The Allen Lee “Write whatever comes to your mind. Do not judge or censor what you are writing” Cary-Grove High School essay arrest story continues to walk over Allen Lee.
Yesterday, I pointed out the story had achieved metropolitan-wide legs.
Meaning it would not die quickly.
Those legs were made for walking, as Nancy Sinatra used to sing and that is most assuredly what they are doing.
Those media legs are walking all over Allen Lee.
It wasn’t bad enough that Lee ended up on the front page of his hometown paper, but, Thursday, the young man was on the front page of the Chicago Tribune and Friday, not to be outdone, graced the cover of the Chicago Sun-Times.
The lesson is probably that a high school boy should not scare one’s teacher. Allen Lee obviously did scare Nora Capron by referring to her as a “control freak” in conjunction with what the Saturday Tribune quoted of his essay at the beginning of its editorial (see below).
Undoubtedly trying to please its new owner, the Tribune runs what I guess could be considered a rebuttal story all the way across its front page right under its masthead on Saturday.
Complete with photograph of Allen Lee.
It’s lead editorial is also about Allen Lee.
It quotes the end of the essay,
“As a teacher, don’t be surprised on inspiring the fist cg shooter.”
A few weeks ago, before…Virginia Tech…those ominous passages might have been dismissed as teenage fantasy…officials…turned the paper over to Cary police, who arrested the 18-year-old senior the next morning as he walked to school…
Was the arrest a gross overreaction or a prudent preventive action?
The Tribune editorial writer points out,
It requires a delicate balancing of the values of freedom and safety, “How far is too far?” is a question that has to be asked about the behavior of students—and about the responses of educational and law enforcement professionals to that behavior.
It concludes,
Maybe he should have gotten off with a stern lecture and some time in detention. But after Blacksburg, he and other kids may find that the boundaries of acceptable behavior have changed for good.
Saturday, the Sun-Times drops the story from the front page, story on page 3, to page 5.
But, it’s a full-page story Saturday, more space than was give Allen Lee on Friday.
But that wasn’t bad enough for Allen Lee’s reputation.
An Associated Press story I linked to yesterday reports that this 4.2 average high school senior isn’t good enough for the Marines. The AP accommodatingly enough ran a full color photo that I notice ended up on the front page of Elgin’s Courier-News.
The photo and a cut line is to the right of an article on the Pentagon’s revealing that a senior al-Qaida operative had been shipped to Quantanamo after having been held by the CIA in secret for months.
This Allen Lee story must really be important. (The al-Qaida story is on page 12 of the Sun-Times and page 22 of the Chicago Tribune.)
Not only did potential trouble maker Allen Lee get more publicity that the capture of an actual terrorist, but he’s gotten more press that Barack Obama did when he supported the continuation of what pro-lifers call partial birth abortion. Of course, that Obama statement was not considered newsworthy, maybe because he had voted that way in Springfield.
Oh, yes.
Did I mention that Allen Lee is oriental, just as the Virginia Tech killer (whose name I refuse to mention) was?
This story will be on CNN and Fox News…worldwide.
As a write this at noon on Saturday, there are 149 news media stories about Allen Lee and one of them was on CNN.
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I see this comment about halfway down in the Northwest Herald from a classmate who is taking the same creative writing course:
But, from the first day of class she has told us on every assignment that if she sees anything that is a danger to the students or the faculty of our school that she HAS to report it. I heard it and the other students heard it- including Allen.