If I hadn't recently seen that "students fighting segregated prom" story from credible news sources, I'd have considered this part of the story to be nearly conclusive evidence of trolling. I should be more charitable than that.
It's still evidence, though. Who could fail to anticipate the devastatingly bad PR from "iPods vs Makeover/mani/pedis"? For that matter, why didn't the devastatingly bad PR occur? Surely the students and their parents weren't under NDA too.
Yet a Google search for 'ipod makeover school -"chic school girls"' doesn't seem to find anything relevant, with or without outraged commentary attached. This random lesswrong page comes up for me in the first couple dozen hits, even on a browser with no Google login or cookies that might trigger personalized rankings.
Nobody ever felt it was worth blogging about how their kids were being given these prizes at school?
Who could fail to anticipate the devastatingly bad PR from "iPods vs Makeover/mani/pedis"? For that matter, why didn't the devastatingly bad PR occur?
Maybe the person applying for the grant was himself black. Then it would be considered acceptable for the same reason rap lyrics are considered acceptable.
Post will be returning in Main, after a rewrite by the company's writing staff. Citations Galore.