Professor Compares Military Recruiters to Child Sex Predators:

And OverAfternoon Open Thread if you’d like.

So you’re sitting around, waiting for your particular football game to start, bored, and needing a thread with some red meat. Something to get you fired up, maybe? Here’s some low-hanging fruit fer ya.’ The article reads like parody, but the radio interview linked below it is comedy gold (well, except for the fact that this professor is drawing a public salary):

From Linda Thomas at MyNorthwest.com:

A Seattle woman, who fought allowing military recruiters in local high schools, is the lead author of a report that compares the behaviors of recruiters with the behaviors of sexual predators.

Amy Hagopian, assistant professor with the University of Washington's Department of Global Health concludes military recruiters are a "threat to the health of adolescents."

Hagopian says, "A review of the medical literature suggests military service is associated with disproportionately poor health for young people. The youngest recruits have the greatest number of mental disorders in the U.S. military, including alcohol abuse, anxiety syndromes, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder."

This isn’t the first time that the esteemed Professor has been in the news concerning the issue. She made national headlines back in 2005 as a PTSA member leading an effort to boot recruiters out of local high schools, though failing to do so. I think we actually had a post on it at the time but I'd have to check the archives. As soon as we get around to getting that whole search function thingy going. (And note that the link goes to something called the "Post-Intelligencer." Some kinda' newspaper I think. Wonder whatever happened to the old gal?)

Anyway...

"Grooming behavior is defined as the process by which a child is befriended by a would-be abuser in an attempt to gain the child's confidence and trust," Hagopian says."

The Army? Not so amused:

"The Army calls the professor's claim that military recruiters act like child predators "outrageous and offensive."

"To say that a military recruiter has the same way of approaching young people that a twisted sexual predator does, is highly offensive and blatantly wrong," says Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command in Fort Knox, Kentucky."

Now here’s your reward for slogging through all that above. What say we listen to the Professor explain things in her own words as she was a guest on the local Dori Monson radio show this past Thursday afternoon?

Remember Janitor in a Drum? This is Batshit Crazy in a Drum.

Now if we can just arrange a meeting between her and Curtis' mom, in a locked room with an open mic....

posted by Genghis at 03:00 PM

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