Most of my readers are probably familiar with the famous multiple-choice quiz that implicates Muslim men in various terrorist attacks. For example,

In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by:

(a) Scooby Doo

(b) The Tooth Fairy

(c) Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid with dynamite left over from the
train job.

(d) Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

Well, the Tennessean is reporting that a city worker in Nashville, Lori Lazo-Bell, may face disciplinary action because she used her city e-mail account to forward the quiz to several of her friends.

Lazo-Bell is in trouble not because she used her work computer for non-work-related purposes–Nashville allows for incidental personal use of city computers–but because “[t]he forwarding of the message violated a Metro e-mail policy that prohibits using city e-mail for sending offensive information.”

Metro Finance Director David Manning said Lazo-Bell used ”poor judgment” in forwarding ‘’such an inappropriate message.’”

Unfortunately, Lazo-Bell seems to agree with those accusing her of wrongdoing. She has issued a pathetic apology:

”It has never been my nature to stereotype groups,” her letter said. ”I have always and will always relate to others as another human being without regard to age, color, economic status or nationality.”

She closed the letter by saying: ”Please know I love my job with Metro and I love the diversity of Nashville and I am truly sorry for putting all of you in the position you are now in with the media.”

As blogger Bill Hobbs points out, the quiz is historically accurate and uses humor to make an important point about the corrupting influence of political correctness in shaping our homeland security policies:

I’ve seen that quiz. It is 100 percent historically accurate and uses humor to make a legitimate political statement regarding the way some American leaders try to be “politically correct” and not let the obvious Muslim roots of the threat we face guide how we screen passengers at airports. The result: we screen elderly women and little kids, and others who don’t fit the profile of a likely terrorist.

The city of Nashville owes Lazo-Bell an apology, not the other way around.

Update: Reader Andy disgrees with me:

I think you need to lighten up on Nashville. Lazo-Bell made a mistake, has apologized and that should be the end of things. As a government employee (federal) and an IT policy writer, I am all too familiar with these mistakes. First, using your employer’s email account to forward chain emails is a bad idea in principal – offensive, or not. Chain emails clog servers and cost money, not to mention often spread urban legends, hoaxes and viruses. Secondly, anything even remotely political should never be forwarded to anyone else from your government email account.

Our agency allows us to use our email accounts for personal business with the caveat that we do not use it in such a way that the agency could be seen as endorsing an agenda that is not “officially” sanctioned. To avoid problems, when I receive a funny, or thought provoking email, such as Lazo-Bell did, I forward it to my personal email account, and then send it to my friends – problem avoided.

Ms. Lazo-Bell’s apology is not the first, or the lamest that I have seen. I would guess that I see one similar to it about once a year in our office, usually after someone has forwarded a chain email, or a joke to the entire office instead of sending it home. So go easy on Nashville’s administrators, they are only doing their job. Ms. Lazo-Bell has now sharpened her governmental employee survival instincts at the cost of some dignity, and maybe a blemish on her next evaluation – if she’s a good employee, she will overcome.

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