The Knucklehead Of The Day

Today's knucklehead is the 16-year-old Georgia girl who, while sitting in class, apparently thought it would be cute to sing a song about shooting her teacher:

A high school student has been suspended after a teacher accused her of singing a threatening song in class.

Beth Ann Cox, 16, a junior at Peachtree Ridge High School, said she had been humming the song during German class but denied singing loudly or directing the lyrics at her teacher, Phil Carroll.

"I'd had a song stuck in my head all day, like the tune of it," she said. "This kid in front of me asked me about the song. So I told him the words. I didn't say them loudly."

The song includes the lyrics: "On top of Ol' Smokey, all covered with blood, I shot my poor teacher with a .44 slug."

Sloan Roach, spokeswoman for Gwinnett County schools located about 30 miles northeast of Atlanta, disputed Cox's version of events. Roach said the student was discussing a grade with her teacher when she began singing the song out loud in class.

Administrators pulled Cox out of class later Friday and asked why she had threatened her teacher. She was suspended Monday.

Cox has had differences with the teacher in the past, said her mother, Suzanne Cox.

"We feel that Dr. Carroll has some kind of a vendetta out for our daughter. And he used this to take a stand against her," Suzanne Cox said.

Roach said the suspension was "appropriate disciplinary action" for disrupting class.

Even if we accept, for the sake of argument, that the mother is correct about her daughter having "differences" with the teacher, it doesn't excuse the teenager's behavior.

I'm more concerned that mom appears to be using these "differences" to somehow rationalize her daughter's actions.

Today's runners-up have got to be the mother-daughter team who cooked-up a batch of Ex-Lax laced cookies to feed to a teacher who had given the kid a less-than-stellar grade. Instead of making the teacher ill, they put four middle school students into the emergency room.

Update: (05/11/06) The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's blog Get Schooled has the latest scoop on our singing student.
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