Teacher in Hot Water After Student Records Sickening Anti-Military Rant
A California teacher who also serves on the city council of the town of Pico Rivera — and is a former mayor — is in a bit of hot water after one of his students allegedly recorded him delivering a profane anti-military rant.
Gregory Salcido — who had previously made news in 2012 for allegedly slapping a student at El Rancho High School, where he teaches — called the military the “lowest of the low” in the videos, which were uploaded to Facebook on Friday, according to The Daily Caller.
The Los Angeles Times reported that the rant was apparently sparked by a student wearing a Marines shirt in his class.
As The Caily Caller reported:
“The video of Salcido’s comments were posted to Facebook by a family friend of the student who took it and they quickly went viral. The student, who wished to remain anonymous, is the son and nephew of military veterans and told the local paper, “’It was so disrespectful to my dad and my uncles and all veterans and those still in the military.’”
How disrespectful? Judge for yourself.
“You better not freaking go,” Salcido says, apparently to the student wearing the shirt. “Don’t wear that in here.”
“We’ve got a bunch of dumbs**** over there,” he continues in the most offensive part of the rant.
“Think about the people who you know who are over there — your freaking stupid Uncle Louis or whatever, they’re dumbs****. They’re not, like, high-level thinkers, they’re not academic people, they’re not intellectual people, they’re the freaking lowest of our low. Not morally, I’m not saying they make bad moral decisions, they’re not talented people,” Salcido says.
You know, unlike him.
To make things worse, local leaders told the Los Angeles Times that Pico Rivera has strong community ties to the military. Needless to say, Salcido’s job is in jeopardy.
Here are the videos. As always, we warn you that there’s vulgar language here. Viewer discretion is advised.
Does that remind anyone else of John Kerry’s infamous “stuck in Iraq” line?
Salcido, 49, also rants about the ability of the military to recruit in high schools.
“I don’t understand why we let the freaking military guys come over here and recruit you in school,” Salcido says. “We don’t let pimps come into school.”
Well, if a guy can’t see the difference between military recruiters and purveyors of the flesh trade, it’s a legitimate question to ask if he should be teaching impressionable young minds. And local officials are apparently asking that question.
“This is not something that we are taking lightly,” Pico Rivera school board President Aurora R. Villon told the Los Angeles Times. “I cannot discuss it because it is a personnel matter, other than we are conducting a full-blown investigation. We are moving very diligently.”
Salcido, 49, was in New York City with family when the videos broke. He had planned on traveling to Washington as part of his work with the city council. Instead, he said he and his wife “deemed it appropriate to head home under the circumstances.”
In a Facebook post, he said that he had come out of a play and “turned my phone back on unexpectedly to see a storm … I want my friends, family, and students to know we are fine and we respect the rights of free expression for all individuals.”
“Because of the many vulgar and violent threats against my family I do not have any comment on the situation at this time,” he added in an email.
While nobody endorses vulgar and/or violent threats against anybody, I find a certain irony in a teacher who — by all appearances — made a vulgar rant after telling a student they couldn’t wear a Marines shirt in the classroom. This is the height of hypocrisy, and one doubts from Salcido’s past behavior and willingness to go on at length that this was the first time anything like this had happened.
As for the part about “the rights of free expression for all individuals,” expression at one’s job — particularly when the expression regards callously insulting those who serve our country and those that support them — is highly, highly qualified. Bottom line, if Salcido is truly responsible for this rant, he deserves to be fired, and one hopes the voters of Pico Rivera either have some method of recall or do a better job picking their councilmembers next time.
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