Opinion: Ex-porn star Sasha Grey in the classroom -- or not
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If former porn star Sasha Grey were a little crazy, she could have faked the whole reading-to-little-kids thing. According to her Twitter account and a photo posted on the celebrity website TMZ, Grey was a guest reader at a ‘Read Across America’ event at Emerson Elementary School in Compton, entertaining the first- and third-graders with a lively rendition of ‘Dog Breath.’
Tweets, of course, can be meaningless, and photos can be staged. But it’s more likely that the Compton Unified School District is the one engaging in bizarre behavior -- by refusing to admit that Grey was at the school. KTLA News reported that the district had released a statement saying it could not confirm Grey’s appearance. According to TMZ, the district out-and-out denied that Grey was among its readers.
Grey has been out of the porn business for a couple of years, and as near as anyone can tell, if she was actually at the school, what she did was -- read a kid’s book. Nice of her.
But still, stupid of school officials or whoever it was who invited her on campus -- if they actually did. Whether or not Grey is just a charitable person who can bring particular animation to ‘Dog Breath,’ a school should know better than to invite porn stars, ex or not. Grey’s celebrity is at least partly connected to her involvement in the porn business. It doesn’t matter if the kids have no idea who she is. Porn is not a connection that works for schools. And if she’s an unfamiliar figure to the children, then why not get an aspiring actress who reads well -- one without the unsavory past?
But the bigger stupidity would be if Compton school officials were lying about her appearance. (They haven’t been returning phone calls Monday.) This isn’t a school district that acted impressively this last year, when parents petitioned to have McKinley Elementary School in Compton turned over to a charter operator. Then, school officials were insensitive to children’s needs and indifferent to parental and public concerns. Sound familiar?
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--Karin Klein
