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A fifth-grade fan of the president can’t wear a Barack Obama mask in a school talent show, his principal says. The fifth-grader, crestfallen, says his routine makes no sense without the mask, so he’ll go roller-skating instead of being in the show. Dru Lechert-Kelly, 11, is a fifth-grader at Llewellyn Elementary School in Portland who was adopted at age 1 from a Romanian orphanage. He hoped to dress presidentially and dance to a YouTube parody that features an Obama look-alike and a rap called “I Can Do Whatever I Like.” He rehearsed the skit Thursday. The choreographed routine ended with Dru on the floor in the splits. The newspaper reported that students and teachers in the crowd went wild. But some adults objected/AP. More here.
Question: Did the principal make the right call after hearing from offended adults?
D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.
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Arch_Druid on March 16 at 1:30 p.m.
No.
JeanieSpokane on March 16 at 2:34 p.m.
Absolutely not.
cantyoureadthesigns on March 16 at 3:57 p.m.
It’s a little hard to judge without seeing the kid’s routine, but if he’s basically following the popular video, I don’t see any issue here.
Cis on March 16 at 5:13 p.m.
so much for freedom of speech