Smearing Teachers as Terrorists

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Did America's largest teachers union construct a subversive web site concerning September 11? This nasty slander against the National Education Association has been spreading across the Internet, sparked by a series of articles in the Washington Times. According to the initial piece by Ellen Sorokin, the NEA "is suggesting to teachers that they be careful on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks not to 'suggest any group is responsible' for the terrorist hijackings that killed more than 3,000 people." Subsequently, the right-wing media echo chamber has amplified this accusation, complaining of "Terrorism In the Classroom" as "Educators Blame America and Embrace Islam." As Bob Somerby points out in the Daily Howler (and as you can see for yourself if you visit the NEA's web site), Sorokin's article was a "ludicrous slander" that pulled truncated quotes from an obscure page on the NEA's site, "misrepresented what the quotes plainly meant; and pretended that the NEA site was therefore bad anti-American."