Douchebaggery! I hate the NY Post

This really should be no surprise as the New York Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch, the only man capable of being evil and a "Rupert" (it just sounds like such a friendly name). And though I don't read it, it looks fun when I see others on the subway leafing through - always so many puns! And how can you but feel warm fuzzies for a paper in which the article "AIDS-Bite Threat from 'Hooker,'" appeared today with the following: "A hefty hooker threw a hussy fit yesterday when she was collared for trying to pick up an undercover cop... threatening to bite him and give him AIDS"?

But it continues to harangue Debbie Almontaser, former principal of the upcoming dual-language English/Arabic school Khalil Gibran International Academy, as well as the school itself in both two news items and editorial column today (as if editorial and news are seperate at the Post). The new principal to replace Almontaser is a non-Arabic speaking Danielle Salzber, and as the name suggests she is indeed a Jew. "New Principal 'Chosen'" is the headline - get it, she's a Jew? Previously she worked at the nonprofit New Visions for Public Schools that is helping to fund the Academy and worked with Almontaser and the teachers to develop the curriculum, so this is no left-field pick as the Post suggests.

And then there's the column, "School Bad Idea Even Before Hebrew-haha" - get it, she's a Jew? - in which Andre Peyser calls the Jewish principal of an Arabic school "the worst joke ever to hit Brooklyn" before getting on with the business of assailing the very idea of the school: "Some bright combination of political correctness and insane guilt has determined that New York needs a public school catering to Arabs." "Using the public schools to segregate Muslim students seems antithetical to every societal ideal."

Peyser's head is so far up her own ass she doesn't even know that "Jew" and "Arab" are far from mutually exclusive identities (ask all the Mizrahim here in New York!) The school is not a "Muslim school" or for Arab students, nor a "potential hotbed of anti-Semitic and anti-American sentiment". Have you ever worked in a public school in New York? The shit you say is monitored. I once wore a t-shirt that was a little out-of-line and had to wear a jacket over it the rest of the day. Furthermore, there are Spanish, French, Mandarin, Korean, Haitian Creole, and Russian dual-language programs and schools already in New York. Why not Arabic? The political affiliation of the columnist is not hard to discern (see: owner of paper) and I bet I could also guess her views on the "war on terror". How do these Islamophobes expect to gather intelligence for their favorite war when they oppose the teaching of Arabic?

Having half their classes in Arabic is no more going to turn students into radical Islamists than learning Russian will produce alcoholic communists or French smoking avant-garde existentialist filmmakers.

That's it - I won't talk about the Post again. It's just too maddening.