Things that make you scream:

Via the New York Times:

FRISCO, Tex., Sept. 28 — “Keep the ‘Art’ in ‘Smart’ and ‘Heart,’ ” Sydney McGee had posted on her Web site at Wilma Fisher Elementary School in this moneyed boomtown that is gobbling up the farm fields north of Dallas.

But Ms. McGee, 51, a popular art teacher with 28 years in the classroom, is out of a job after leading her fifth-grade classes last April through the Dallas Museum of Art. One of her students saw nude art in the museum, and after the child’s parent complained, the teacher was suspended.

Although the tour had been approved by the principal, and the 89 students were accompanied by 4 other teachers, at least 12 parents and a museum docent, Ms. McGee said, she was called to the principal the next day and “bashed.”

She later received a memorandum in which the principal, Nancy Lawson, wrote: “During a study trip that you planned for fifth graders, students were exposed to nude statues and other nude art representations.” It cited additional complaints, which Ms. McGee has challenged.

The school board suspended her with pay on Sept. 22.

Everybody at the office can now here me pounding the keys so hard I that I might break my keyboard.

Ms. McGee and her lawyer, Rogge Dunn, who are exploring legal action, say that her past job evaluations had been consistently superior until the museum trip and only turned negative afterward. They have copies of evaluations that bear out the assertion.

Retracing her route this week through the museum’s European and contemporary galleries, Ms. McGee passed the marble torso of a Greek youth from a funerary relief, circa 330 B.C.; its label reads, “his nude body has the radiant purity of an athlete in his prime.” She passed sculptor Auguste Rodin’s tormented “Shade;” Aristide Maillol’s “Flora,” with her clingy sheer garment; and Jean Arp’s “Star in a Dream.”

None, Ms. McGee said, seemed offensive.

What the FUCK is up with the puritanical fucktwits in this nation? Nudes? In an art museum? Who would have fucking guessed. It's not like western art has consistently focused on the nude form for the past 3,000 years! And we're not talking avant-garde, explicit photography here. This is the same fucking type of sculpture you'll see on the U.S. Capitol, the Supreme Court, and many other government buildings. Should we not let kids tour them either?

God forbid their delicate eyes see a boob reproduced in limestone!

The mother who called in to complain should be sued to recover the cost of this whole mess. And the principal that didn't stand up for her teacher deserves to be fired, not the teacher. I'm the son of and husband of teachers. There are always parents out there that think that the teachers are to blame for everything. It's a principal's job to determine when the parents have legitimate complaints and when the y should back the teacher's decision.

I'd be willing to bet that the parent that complained had never in their life been to an art museum. I'd be willing to say 'to each their own' if that culturally illiterate person wasn't trying to prevent other people from being exposed to the world of art, but the parent isn't just leaving well enough alone. If thinking less of a person who has never visited an art museum yet insists on persecuting people who tries to enlighten his or her children makes me a 'liberal elitist' so be it. I take that title proudly.