Des Moines, Ia. For someone who has never set foot in a school, Rick Santorum seemed to be in his element in Miss Hess’s first grade classroom. Friday’s visit to Miss Hess’s first grade classroom at Riverside Elementary School in Des Moines marked the last stop of the republican candidate’s Faith, Family and Freedom Tour.
We arrived as Santorum and the children were returning from recess. The excited children filed to their seats as they chattered about how Mr. Santorum’s nailed three kids “right in the head” during dodge ball.
Miss Hess directed the children to quiet down so that the last two children could present their projects. These projects, done in honor of Santorum’s visit, depicted important events in the children’s lives.
Ben Mason displayed a poster sized photograph of the buck his dad had shot. Sliced open from pelvis to sternum, the deer hung lifelessly from on old Oak tree, its leaking entrails glistening in the sun. “I gutted it with my twelve-inch Swiss Army knife”, announced Ben as he gleefully pointed to the parts that were the most fun to slice. The graphic photo, blown up to poster size, drew mixed reactions from the students. Kacey Prindle rushed from the room and could be heard retching in the hallway. Carlos wanted to know if there was any poop in the intestines. That drew a laugh from the boys, and eye rolls from the girls. Lauren Meister informed the boys that the picture was disgusting and that hunting was wrong.
Mr. Santorum interjected, “Ben’s family has exercised its God given right to bear arms. Any murderer from the housing projects, not necessarily DeShawns’ father of course, could wait under your beds to slice you open. How will your parents protect you? Do YOU want to end up like that buck?” Twenty five first graders shook their heads in unison.
Lucy Bellows showed a collage of Iowa's 2010 floods. Pictures showed mobile homes sailing down interstate 80, trains plunging into the Des Moines River, and the utter desolation on the faces of those who had lost everything. Miss Hess invited Lucy to share her feelings about the flooding. “I was very scared that my mom would get sucked into a sewer hole and no one would take care of me.” Joey Hildegarde lamented that he had to live in a poisonous FEMA trailer and it really sucked for him because he had to share a bedroom with his sister. A tearful Shannon McNerney recalled how Chuck E. Cheese’s flooded so she couldn’t have her birthday party there. Gino shyly recounted how his two daddies lost their bistro during the flood.
Santorum abruptly rose to his feet. “Gino, it’s because of your two daddies and other homos like them that Iowa has floods”. Santorum explained that the floods were God’s way of punishing Iowans for gay marriage and for the unnatural ways that gays “or fags, or homos, or fairies, or whatever you want to call them” get babies. Pointing at the cowering six-year old, Santorum said, “Gino here was created by some crackpot in a lab and then forced to live with two deviants because no one else would take him”.
Santorum then instructed the children to look closely at Gino’s head and notice that it had a caved-in look from “being compressed in a tiny glass tube for nine months”. “Because of perverts like Gino’s two daddies, Iowa floods will get worse”. He added, “Next time, ALL[i] of your parents will get swept away, and you won’t see them again until their headless, half-eaten bodies wash ashore in the Gulf of Mexico”.
Sobs, wailing, and shrieks for mommy and daddy ensued, but with some deep breathing
exercises and bags of Very Berry Skittles, the children calmed down and were soon firing questions at the adults.
“Is the stork a homo?”, “Is the tooth fairy actually my father?”, “Is the mailman a pervert?”, “Is my head smashed in like Gino’s?”, and so on.
Wringing her hands, Miss Hess said, “They’re totally confused and I’ll be getting some angry phone calls tonight”. Mr. Santorum suggested to Miss Hess that they demonstrate to the kids how God loving people created babies.
As the children sang the “Hokey Pokey”, Miss Hess formed a circle with her thumb and forefinger, and Mr. Santorum used his own forefinger to go in and out, in and out, in and out.
All too soon it was time for Santorum to leave. The children thanked him and promised not to be "fags, homos, or fairies or whatever we want to call them”.