America...wake up!

Hey all,

Ah! Elaine is finally posting a blog! Yes, it's true. I'm finally coming out of the woodwork - I feel I must because there are issues which need to be brought to light.

So today's post is...Wake Up, America! Start using some common sense!

Someone I know put the line, "People are getting stupider and stupider" into his writing on several occasions. And it was funny in its context and on the right occasion, true. But now I think we've moved past humorous and we're into scary.

I had to jump on the bandwagon of writers because this is something that needed to be said. News around the writer world is that a high school English teacher in Snyder County, Pennsylvania, is now under public scrutiny and condemnation (Scarlet Letter, anyone?) because she is a published author in her spare time.

HELLO? Unless the teacher is doing something illegal, she is allowed to do whatever she wants in her spare time. This one teacher writes some steamy edgy romances. They may not be to everyone's liking (in reality, the more erotic genre is not my favorite either) BUT it's not illegal. She uses a pen name and has never mentioned her books or her writing career to her students.

What happened? The wrong parents found out. You know the kind. They're the parents who keep lawyers in business because they want to sue the school because little Johnny didn't get to use the swings first at recess. They claim he suffered mental trauma. These types of parents then blossom into ones like now, trying to get this English teacher fired because she writes in her spare time. And then enter in the mob mentality, throw in a little Puritan ethics, and there you go.

I did want to share a couple of things. One is a link to my fellow buddy and writer Anna DeStefano, who wrote a blog post on this topic. Another is the video below of one of her former students created in response to this craziness, because I think he's right-on accurate about how people are behaving.

Please, America. Wake up. If we turn everything into a one-size-fits-all world, shove-each-other-thru-the-Happy-Meal lane, we'll all wind up like walking zombies. Being different is not necessarily a bad thing. Fear gets people behaving in crazy ways. Please. Stop the madness.

And let those of us who love to write continue to do so, no matter what the subject and no matter where we work!