Les Jones

Media Behaving Badly > Melinda England

I'm heading out the door, so this is all I have time to say about the story of Melinda England, the Inskip elementary teacher who's under fire for some racy photos she posted online. First, there's no nudity. You could see that sort of thing on a poster at the movie theater. You can see the pictures here and judge for yourself.

Part of the narrative is that England discussed "prescription drug use" on her Web page. When I read that I assumed she was an Oxycontin fiend or something. Not exactly:

The haters are raving that she’s blogging on MySpace about prescription drug use and “out of control” kids. Well, it turns out her “prescription drug use” is Prednisone to help with flareups from fibromyaglia.

So that didn't pan out. I don't think it was a great idea for an elementary school teacher to post those photos, but that doesn't mean it should be a firing offense.

By and large, the whole thing reminds me of this definition of scandal: "By scandal I mean something which is legal and many consenting adults do."