Rebel Flag Onesie Sparks Brouhaha at Preschool

Deb­bie Dou­glas didn’t expect to start a con­tro­versy when she  hand­made a rebel flag one­sie for her daugh­ter who attends Cab­bage Patch Col­lege, Kissimeecoochee’s pre­miere preschool, where Dou­glas also works as a Pre-K teacher in the infant room.

“My daddy died three months before my daugh­ter was born,” Dou­glas said.  “I was try­ing to think of a way that I could honor him and involve him in Dixiebelle’s life.”  Dou­glas went on to explain that since her father was pas­sion­ate about Civil War reen­act­ment that she decided to design a one­sie with the Bat­tle Flag of the Confederacy.

“As soon as Dix­iebelle could sit upright on Daddy’s knee,” Dou­glas con­tin­ued, “he would have started teach­ing her every­thing he knew about War of North­ern Aggression.”

Tiffany Wash­ing­ton, Douglas’s co-teacher, dis­agrees.  She claims that Dou­glas is try­ing to intim­i­date her into quit­ting her job with the use of a racist sym­bol.  “What’s that baby going to be wear­ing next?  A white hood?”

An unnamed source who agreed to speak with us on the con­di­tion of anonymity but sounds a lot like Jenny McGreevey who works across the hall in the tod­dler room due to her sig­na­ture lisp, said that the bad blood between Dou­glas and Wash­ing­ton goes back to an Easter potluck when the two women had a ver­bal alter­ca­tion over whether corn­bread should be sweet or savory.  “Tiffany likes her corn­bread kind of sweet, but Deb­bie believes corn­bread should be savory.  Nei­ther one would back down and I just knew that hair and hair exten­sions were going be fly­ing around the teacher’s lounge.”

Since Dix­iebelle made her first appear­ance in the con­tro­ver­sial infant body­suit, other par­ents have com­mis­sioned Dou­glas to pro­duce rebel flag one­sies for their babies, as well.

“I don’t give a damn about his­tory or any­thing else,” said Angie Bom­gard­ner, a par­ent with an infant at Cab­bage Patch Col­lege and designer of a line of upscale tube tops, Stick-Em-Up Chic.  “I love to acces­sorize, and I love the way Junior’s one­sie matches the bumper sticker on the back of his daddy’s truck.  It is too cute and now Earl doesn’t mind tak­ing Junior with him to the Pig­gly Wiggly.”

Dou­glas’ boom­ing one­sie busi­ness led Wash­ing­ton to take her griev­ance pub­licly by con­tact­ing the Kissimeecoochee Observer.

Preschool Direc­tor Estelle Bach­man held a press con­fer­ence this morn­ing and announced that no more stu­dents would be per­mit­ted to wear any cloth­ing with any flag imagery unless par­ents agreed to allow staff to run them up the flag­pole.  Fur­ther­more, corn­bread would be banned from future potlucks at Cab­bage Patch Col­lege.  She also said that if some staff could not work out their dif­fer­ences, they both bet­ter pick up employ­ment appli­ca­tions from Wal-Mart.