It had been a while since Ms. Foster had taken a history class, but she had her suspicions when the Insight's political cartoon depicted her in a military uniform, standing alongside the student council, holding a red-tinted copy of How To Be A Good Person in a salute. For one, olive and red weren't Heller school colors. And why was the caption in block print? Mr. T confirmed the worst after laughing so hard that he was red in the face: Ms. Foster was now a communist. Ms. Foster didn't like communism very much; it was something both Tucker Carlson and Anderson Cooper told her was bad, and her parents had told her scary stories as a kid about their honeymoon in the USSR—too many people who didn't speak English. With this in mind, Ms. Foster marched outside to Mr. Simon's classroom.

She knocked firmly a few times and entered after she heard a beleaguered "Come in," one that made her suspect Mr. Simon had received many visitors that day.

"What will it be now? That we interviewed Madeline for her own newspaper and had to creatively censor her words at 11 PM? The suspicious amount of advertising space dedicated to the club elite's family businesses? The crime blotter listing such heinous crimes as 'taking too long to get dressed for PE' and 'not helping the lunch ladies carry boxes'? I've heard it all at this point, and I can promise you that nothing can be done about it."

"No, Paul. I want to know why I'm a communist."

"Oh, that's a new one. You mean the cartoon?"

"Yes, and for the record, I did not find it funny. I demand an apology. What if my Facebook friends hear of this and think I'm running a sweatshop or dictatorship here? I'd never hear the end of it."

Mr. Simon rolled his eyes. "No matter what the club wishes to take away from the rest of the school, they've expressed little interest in interfering with a free press—with some conditions, of course, but nothing we can't adapt to. Part of this free press is the right to satire and parody. And if Frank, who has the most to lose from being drawn like Chairman Mao, found the idea so hilarious he immediately commissioned propaganda posters, you can take it less seriously too. Talk to Mr. Kurtz if you want, he'll see my point of view."

Ms. Foster was too blinded by rage to take Mr. Simon's remarks as anything but a declaration of war. What if he was one of those communists too, trying to poison her head with communist lies? The Insight may very well have been Pravda if they weren't willing to do the proper thing and avoid anything incendiary or controversial. She stormed out of the room immediately and marched again toward Mr. Kurtz's office, ignoring Mr. Simon's faint shout of "Hey, come back! I wasn't serious! Aw, Bosnia-Herzegovina."

Mr. Kurtz had only briefly skimmed that day's edition of the Insight, but he had few thoughts on the issue. His gut told him this wasn't the sort of thing he ought to be concerned about, so after completing the How To Be A Good Person-themed crossword at a leisurely pace, he returned to work; this serenity was disrupted when Ms. Foster entered without knocking, clutching a copy of the political cartoon.

"Turn to page 6," she commanded. Normally Mr. Kurtz would have said something snarky in response, but the anger in Ms. Foster's voice demanded respect, and so he obeyed.

"Yeah, I saw the cartoon. Great drawing. You should be flattered. They really portrayed you accurately."

"While you sit around in your ivory tower, Mr. Simon and his Red Guard are spreading communist propaganda throughout the school! It's disgusting, shameful, critical, and I don't like it at all! He refused to listen to me, so you have to do something. Tell him to stop saying negative things about us."

"Mr. Simon tells it like it is, Lisa. We need more of that in society these days. Is that not what a newspaper is supposed to do? Now, if you think this cartoon is inaccurate, maybe do a bit more self-reflection. Is there the chance, Lisa, that you've done anything recently that could be misconstrued as communist? Anything at all?"

"No, Patrick. I haven't done anything communist."

"Are you sure?"

"Why, yes, I'm quite sure."

"Well, last time I was in the leadership office, I saw all your students sharing materials with each other. Those are ones you provide, right, and that they don't bring from home. Is that sharing, maybe, kind of collectivist?"

"That's a stupid example and you know it. That's established practice we've been doing for years, and—"

"So it seems that your cadre, if you will, has already embraced some communist values! That's not a bad thing. We live in a free country, and in California, no less. But when you look at things like that, you can see how the newspaper staff may get the wrong impression, and a sign of maturity would be if you accepted that. Why, once I wore an Oakland A's baseball cap to a bar once, and everyone thought I supported them! But that was a funny miscommunication, and after a few drinks, we forgot all about it. Mr. Simon takes the humanities department on a trip to Napa every month—why don't you join them?" Ms. Foster let out a long scream, loud enough that the counselors working outside thought that Mr. Kurtz had denied a student a letter of recommendation, and stormed out again.

Discussion Questions:

How have different characters so far, like Ms. Foster and Mr. Kurtz, had different attitudes on what's acceptable for "free speech" in a newspaper? Where else has this idea of free speech come up before?

Why is Mr. Kurtz's first instinct to blame Ms. Foster for this? How reasonable is it that she's been blamed for what's been happening at the school?

Clearly Frank and the more loyal club members have a different perception of what being a "good person" means than how people outside view the idea. Who's right?