When we last checked in on my fair state of Pennsyltucky, Republican congresswoman Stephanie Borowicz tried to hurl Jesus magic at a newly elected Muslim representative, to the point where even the fellow bigots and homophobes in her own party went, “Wow, goddammit, lady.” So you’ll probably be surprised to learn that the same region that farted Wizard of Christ Borowicz into the state capitol is making headlines again for another remarkably stupid display of Islamophobia.

NBC News reports:

A video of an active shooting drill at a Pennsylvania school has received sharp criticism over the decision to dress an actor playing a would-be shooter in what appears to be a Middle Eastern-style headdress.

The simulation video, which was made in January and only intended for internal training purposes, shows an actor abruptly entering a classroom and firing a shot, followed by a loud scream and students ducking their heads. The school said that two actors were used during the filming.

In the first scene, it’s not clear if an actor is wearing a headdress — but a few minutes later, after police officers have caught up with him, there’s a clearer picture of him wearing a headdress with his hands up.

Yup, all of that is as bad it sounds, and the school district in question is really hoping you don’t have eyes and a functioning brain.

Via WITF:

The video appears to show the actor wearing a kaffiyeh. The Penn-Trafford School District said organizers of the training didn’t intend to portray the shooter as Arab or Muslim at the January training.

The district said volunteers were provided costumes by a consultant group and there was no intent to represent any particular culture or religion.

Obviously, any sane and rational adult with even the most cursory knowledge of school shootings knows that the shooters are almost exclusively white males with easy access to guns. (And just to be clear, I’m talking about shooters who actively burst into a school with the specific intent of killing as many as possible and not instances where a parking lot and/or sidewalk fight turns into a shootout in case anyone tries to come in here and muddy the waters.) So any accurate portrayal of a school shooter would involve making him look like a regular member of the local community that’s sloppy with guns. Not to mention the fact that Islamic terrorists aren’t exactly out here targeting buttwater PA towns in the middle of nowhere, and I say that as someone raising a family in one of those buttwater towns. If anyone’s going to shoot up one of my kids’ schools — which I live in daily fear of because America is a Christian murderbox of dumb — it’s going to be an angry white kid with an AR-15 he pulled from a gun rack with a MAGA hat on it.

Of course, try telling Sarah Palin’s “Real Americans” that because here’s just a smattering of the predictable responses to this story that I culled from KDKA in Pittsburgh and PennLive in Harrisburg. (Fun fact: I left out the handles, but one of these commenters used the town I live in as his screenname, so that was neat.)

“This is exactly the kind of PC mentality that’s going to get Americans killed.”

“GET OVER IT. Pretty close to reality, so it hurts?”

Everyone’s a snowflake. You get the picture.

Thankfully, there’s a glimmer of hope in all of this, which I’m going to cling to as this country careens even further into Super Racist Gilead. Via KDKA:

Trinity Garbacz is a junior at the high school and has her own ideas about how it should have been produced.

“I just thought that maybe they could have used a normal person not to offend anyone. Like, you could have used anyone. You didn’t have to dress him up,” she said. “I could’ve done it, you could’ve done it. It doesn’t have to be a certain religion or race or anything like that.”

The kids know what’s up.

Header Image Source: Penn-Trafford School District

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