sundries

[rm]

Constance McMillen's school cancelled the prom because she wanted to wear a tux and bring a female date. She sued and the court agreed her civil rights had been violated, but the school was under no obligation to reinstate the prom. Various celebs offered to pay for a prom, offered to have McMillen and her date fly out to some cool party somewhere, but she just wanted to go to her high school prom. A group of parents got together and decided to hold a prom. Word was, McMillen wouldn't be invited. Then, at the last moment, the AP reported that she would be.

Happy ending?

Wrong.

Turns out McMillen and some other students deemed undesirable (including at least two with learning disabilities) were sent to a fake prom that fewer than ten people attended while the real prom went on somewhere else.

Graveyard of the Automat Machines. I remember going to the automat in midtown with my parents in the 1970s.

Marketing and organ donation.

Scrabble should be hard. Fuck these new rules.

I've been reading a lot about coal mining death statistics over the last 100 years today, and now have a sudden urge to do a story involving coal mines set right after WWII. I don't know what it's about, or any of the characters, or, you know, ANYTHING, but such is my brain.

Comments

[manycolored.livejournal.com]

They sent the kids with learning disabilities there too. Step right up, we have more than enough hate to go around!

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

That prom thing horrifies me beyond measure.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Jesus. I can't imagine the humiliation, the hurt, the bloody rage. What the fuck is wrong with people?!?!
Is there really so much hate and apathy towards these kids?

[dr-is-in.livejournal.com]

The whole organ donation thing hits close to home. Even if Bill gets on the list, the average wait time for a transplant is about 3-4 years

Thought you would be interested in this link with some statistics on donation.
http://www.kidney.org/news/newsroom/fs_new/25factsorgdon&trans.cfm

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

The whole fake prom thing has been making me feel sick ever since I read about it. What a cruel, cruel thing to do, not only to McMillen, but the other students too.

[pandarus.livejournal.com]

I read about Constance McMillen's fake prom yesterday, and I'm still reeling.

What the everloving HELL, parents? I mean, really? REALLY? It's just unfathomable to me.

On the plus side, McMillen does seem to be handling all this shit with grace and gumption, and she's a babe (er, which isn't relevant, is it? But she is), and she's obviously had masses of positive input and support now from the world beyond this tiny, parochial, hateful little home of hers, so I'm hoping that on a purely personal level there will be as much of a silver lining as there is cloud. But - my God. What vicious, shitty, Carrie-level cruelty.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

The prom thing just keeps getting uglier.

What utter shit.

I hope she has the best life ever, and her classmates stagnate and flounder.

The Automat thing made me smile, because my brother had his Bar Mitzvah party at the Automat.

It's a Gap now.

[gallo-de-pelea.livejournal.com]

Those parents are acting like bullies years younger than their own kids. What the everloving hell.

Looking forward to hearing about Constance getting the hell out of Dodge to go live an awesome life, leaving a dust cloud in her wake for those assholes to choke on.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

That is SO messed up. A fake prom for the undesirables? And actual grownups did this? Bad enough if you're convinced us queers are sinners, but what sin did the learning disabled kids commit?

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

I had the same flash back to Carrie. What a great lesson these adults have taught their children. Its OK to be lie and be mean to people who are different than you. Its OK to exclude your classmates from a party because they don't meet your standards of 'normalcy.' And McMillen is an incredibly classy young lady. I hope she continues her life with as much grace and intelligence as she's shown through this whole disgusting episode.

As for the rest of these kids...well something tells me that most of them aren't likely to be 'winners in life.' Its evil, I know, but I visualize them getting married right out of high school, rolling out a bunch of babies, sitting around with their nothing lives remembering their glory days - the big hair, sex in the pickup truck, playing football, underage drinking moonshine along with excluding the gay woman and the disabled from their prom. Something to treasure and tell the grand-babies about no doubt. The highlight of their pathetic, meaningless lives.

Apparently, there is.

[the-ogre.livejournal.com]

It's not even apathy - it's active hostility, and apparently the parents and their kids don't really care that everyone knows this - and that's the part that bothers me the most.

[abnormal-apathy.livejournal.com]

I actually don't use the word 'horrified' terribly often, but that's how I felt about the continued ugliness surrounded McMillen and the prom.

[malle-babbe.livejournal.com]

You stay classy Mississippi! Or at least don't whine when "elitist liberals" like me roll their eyes at you.

Am I the only person who gets the feeling that the school board was really disappointed that Ms. McMillen didn't get a cross burnt in front of her home?

Rural America is going through a massive brain drain right now, and petty provincial shit like this is the reason why. I hope Constance gets out of MS and has a fabulous life.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Scrabble should be hard. Fuck these new rules.

Agreed. Imagination fail much?

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

I remember going to the automat in midtown with my parents in the 1970s.

They seem to be a very New York nostalgia kind of thing. I hope the automat-collector can find some organized way to display some of these odds and ends in future.

(I once recall seeing an Edward Hopper picture of a woman at an automat, where the museum had mistakenly believed that such a place was a laundromat rather than a restaurant! Needless to say, that exhibit wasn't in NYC...)

[paragraphs.livejournal.com]

McMillen is a cut above (or twenty cuts above) the people in that town. It would be wonderful to keep an eye on her in coming years...I think her comment about her fellow attendees spoke volumes about the amazing person she is.

It is difficult to fathom that people like these (the parents, etc.) exist. And, they don't give a damn, do they.

[moizissimo.livejournal.com]

I couldn't remember if I had registered to be an organ donor. The last time I checked, something had to be mailed in. So I checked, and in BC, everything is done digitally! That made me happy. :)

It's nice that our form just has a list of general organs you can decline to donate. Really general, as in heart, kidneys, liver, whatever, so there is minimal grossing out. Otherwise, it's donate everything!

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

You'd think that, considering that NYC's administration is trying to be more "with-it", that this would be an ideal place to start!

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

A decoy prom? Seriously? It's like a John Hughes movie on crack.

Aw, man, I remember driving past the Automat on 42nd when my family first moved to NYC, but I never ate there. However, unless it's closed since I last stopped by, there's an itty-bitty restaurant on St. Mark's Place that has an Automat-style coin-op wall.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

That would be Bamn!. I've passed it once, but never been in. No idea if it's survived the recession, but its website apparently has.

[humascot97.livejournal.com]

Dear Constance: If NYC is an option you'd like to consider for college or your adult life, please come. We'd be honored to have you.

Dear most parents and students of the Itawamba County School District: Fuck. You.

[weirdquark]

Turns out McMillen and some other students deemed undesirable (including at least two with learning disabilities) were sent to a fake prom that fewer than ten people attended while the real prom went on somewhere else.

Classy!

I second the "what the hell?" comments. Because seriously? People thought this was a good idea? Since there was no way the news wouldn't pick this up, did the school and parents really think the bad press they're going to be getting was worth keeping these kids out of the prom? Really?

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Of course it's relevant that she's a babe - what is she, 17? Given everything else that's happening, I'm sure she'd appreciate being publicly thought of as an International Sex Symbol, as well as a living embodiment of grace under pressure.

Anyway, by the age of 17 she has managed to freak all the adults in her home town into behaving like immature 12 year olds ("Suppose we tell her the sleepover's at Mary's - and then all go to Ann's!") and the entire internet knows it.

The world is her lobster - I only hope she realises this, sells her story for a million dollars, goes to an Ivy League school and comes back to her high school tenth reunion in her own helicopter.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Constance pointed out that the learning disabled kids had a great night specifically because the others weren't there. Which says a lot about this town, none of it good.

[elisi]

Turns out McMillen and some other students deemed undesirable (including at least two with learning disabilities) were sent to a fake prom that fewer than ten people attended while the real prom went on somewhere else.
It's been half a day since I first read that, and I still don't have a comment that's fit to print.

[copyright1983.livejournal.com]

Agreed that Scrabble should be hard. Fortunately, the new rules aren't going to be affecting tournament play anytime soon.

Source: http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/browbeat/archive/2010/04/06/don-t-panic-proper-nouns-will-not-be-allowed-in-scrabble.aspx

[shipchan.livejournal.com]

As a queer kid who got booed everytime I would enter my math class in 8th grade, the prom thing doesn't surprise me as much as it seems to surprise other people. That being said, it's still disgusting and makes me think that when aliens land here they'll pretty much think we're scum taking up a nice place.

[paulshandy.livejournal.com]

Except a John Hughes movie would have been more like "Footloose" than "hide from the queers." But the advantage to all this is that we no longer have the illusion of moral progress in Mississippi. Stuff like this lets us know what they're really thinking behind those polite southern manners.

As for the Scrabble thing, I've run into a few variants of chess in my day, and they never last either. Some of the Monopoly stunts are fun to read about, like games played with real money.

[fruitsgrow.livejournal.com]

It is so nice to come to this post and see the supportive reaction to McMillen. I just walked away from another where a person claimed that she's just in it for the attention, and she should basically have been quiet. Ugh.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

The prom thing just keeps getting uglier.

Over on Firedoglake, one of the kids who went to the other dance has been defending it. The entitlement and cluelessness are appalling, and she still hasn't grasped that she's digging the hole deeper with every snotty post.

[firefly124.livejournal.com]

The whole prom thing is just utterly horrifying.

[sethg]

We were listening to Campaign and Suffering in the car the other day—my children learn about politics by listening to Capitol Steps CDs—and one of the songs there, “76 Unknowns”, has the lines “And now Dennis Kucinich is in / And he thinks that he should win / ‘Cause his name earns the most Scrabble points”.

My seven-year-old geek son remarked that you couldn’t actually play “Kucinich” in Scrabble because it’s a proper noun. Now I can tell him that you can.

[sethg]

Obviously the whole point of high school is to serve as an arena where teenagers can play out adolescent power games and even act as proxies for the power games that their parents never outgrew. Perhaps you labor under the sad misimpression that the point of high school is to learn enough math, science, and English to qualify for more advanced education....

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

Australia is the same - the pamphlet has a list and you can just cross out anything you don't want to donate, otherwise, it's all in. Now you can do it digitally. Our organ donation rate is still appallingly low, though, and only some of that is due to our low population density.

[moizissimo.livejournal.com]

It used to be SO EASY. Just a sticker on your carecard and/or drivers license, and I think, a postage-paid postcard. I still have my sticker, actually. :)

[natf.livejournal.com]

*nods* This.