Last week Kansas Governor Sam Brownback gave a speech to students participating in the state’s Youth in Government program. One of the students in attendance, Shawnee Mission East High School senior Emma Sullivan, jokingly tweeted that she had taken the opportunity to tell Brownback that he sucks.
Naturally, Brownback, a grown-a$s man who holds a position of power, did what any grown-a$s man in a position of power would do — he, or should I say his staff, tattled on young Emma, calling her school to inform its principal that she had been rude to Brownback on the Twitter machine.
On Tuesday, Sullivan was called to her principal’s office and told that the tweet had been flagged by someone on Brownback’s staff and reported to organizers of the Youth in Government program.
The principal “laid into me about how this was unacceptable and an embarrassment,” Sullivan said. “He said I had created this huge controversy and everyone was up in arms about it … and now he had to do damage control.
“I’m mainly shocked that they would even see that tweet and be concerned about me,” she said. “I just honestly feel they’re making a lot bigger deal out of it than it actually was.”
To makes amends for her clearly atrocious behavior, Sullivan was ordered to write Brownback, a Republican, an apology letter by her principal, which she initially agreed to do. HOWEVER, she has now decided not to, essentially telling Brownback and school officials to go f*ck themselves — which is exactly what she should do.
While she had initially agreed to apologize, a swell of support from strangers, particularly on Twitter, has caused Sullivan to have a change of heart. “I would do it again,” Sullivan says, adding that a “dialogue” about free speech in social media had been “opened up” thanks to her tweet.
She isn’t quite sure what will happen when she formally declines to pen the apology letter, but says she’s received several emails from attorneys.
Though she won’t apologize, Sullivan would take an opportunity to talk to the governor if presented with one. “I think it would be interesting to have a dialogue with him,” she told the Kansas City Star. “I don’t know if he would do it or not though. And I don’t know that he would listen to what I have to say.”
Now that we know that his staff are such Nazis about policing Twitter for anti-Brownback tweets, I think we should dedicate a day to calling the governor of Kansas names on Twitter. With a last name like “Brownback” I’m sure it’d be lots of fun!
UPDATE: Brownback has issued an apology for his staff “overreacting,” but is refusing to apologize to Sullivan personally. So yeah — Sam Brownback is such a dick.