According to the National PTA, this week was Teacher Appreciation Week. Right-wing media appear to have missed the memo.

The week started on May 5 with radio host Rush Limbaugh stating that those who advocate for greater diversity among teachers were “pushing for racial quotas” and want to return the U.S. to segregation and “go back to the way it was ... before the Civil Rights Act.” Limbaugh was responding to a report from the Center for American Progress and the National Education Association which found, according to the Associated Press, that “U.S. teachers are nowhere near as diverse as their students.”

On Fox News' Outnumbered the same day, Fox host Tucker Carlson responded to a story about a female teacher who supposedly gave a “lapdance” to a male student, claiming that men understand that getting sexually harassed by a female teacher is the “greatest thing that ever happened.” When co-host Harris Faulkner read a viewer comment that “Whether this woman is hot, of course, is still out,” Carlson responded, “She's hot enough.” On April 28, Carlson told America to “lighten up” on the issue.

On May 6, Fox & Friends took to calling a Florida public school teacher a “Bible Bully” because a fifth-grade boy at a Broward County school claimed his Bible was taken away during free-reading time. Despite a statement from the county affirming its commitment to students' religious freedom and local reporting that the student was reading his Bible during a “classroom 'accelerated reading' program,” Fox hosts nonetheless accused the teacher of being a “Bible Bully” and “humiliat[ing]” the student.

Fox & Friends even hosted Fox radio host Todd Starnes later in the program to discuss the Florida story, who made multiple outlandish claims about teachers:

STARNES: We got to start calling this like it is. We either have a bunch of religious bigots teaching our kids or we have a lot of ignorant people who don't understand the law.

[...]

STARNES: What if that child had been reading a Quran? I don't think that teacher would have done a single thing.

Breitbart.com blogger Javier Manajarres joined the fun on May 8, claiming the Florida story was indication of a “War on Christ in Florida,” outing the teacher as a “registered...wait for it...wait for it...Democrat” and concluding, “Can you imagine if [the teacher] were to have banned a Koran from being read in classroom? All jihad would have broken loose, and she would be canned. The War on Christ is alive and well among the Democrat faithful.”

Of course, teacher-bashing rhetoric is nothing new when it comes to conservative media. Limbaugh previously claimed that the idea that teachers contribute to a growing economy is “ignorance.” Fox News earlier this year devoted several segments to bashing teachers and teachers unions in a debate over public school space in New York City. And just a few weeks ago, Breitbart Texas launched a transphobic attack on a substitute teacher in Texas who was suspended because of her gender identity, attempting to portray her as mentally disturbed and suggesting that a divorce was what prompted her to become transgender.

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

Image at top obtained via Flickr user Cybrarian77 with a Creative Commons license.