From the category archives:
(Daily Mail) - An 84-year-old Long Island grandmother says she was injured and humiliated during a strip search at Kennedy Airport.
Lenore Zimmerman says she was on her way to a flight to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, when security workers forced her to strip down to her underwear when she requested to avoid the metal detector to make sure that her defibrillator would not be affected.
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(Daily Mail) - A retired New York City police officer has been ordered to take down the flag he flies outside his home to commemorate the colleagues and friends he lost in the 9/11 attacks.
Hero Richard Wentz, who pulled victims from the wreckage of Tower 1 on September 11, 2001, has ordered by the homeowners’ association at his retirement home in Florida to remove the flag or face legal action.
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(Daily Mail By PAUL THOMPSON) - Two 12-year-olds faced a police investigation for a sex crime after being caught kissing at school.
Police were called to a Florida elementary school after an assistant principal was told the pair had exchanged a playground kiss.
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(Daily Mail) - Footballs and baseballs have been banned from a school in Toronto because they are ‘too dangerous’
The principal of Earl Beatty Public School banned the hard balls after a parent suffered a concussion after being hit in the head with a soccer ball.
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(Post And Courier By RENEE DUDLEY) - It’s not even December, but Santa has already been fired from Charleston’s Hollings Cancer Center.
For each of the past two years, hospital volunteer Frank Cloyes spent one day as St. Nick, spreading good cheer and snacks to patients sitting through chemotherapy treatments. The 67-year-old James Island resident, a retired insurance executive who calls himself a “gregarious guy,” paid for his own costume rental.
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(Daily Mail By LYDIA WARREN) - A university student went to sleep drunk and woke up in hospital paralyzed from the neck down – after falling more nearly four feet from his dorm bed.
When Kei Usami, 20, fell from the school-supplied ‘loft’ bed at Fordham University, he smacked his head so hard that the impact fractured his spine.
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(Daily Mail) - A dwarf has avoided jail for dealing crack cocaine after a court was told he would lose his specially adapted home if he was given a prison term.
3 foot 9 inch Pele Watson was caught by an undercover officer who bought drugs from him outside an East London bookmakers.
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Posted to WIDK by Bianca Coombs
(Christina Boyle & Matt Lysiak, New York Daily News) - Millionaire rapper Jay-Z is set to launch an Occupy Wall Street T-shirt line Friday — but he doesn’t plan to share the profits with the 99%.
A spokeswoman for the mega entertainer’s Rocawear clothing label said the T-shirts were being produced in support of the movement, but not financially. [Click to read more…]
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(The Guardian By MARK SWENEY) - A provocative ad campaign for Marc Jacobs perfume featuring 17-year-old Dakota Fanning, the US actor who has starred in films including War of the Worlds and Charlotte’s Web, has been banned following accusations that it sexualised children.
The magazine campaign, which featured in the London Evening Standard’s ES Magazine and Sunday Times Style magazine, featured Fanning wearing a short skirt and holding a bottle of Marc Jacobs perfume in what the advertising regulator deemed a “sexually provocative” position between her legs.
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Posted to WIDK by Bianca Coombs
(Luchina Fisher, abcnews.go.com) - “Glee,” the popular musical comedy-drama about a fictional high school, is no stranger to controversy, and today’s episode featuring two teenage couples — one gay, one straight — losing their virginity drew fire even before it hit the air.
In the episode titled “The First Time,” heterosexual couple Finn and Rachel and homosexual couple Kurt and Blaine consummated their relationships. EW’s Pop Watch called the episode “incredibly moving,” saying the sex scenes were “handled very delicately.”
But the Parents Television Council didn’t think so, calling the show “reprehensible” and the Fox network reckless for “celebrating teen sex.”
FOX declined ABCNews.com’s request for comment.
“There are opportunities and occasions when programs have dealt responsibly with teen sex,” Melissa Henson, PTC’s communications director told ABCNews.com. “I’m not convinced that ‘Glee’ is that program.”
Henson said “Glee” creator Ryan Murphy made a storyline for “shock purposes, not educational” ones.
Though Henson dismissed the gender of the two couples as “irrelevant,” the coupling of Kurt and Blaine marks a new milestone in television.
“I can’t think of another network series that’s taken a teenage gay relationship so far or been so progressive,” EW’s Pop Watch said.
Liz Pearle, editor-in-chief of the nonpartisan Common Sense Media, said homosexuality is part of our culture, regardless of how we feel about it.
“It’s the third rail of discussion points,” she said. “And it needs discussing, whatever our values are about it.”
Pearle said the episode presents an opportunity for parents to talk to their kids about all aspects of sexuality, because they are already talking about it anyway.
“Our teens are growing up in a culture so sexualized, whether or not they participate,” Pearle said. “In high school they are thinking about what their first time is going to be like. The discussion is very much in a high schooler’s mind. FOX has teed up a conversation for families that kids are having on their own.”
Henson said that rather than creating a conversation, the show plays into research from the University of North Carolina that found television acts as a “sexual super peer” for teenagers, exerting pressure on them to make decisions they are not ready for. At the same time, she pointed to a Kaiser study that showed most kids get their information on sexual health from television.
Pearle agreed that television can be a super peer. All the more reason she said for parents to talk to kids about the messages they are getting from media and teach them how to think critically about them.
By now, star Chris Colfer, who plays Kurt, is used to the flak the show receives.
“I absolutely expect to hear from (watchdog groups). It’s funny, I always go into this instant panic state whenever they tell me about upcoming episodes, because we always do so many delicate situations on the show,” Colfer told EW recently. “But then I get the script and we shoot it and it’s always handled so well that I never really had any reason to worry about it.”
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