Because in Italian “bambino” isn’t neutral. Is masculine, and translates to boy. The female form is “bambina” and translates to girl.
I was under the wrong impression that kid was masculine only.
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Straw poll… what if he had chosen to wear a zombie Nazi costume (re i.e. Call of Duty) instead - would that mitigate the situation at all? Or no Nazi iconography ever.
Are you asking which kind of Nazi wouldn’t be a problem for an elementary school costume?
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I’m gonna take a wild guess and say ALL of them.
Undead Nazis are still Nazis and it’s still a school. If this “costume” was the kid’s idea the parents should have had a serious talk with him about why it’s problematic.
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He’s asking for a friend, I’m sure…perhaps the leader of the Racist Party in Canada who failed to win his own election.
Man, the lengths people will go to in order to show that Nazis deserve a fair hearing, too – in the name of Freeze Peach, naturally.
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I dunno; right after Raiders of the Lost Ark debuted, I saw a pretty good Nazi-villain-with-face-melting-off-from-viewing-the-Ark that didn’t seem to tick anyone off. To be fair, however, a) the movie was fresh in everyone’s mind, and b) it was GREAT latex; what was going on was obvious and there was no “glorification” of Nazism.
So shrug yeah, inappropriate, but there’s degrees to it, as well. In this case… Oy veh. It’s bad on more than one level.
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And of course, those were different times. When Raiders of the Lost Ark was fresh in everyone’s mind I think we lived in a culture where Nazi was a universal stand-in for evil (there’s a reason they made them the bad guys of the movie). So dressing up as a Nazi from a film it was pretty obvious that you were going as an evil villain, not as a hero.
In the wake of a real life violent street clash between torch-wielding Nazis and anti-facists in which someone was murdered with a car the current president said there were fine people on both sides. In today’s context, it’s a lot less clear that someone dressing as a Nazi is intentionally playing the part of the villain.
It’s like people want some simple answer that deals with every situation and it turns out life is complicated.
On top of all that for all we know that Nazi costume retraumatized a holocaust survivor but no one gave a shit about that in the 80s.
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On on hand… that sounds like a really cool costume, and I wish you could show us a picture!
But on the other… that sounds too intense for a school costume, since it might give some kids nightmares. That might be better kept for a grown-up costume or non-school activity.
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It’s not banned at home, just at school. Simmer down.
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It was, actually; I saw it at a Hallowe’en party =) . And yeah, it was pretty convincingly gory; it had that properly-goopy eeeyurgh to it, if you know what I mean?
Right about here, but with no actual splatter:
They also had the outfit a bit more like the SS commander who melted, just previously, but THIS guy’s face. Good call; it was quite ghastly.
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Look into the history of the Alien and Sedition Act and how it was applied. You will find that it was enforced against people who made statements against slaveholders and abolitionists, respectively, depending upon the context. It was applied in a way that would fit closely, or even exactly, the current definition of hate speech.
Just because John Jay didn’t use the term “hate speech” explicitly, doesn’t mean the concept was alien to jurisprudence at the time.
Then come back here and disparage my (layperson’s) understanding of the law. Feel free.
Meanwhile, I’d suggest you take off your blinders and read the whole case history on hate speech and it’s interactions with the First Amendment, rather than glossing over the parts you don’t like.
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“Hey, I’m a kid in 2019 dressed up as a kid from 1981 that is wearing a Nazi costume that reminds people of Raiders of the Lost Ark!”
No, I’m pretty sure that’s still not going to sufficiently take the sting out of the “Nazi” part when it comes to costumes for elementary students.
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Well, using something’s similarity to the A&S Acts as an argument in favor of its constitutionality is certainly unique, I’ll give you that. I can’t imagine many, if any contemporary legal scholars would argue that those acts provide a road map for permissible restrictions on speech.
In any event, I thought you agreed at this point that hate speech was, in fact, protected speech, but were arguing that it shouldn’t be?
Not for nothing, but I have. A really good professor who wrote law review articles about the subject taught the class. We learned all about the developments of speech regulation, which is why I’m telling you you’re mistaken in much of what you’ve argued, and misunderstanding the holdings of RAV and Virginia. But which case would you like to discuss that we haven’t yet? Phelps? Skokie? Brandenburg?
And where did I imply it would? It was at an adult party, the Hallowe’en after the movie’s release. I’m not even remotely trying to excuse this student’s parents (although the student, himself, has the excuse of being very young, if nothing else).
Times change, especially re: pop culture.
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Did you do the reading or not?
I did not. Please don’t put words in my mouth.
I pointed out that, in Virginia v. Black that burning a cross in an African American’s front yard was accepted as illegal, as it represented intimidation and threat. You can keep pretending that it isn’t “hate speech”, but that’s ignoring the context, which is clearly what makes it a threat rather than an innocuous event.
A group of churchgoers could burn their old cross in their own parking lot, and there would be nothing illegal about that.
You could burn a plastic snowman in your neighbor’s yard, and the most you’d be looking at is minor property damage.
But if you burn a cross in an African-American’s yard, that is both hate speech and a very specific threat. You can’t rhetorically separate the two. The context defines the threat.
Likewise, a group of neo-Nazis can have a rally downtown and chant “Blood and soil” and it’s socially deplorable but not illegal. Do the same thing outside a crowded synagogue, and it’s a whole different ballgame. That’s no longer protected speech, it’s hate speech with intimidation, and it’s not going to be protected by the First Amendment. Those same people could chant “Pokemon: Gotta Catch Them All” outside the synagogue and it would be weird, but not illegal.
You keep getting hung up on the semantics that you heard somewhere that “hate speech” is protected, when there are clearly exceptions to that protection, they are common rather than niche, and they are specific to the context of the expression. Scalia might have written that cross-burners should be prosecuted as litterers, but that is not what the case law actually states.
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That’s so unfair.
Cancer doesn’t have a choice.
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we miss tinker v des moines.
On a related theme…
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That’s a helpful explanation, thanks.
Child or children would have been another choice you could have made.
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This ignores most of what I wrote above explaining where your understanding of what Virginia holds isn’t quite right, which unfortunately indicates we’re probably well into the phase of talking past each other. I don’t want to talk past you, either, but I do think you’re a thoughtful person and this is an interesting topic for me, so I suggest breaking down what I’m actually saying into some elements you can agree or disagree with to see where we’re actually at.
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“Hate speech” is protected speech under the US Constitution;
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No speech is absolutely protected, including political speech, religious speech, and “hate speech”;
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There are several narrow categories of unprotected speech such as true threats and incitement which the state can permissibly regulate and punish;
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If any speech passes the test of one of these forms of unprotected speech, the state may regulate/punish it on a case by case basis;
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Under the First Amendment as currently understood and applied by the Supreme Court, the state cannot presume intent and criminalize categories of speech like “hate speech,” but must instead examine the individual act to see if it was carried out with an intent to threaten or intimidate.
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