuckie was very much like the Hussein sons," David Crane, founding chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, tells Rolling Stone. "He was completely above the law, protected by his father and his ; henchmen."
;Wonder if he still gets the Evans alumni newsletter?
;In an effort to cement his place in history, Chuckie has also released a song. Recorded in Trinidad, "Angel" is the kind of sped-up, soul-sampling beat Kanye used to specialize in (before he, you know, went crazy) and it's weirdly not bad. He takes a cue from Ja Rule's thug-love growl, with the added element of a bone-chilling, off-key sung bridge that could be his "Singing in the Rain" from Clockwork Orange. One can only imagine how many people heard that low voice just before they died.
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;If you are one of the scores of people who still get a Sunday Orlando Sentinel delivered to your home, you got a big surprise this week. In addition to the car ads and recipes, you got a hateful, fear-mongering anti-Muslim DVD for your watching enjoyment. Lucky you.
;The DVD, Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West, was inserted in 100 newspapers in battleground states. It purports to show how pretty much all Muslims want to bayonet your babies and eat your entrails. Editor & Publisher called it a ; "?‘neo-con' propaganda scam in the context of ; the presidential campaign," likening it to a 527-fund contribution to the McCain campaign. "Obama" sounds pretty Muslim and all, don't it? E&P called papers that accepted the DVD "politically naive in the extreme."
;Our little Sentinel, however, thought it was pretty cute. Here's their foreign policy expert, film critic Roger Moore, ; giving an analysis on his blog – only the Miami Herald deemed the DVD worthy of actual newsprint – of the DVD and its ramifications during an election year and in close proximity to the Sept. 11 anniversary: "But hey, the folks behind Obsession paid to package it with our paper, so glad to be of service! Did the check clear?"
;OK, that's not entirely fair. Moore does raise questions about the filmmakers' intent, and deems it an "alarmist manifesto." He also calls it kind of a shitty film. What he doesn't do is question the paper's distribution of it. Money, after all, is money.
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While mean grandpa John McCain may not be able to tell his computer from a TV dinner, his Republican party operatives are well-versed in pushing propaganda ; through the Internets.
;Last week, the McCainsters ventured into illegality by apparently hacking into the Florida Department of Education server to obtain the e-mail addresses of all of the state's teachers from the "Just for Teachers" listserv. Messages were spammed out hyping dominatrix Sarah Palin and demeaning Barack Obama Sept. 12, reportedly stirring up some concerned response from legions of underpaid educators who don't believe Obama's a militant Muslim.
;Florida DOE teacher liaison Sheila Veatch tried to calm the situation in an e-mail obtained by Happytown™, writing "steps are being taken to resolve this problem and ensure that it does not happen again. We apologize for any inconvenience this error may have caused." Another e-mail advised, "Users should just delete them as with any other unwanted messages." Indeed.
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;From the updates desk comes a resolution to a lawsuit we first reported on more than a year ago. (Don't blame us; the system's slow.)
;Last August, we told you how MetroWest developer Veranda Partners had filed a lawsuit to shut down the website www.verandaparknews.com, on the grounds that it was "designed to disparage and injure [Veranda Park's] reputation and goodwill" (see "Slapp Happy," Aug. 9, 2007).
;Site owner Larry Giles had said mean things about the developer on a blog almost nobody read, and the developer tried to shut him down. It's a classic example of ; what's called a SLAPP – a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, or an occasion in which a company threatens legal action to shut down speech it doesn't like.
;On Sept. 11, circuit court Judge George Sprinkel ruled that Veranda Partners had absolutely no claim to be libeled or defamed and, in his words, the website was "core political speech and a tool for the defendant to petition his local leaders." And because Giles was offering "opinion and/or rhetorical hyperbole," not making up slanderous facts, his website is protected by the First Amendment.
;Happily, www.verandaparknews.com is still up and running, though there's not much in the way of critical content on it as of this writing. Better still, the developers will have to fork over some $74,000 in attorney's fees.
;The good guys won one.
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