IRVING, TEXAS — A Texas student has been suspended from class because, according to sources close to the story, all the adults involved are “fucking idiots.”
Ahmed Mohamed, 14 years old, was suspended from his Irving, Texas high school when he brought a homemade clock he’d created out of electronics parts and brought it to school, assuming his teachers would be impressed with the fact that he’d been so enthusiastic about learning that he’d built something on his own time using what he’d learned at school. Mohamed’s assumption, however, met what Irving police officer Tom Rimpleston is calling “good old fashioned Texas ignorance” when an alarmed teacher turned the student in for having attempted to make a bomb.
Mohamed, a Muslim student, reportedly told the authorities involved that he’d only tried to build a clock. According to accounts, that’s when he was told that his clock “looks like a movie bomb.” Young Mohamed was then led out of school in handcuffs after being told by school administration he could be expelled for his extracurricular science project. There is no word at this time whether the school or Irving police will take any further action.
“Look, it might seem to those who live outside the Lone Star state that this is a clear case of tacit Islamaphobia,” Rimpleston told reporters at a press conference, “but to those of us who live here, this is just good old fashioned Texas ignorance.” Rimpleston said he could “guarantee that some of the faculty and students” at the school might have been alarmed by the device because they “can’t tell time unless a Republican politician is telling them what position in the sky the sun is.” Rimpleston also insisted that “even if it was some kind of Islamaphobia, it was probably not intentional, just Texan.”
Officer Rimpleston told reporters that Mohamed in his view wasn’t treated any differently than other kids who get into trouble at school. He related the story of a junior at another Texas school that had brought the rifle his father gave him for his birthday to school and left it in his truck. “That kid was taken out of class, questioned about why the gun was there, and when he provided the traditional Texan response to being questioned about a gun — to yell ‘Shall not be infringed’ and give the middle finger salute — he was allowed to go to the car, secure the gun in the school’s gun locker — all Texas schools have them by law — and he was told to make sure he remembered to properly stow his firearm next time.”
“Again, I have to insist that we not frame this as some kind of cultural racism,” Rimpleston said, “and remember that it’s most likely that every single adult failed in this situation, and that’s probably because they were all fucking idiots, yeah.” Rimpleston conceded that it would be “really unheard of and kind of moronic for the kid to build a bomb and then literally show it off instead of detonating it,” and that “most certainly proves” his point that the adults were “just bonafide, slack-jawed Texas jackasses.”
As he concluded the press conference, Rimpleston reiterated that “a few simple questions and a demonstration should have been all it took” to clear Mohamed of any wrongdoing.
“However, this being a school in Texas, full of adults presumably educated in Texas, none of us should be surprised that not a single adult could look at the device he brought and figure out it’s nothing remotely like a bomb,” Rimpleston said, adding, “and that’s why it’s important to remember this is just a simple case of what happens when ignorance is embraced, taught and drilled into a populace’s minds. I’m not trying to excuse our baseline idiocy here, just to explain it. Because when you literally take critical thinking out of school curriculum, moments of mass stupidity like this will not be random and infrequent; they’ll be common place,” Rimpleston concluded.
Then, after a beat, “Correction — they are common place.”
