Maybe the governor has been working too hard lately. Or maybe he just isn't thinking too clearly. But there has to be some reasonable excuse for the inane comments he made at a news conference on Tuesday.At the end of a string of questions surrounding important matters, such as his moves to tighten rules dealing with state contracts, Gov. Siegelman was asked what he thought of the current controversy involving an 8-year-old boy in Hoover who was sent home from his school for wearing an earring.
"Parents ought to be there talking to their kids and saying, 'You know what kind of fool you look like with an earring? If God had wanted you to wear earrings, He'd have made you a girl,'" Gov. Siegelman said.
That could possibly be the most offensive thing this governor has said since he has come into office and quite possibly the dumbest.
Firstly, he should have known better than to stick his nose into this. This silly business will sort itself out in time and the governor has plenty more on his plate to attend to. But now that he has up and offended not only young Dustin Weaver, the boy in question at Trace Crossing Elementary in Hoover, and any free-thinking Alabamian. He needs to be hauled to task for it, even if it wastes valuable time and space.
Such utterings were expected by our Paleozoic Era leader, Gov. Fob James, but not from Don Siegelman: man of tolerance and understanding.
But we all know he is also a man of politics. And that is at least part of what is at play here. The governor likes to throw bits and pieces to the far right in this state. A couple of years ago he tore off on a get-tough-on-crime campaign and talked with a straight face about the chemical castration of sexual offenders. Who is he fooling?
If the governor really believes what he is saying then maybe he ought to be saying the same thing about little girls who run around wearing pants: "If God had wanted them to wear pants then he would have made them boys." Or how about this: "If God had wanted any of us to wear earrings he would have put holes in our ears." And on and on and on.
There are a lot of bone heads in this circus, the Hoover superintendent of schools, the principal of Trace Crossings, all those who have been egging this situation on and now the governor.
If Dustin Weaver wants to wear an earring to school, then that is what he should be allowed to do. And he should not be made to feel like an outcast for doing so, especially by his governor.
