What if the T-shirt had the phrase "PUBLIK SKOOLED" printed on it, with a silhouette of a ghetto public-housing complex emblazoned underneath? No doubt J.C. Penney would have balked at such a blatantly contemptuous image. The National Education Association and minority civil rights brigade would have made a federal discrimination case out of it.
But of course, no such T-shirt dissing the failed public school monopoly is sold on tees.com or at J.C. Penney. Why not? Because when it comes to bigoted insults in our politically correct culture, some institutions and groups get a pass. Despite criminally low test scores, enormous waste, unsafe classrooms, and administrative incompetence, the public schools remain a hallowed and untouchable fixture. The snickering snobs of the education establishment smear those who seek to protect their children from this corrupted system as ignorant and intolerant anti-government radicals.