Education

Arizona Schools Boss Wants Spanish Media Ban, Cries At Own Press Conference

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The hits keep coming for Arizona superintendent of public instruction John Huppenthal, who admitted earlier this week that he has been posting pseudonymsly on a number of political blogs on topics ranging from Darwin to Hitler.

In a comment unearthed by Tucson Weekly, The Grand Canyon State’s highest-ranking public education official advocated a ban on all kinds of Spanish language use.

“We all need to stomp out balkanization,” Huppenthal wrote. “No spanish radio stations, no spanish billboards, no spanish tv stations, no spanish newspapers. This is America, speak English….”

At the same time, the Republican schools superintendent explained that immigrants are vital to the United States economy because “Caucasians aren’t reproducing themselves, so all population growth has to be immigration.”

He also criticized Mexican restaurants for using Spanish too much of the time to describe their food options.

“I don’t mind them selling Mexican food as long as the menus are mostly in English.”

Lest readers assume otherwise, Huppenthal added that he was “not being humorous or racist.”

In another comment at Espresso Pundit, a pseudonymous commenter writing as as Falcon9 – one of Huppenthal’s favorite screen names – delved into the mind of bizarro Tucson shooter Jared Loughner.

“Loughner’s act was logical once you understand what he was thinking,” Huppenthal reportedly wrote in part. “He just wasnt’ [sic] very good at articulating his thoughts but those thoughts and the intensity of which he partook of them gave him an incredible sense of superiority over us mere mortals.”

At a hastily-arranged press conference on Wednesday, Huppenthal broke down and cried over the clamor that his blog-commenting habit has caused all over the state, reports the Arizona Daily Independent.

“I don’t mind getting beaten up a bit, I have been in office a long time and it comes with the territory,” he told a gaggle of reporters. “I am here to repudiate my blog comments; they were not what was in my mind, they were not what was in my heart, and especially the actions of myself or my employees in the agency over the preceding years.”

Shortly thereafter, the elected public official became highly emotional and left the room.

Huppenthal has apparently used at least two different screen names to write his screeds. They are Thucydides and Falcon9. He’s been at it since at least 2011. (RELATED: FINALLY! Republicans Get Their Own Carlos Danger In Arizona Schools Boss John Huppenthal)

A group of bloggers at Blog for Arizona, a pro-Democrat outfit, had been maintaining for months that Huppenthal was the man behind the pseudonyms.

Last week, he was confident that his previously anonymous commentary would not affect his political career, but he did apologize.

“I probably have 300,000 words out on the Internet, and 100 of them are getting me in trouble,” the state school superintendent said in a statement released last week. “When all of your missteps are there all together for people to see, it’s not a pretty picture.”

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