DC Trawler

“Put down the iCarly lunchbox and back away slowly!”

Font Size:

Lunchgate continues. The Blaze reports:

North Carolina officials have said there was a misunderstanding when a preschooler’s homemade lunch was sent home for not meeting certain nutritional requirements, but now a second mother from the same school has come forward exclusively to The Blaze to say the same thing happened to her daughter.

Diane Zambrano says her 4-year-old daughter, Jazlyn, is in the same West Hoke Elementary School class as the little girl whose lunch gained national attention earlier this week. When Zambrano picked Jazlyn up from school late last month, she was told by Jazlyn’s teacher that the lunch she had packed that day did not meet the necessary guidelines and that Jazlyn had been sent to the cafeteria…

When Jazlyn said she didn’t eat what her mother had made her, Zambrano went to her teacher and demanded to know what happened. She said the teacher told her an official had come through that day to inspect students’ lunches and that those who were lacking certain food groups were sent to the cafeteria. After she received her cafeteria food, the teacher told Zambrano, Jazlyn was told to put her homemade lunch back in her lunchbox and set it on the floor.

Did a hazmat team swarm in and remove it from the area? Did government agents protect this poor child from the lunch her own mother made her?

By the way, I purposely skipped over the part of the story that describes the lunch Zambrano packed for her daughter, and what the kid was given to eat instead. BECAUSE IT DOESN’T FREAKING MATTER. It’s not about whether chicken nuggets from a school cafeteria are more or less healthy than whatever parents choose to feed their kids. It’s not about whether a homemade lunch meets a government agency’s “necessary guidelines.” It’s about the fact that there are “necessary guidelines” in the first place, and now they’re even sending agents around to enforce them. It’s about yet another busybody government bureaucracy intruding into yet another aspect of our daily lives. You’re never going to see a Bureau of Leaving Everyone the Hell Alone.

DHHS says it’s not their policy to inspect kids’ lunches, which is now an even less plausible claim. What’s the name of this “official”? How many more “officials” are running around out there, poking their noses into little kids’ lunchboxes? Who do they think they are, telling you what you can and can’t feed your own children?

What’s that you say, food fascists? “Why are you against getting kids to eat their vegetables?” I’ll answer that question with another question: Why are you in favor of the government encroaching on the rights and responsibilities of parents? While you’re thinking about your answer, go jump in a lake of trans fats.

P.S. Speaking of state-sponsored psychological child abuse, the Daily Mail reports:

The mother of a seven-year-old boy was told to sign a school form admitting he was racist after he asked another pupil about the colour of his skin.

Elliott Dearlove had asked a five-year-old boy in the playground whether he was ‘brown because he was from Africa’.

His mother, Hayley White, 29, said she received a phone call last month to say her son had been at the centre of a ‘racist incident’.

She was then summoned to a meeting with Elliott, his teacher and the deputy head of Griffin Primary School in Hull.

Ms White claimed she was asked at the meeting to read a copy of the school rules and in particular its zero-tolerance policy on racism.

‘I was told I would have to sign a form acknowledging my son had made a racist remark which would be submitted to the local education authority for further investigation,’ she said.

‘I refused to sign it and I told the teacher in no way did I agree the comment was racist. My son is inquisitive. He always likes to ask questions, but that doesn’t make him a racist.’

What this school is really doing is telling the other child to be ashamed of his African heritage.

Instead of branding a kid a racist for asking a perfectly innocent question, and trying to turn him and his mother against each other, how about sitting all the kids down and explaining things to them? “Yes, Timmy here, his ancestors came from Africa. Elliott and Suzy and you other children, your ancestors came from elsewhere. It’s a big world. People come in all colors and shapes and sizes. It’s okay that we don’t all look the same. And it’s okay to be curious about it.”

But no, that’d be too much like work. It’s easier to write up speech codes and enforce them against 7-year-olds. As the great Colin Quinn says: “Everybody wants to celebrate diversity, as long as you don’t point out that people are different.”