Note: This will be the first in what I'll call "Behind the Times" posts...ones that are so big, a single post would take up the entire page or most of it. Instead, I will backdate them so they won't appear in the normal order, but instead will date the post at the top of them, like this:
Sept. 17, 2015
Surely, by now you've seen or read this story:
Muslim teen Ahmed Mohamed creates clock, shows teachers, gets arrested
The world is outraged over this and I am outraged as well...I'm outraged at the outrage. Here's why:
A couple of yrs. ago, a 10 yr. old boy from Ohio was suspended from school for making a "gun" with his thumb and finger and a yr. before, a 7-yr. old kid from Maryland was suspended for nibbling a Pop Tart in the shape of a pistol. Both of those children were white.
Since those incidents, there have been multiple incidents of children being suspended for bringing Bibles to school or for reading them during supposedly "free reading periods" or recess and there wasn't nearly the uproar that this "It's a clock, not a bomb!" thing has generated.
So, little Ahmed builds a clock and puts it in a pencil box that looks just like a miniature suitcase, brings it to school, shows it to his engineering teacher. The teacher says "Good job." but advises him to not show it to other teachers. What does the kid do? Well, he puts it in his backpack and totes it around school all day, has the alarm go off in the middle of a class, then fumbles around with it and then wonders why people were upset?
What if it HAD been a bomb and everyone was told "It's JUST a clock!" Trust me, that would have ruined everyone's day. "There were no explosives inside along with the clock." Well, it's a school w/ a chemistry lab and even though it's been nearly a half century since I was a kid in school (barely passing Chemistry), I guarantee you I could walk into a school laboratory storeroom right now and cobble together a few chemicals that would kill or seriously injure dozens, maybe hundreds of kids and teachers. Heck, I could probably do that with what's under my kitchen sink (or anyone else's) right now.
People are griping about how silly it is to get worked up over something so innocent as a homemade science project, as well as how "rampant" racism/Islamic phobia is in Texas. Well, there wouldn't have been all this outrage 14 yrs. + 1 week ago, but that all changed on 9/11. No one then considered box cutters all that dangerous, either....maybe accidentally cut your finger with one, but no one thought about flight attendants and pilots having their throats slashed with them (by Muslims, no less) and the planes commandeered and flown into buildings.
As far as I'm concerned. perhaps there WAS a bit of overreacting to this incident, but the catch phase these days is "better safe than sorry".
There are a few things that bother me about this story, though:
The clock doesn't look like a clock, not from the photos I've seen. It looks very crude, just like the guts of bombs we've all seen on TV and in the movies. He's clever enough to build the device, yet not clever enough to know that it resembled a TV/movie version of a time bomb? He's ingenious enough to build the thing, yet doesn't understand how to set the alarm? Gimme a break.
Why did the kid build his clock and put it inside what amounts to a miniature briefcase? Why not hollow out an old book, that would have been way cooler, esp. if he had used a
book with "time" in the title. I saw several comments under the New York Times article from Boston and Massachusetts residents about how racist Texas was, how stupid we are, how the rest of the country needs to build a wall around the state to keep we inbred bigots and our guns in. Well, you ignorant Beantown asshats, what if some kid (white, brown, black, pink or purple) brings a pressure cooker to Home Ec class "What's in there, Jim?" (or Jane) "Aw, just a TV I made." Seems to me as though people in that part of the country would be a little more sympathetic to the possibility of a homemade bomb. BTW, what was the skin color and religion of the two brothers responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing?
As I mentioned before, his teacher told him not to show it to anyone else and probably told him why. (but little Ahmed didn't mention that little tidbit in the post-incident interviews)
There's a picture of him in handcuffs, standing there dejected with a look of disbelief that this is happening to him. I think he was smart enough to recognize a photo op when he saw one...or maybe his daddy coached him on how to look.
I'm no conspiracy theorist by any means, but this all just sounds a bit too "scripted" to suit me.
The family has already hired a lawyer. (wow, THAT was fast!) Now he'll get a hefty sum for his civil rights being violated and in three/four years, his scholarship to M.I.T. will be waiting...a full ride. He's already been offered jobs by Twitter and Facebook,invited to the White House and to bring his clock. (where I'm positive the Secret Service will go over the clock with a fine-tooth comb and use explosive-sniffing dogs)
I could rant a LOT more about this, but I'm already tired of it. I hope this blows over soon; then we can get back to the really important stuff, like whether Bindi will win this season on Dancing With the Stars, the size of Kim Kardashian's butt or whether Caitlyn Jenner wears a push-up bra.
Me? I'm just gonna worry about how the Cowboys will do Sunday against the Eagles. It has just as much importance in the scheme of things as does anything else...at least it does to me.(hey, I have a right to skew important priorities, just as much as the next person!) If Dallas allows Murray to rush for a hundred yards, loses the game and the Philly fans cheer if a Cowboys player gets hurt, then I'm gonna go on social media and rant and rave about the injustice of it all.
Yeah, sure.
