With the dust settling on the Eightball #22 controversy, there remain a few close-the-bar comments that ware worth checking out.
First up is Eric Reynolds, who provides a measured, thoughtful accounting of the matter:
I appreciate any parent wanting to protect their children, but in this case, would the child be any less protected if a solution that didn’t include a police investigation and/or immediate resignation had been pursued? To me, that’s the fundamental question. Going outside the curriculum = against the rules, for sure. But if his intentions were good, who benefits from his resignation? Which leads us to (b). The ONLY reason this teacher should have been forced to resign is if there was any reason to believe that their was something improper in his motives. But as near as I can tell, there was nothing remotely predatory about his behavior.
Then there’s child advocate Minivan Diaries:
However, at what cost and to what extremes do we go to protect our children? Isn’t it also our job to be good role models for our kids, especially when they are teenagers and they judge our behavior so scrupulously? By rushing to the police, and notifying school officials, she denied the teacher any opportunity to explain himself. He was guilty way before he even had a chance to prove his innocence, or at least his poor judgement. This was a perfect opportunity for a Parental Teaching moment — to demonstrate how adults work out differences by gathering facts, communicating, trying to understand both sides of an issue, and in this case, realizing that people, even teachers are human and they make mistakes.
But if you’re just looking for snark, Vulture has you covered:
1. Did school administrators make any effort to determine whether this was true before suspending the teacher and (as hinted at in later posts by Eric Reynolds of Fantagraphics, Eightball‘s publisher) pressuring him to resign?
2. What kind of idiot would try to seduce high-school girl with Daniel Clowes? Good Lord, do they think he was trying to creepazoid his way into her pants?
And while we’re talking about Clowes, don’t forget that his new strip, Mister Wonderful, is currently being serialized in the New York Times Sunday magazine section.
