Sonja Eddings Brown is Rather Unpleasant

Imagine my mild surprise when I discovered that the woman who terrorized me in my final days in high school is the face of Proposition 8. Sonja Eddings Brown is everything you would expect a Proposition 8 supporter to be: someone with misplaced values and a knack for being a big bully. Yes, a middle-aged mother of three went out of her way to threaten to kick a high school senior out of her valedictory speaking position simply because the student refused to have (strange) words placed her mouth and to be used as a propagandistic advertising vehicle.

While my experience with her was far from fun at the time, it’s quite the comical story, and her proposed (and, thankfully, never executed) changes to my speech are worth a read. They offer insight into the backwards thought processes of a Proposition 8 supporter and upward political climber.

In June of 2005, I was finishing my final semester at Granada Hills Charter High School. Back then, the two student speakers for graduation were those with the highest GPAs, so I had technically “earned” the right to speak, though there were many other equally qualified candidates who simply hadn’t squandered their high school careers worrying so much about grades. During that period, Sonja Eddings Brown, presumably in an attempt to launch her political career, was serving as president of the school governing board. In the week before the graduation ceremony, I ran my speech by school officials, completely open to editing out anything that was potentially offensive. After all, it was for an audience of a couple thousand. In fact, I ran it not only by the principal but by numerous other teachers and fellow students.

The version that emerged had its cheesy moments (I’ve also added a few footnotes to make sense of some of it), but as far as valedictory addresses go, it was passable. After I gave my speech a test run in the school football stadium, Sonja Eddings Brown approached me about coaching my delivery of the speech and said something to the effect of “Before I worked with her, Michelle Kwan was awful in front of the camera. She simply couldn’t speak. Look at her today! And I’m confident I can help you.” At the time, this seemed like a great idea. I was eighteen, and I had some degree of respect for authority. However, given what followed, I think it’s fair to consider her motivations for comparing me to the one of her many diverse clients who, like me, was both Asian and female.

So I naively accepted and sent her a copy of my speech over email. In the exchange that followed, I was a bit thrown off when she responded that she had begun rewriting my speech, but I agreed to meet with her.

Now, the meeting itself was one of the most absurd encounters I have ever had.

I arrived with a friend, and Sonja invited us in, giving us a long-winded description of her home, “one of the original farmhouses in Northridge.” She then disappeared to locate her laptop, asking us to help her young daughter with math problems in the meantime. We sat there for about fifteen minutes, trying to teach her how to add and subtract, but she barely responded to anything we said. It’s impossible to judge a child after only sitting with them for fifteen minutes, but the entire situation just didn’t feel right.

Sonja finally reappeared with the laptop and began reading off what she had written. Initially, she claimed that she had barely changed the speech, but what she rattled off better resembled a narrow-minded and illogical infomercial than it did my original piece. (She was selling a very “Pro-America” high school campus full of jocks for whom education means making a sacrifice and where minorities only exist to make the school “diverse”.)

I would like to recognize some of our fellow classmen who have shown such strength of mind and spirit.

Whose educations have been a matter of sacrifice, and who have shown their own brand of personal valor.

Tonight diplomas will go to competitive swimmers, All-City wrestlers, defensive backs, soccer forwards, and home run hitters, and who have risen every day trying to achieved their personal bests, represent Granada, while still maintaining good grades. We salute these graduates.

I was puzzled by the half-smile that remained planted on her face, even as she told me I was selfish for mentioning the name of a fellow student in the speech. At one point, she pulled out a dictionary to look up the word valedictorian. Not finding anything useful in the definition, she spun her own, claiming that it stemmed from the “Greek” word valor. (Not only does valor come from Old French, but my physics teacher later noted that valedictorian is actually of Latin origin and relates to bidding others farewell.) I told her that, while I would certainly consider the changes she wanted, I was not yet sure I would incorporate statements like, “To all of us, who worked through the night, fought through our projects and tests, and missed every good thing on TV except American Idol.”

Then we had the following exchange, as quoted from the original, less-than-civil post I published in my blog soon after the ceremony.

BROWN: How badly do you want to speak tomorrow?
LIN: What do you mean?
BROWN: Do you get some kind of personal kick out of speaking with your classmates?
LIN: Huh?
BROWN: Because you don’t have to speak tomorrow.
LIN: Yes, I do. I earned this position.
BROWN: We don’t have to let you speak.
LIN: Who’s we?
BROWN: The administration of Granada.

And below are the last two emails we exchanged following the meeting, and I have Gmail to thank for still having these buried beneath four years of far more productive emails. Though I was quite unhappy as I wrote this, I knew that I was dealing with a political beast. (I’ve bolded part of her response):

date Wed, Jun 1, 2005 at 10:03 PM
subject Re: Marena Lin’s Speech

Dear Mrs. Brown,
Thank you so much for putting your time into this. I really appreciate your input and would love to see your revised version of the speech. I’m definitely considering changing this speech given the circumstances that you have brought to my attention. Thank you.
Marena

date Wed, Jun 1, 2005 at 10:17 PM
Here’s a run at it Marena.
Remember, it’s more important to be heard, than to say nothing at all.
Sonja Brown

She rarely seems to choose between the two. Proposition 8 posters feature phrases like “Free Speech” and “Less Government,” for which I have to believe she is directly responsible, as Deputy Communications Director. Ironically, those are the two values she was violating in imposing herself on something as trivial as a high school graduation speech.

In her attached revised speech, she was also racially enlightened enough to insert a trite quote from Lao Tzu. In her effort to rewrite this speech such that it did not offend people, she left in the most dubious part, “(Heavy Asian accent) You learn your lesson. Do not disobey your parents.” Her assumption: Asian people are all the same. I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that she honestly believed that I salute Chairman Mao after rolling out of bed each morning. Speaking of saluting, her revision of the speech liberally replaced words like “Dubya” with “W” and seemed oddly dismissive of both intelligence and dictionaries.

Generally speaking, I had much less of a problem with changing the speech than I did with the fact that she sought to demonize and threaten me while inserting meaningless crap into my speech. And yes, it was utter crap. Sonja’s formal and elected position on the school governing board had been more of a public relations front to convince the peeps higher up in the bureaucracy that our high school was worthy of becoming chartered, so the type of language she chose to use was better suited to the North Korean dictatorship attempting to create a facade of prosperity than it was to a cheesy valedictory speech. (I believe “We salute…” was repeated about a dozen times.)

The following morning—the morning of graduation—I confronted our executive director about Sonja’s threat prevent me from speaking, wrongfully assuming that Sonja was speaking honestly for the rest of the administration. Eventually, after several tense hours, the whole thing was sorted out with the help of other school staff, and I was permitted to give my original speech. As it turns out, Sonja had no jurisdiction over graduation speeches in the first place, and it was not in her power to prevent me from speaking or graduating. In fact, the other student speaker had never submitted a copy of his speech for review and was permitted to give it anyway. At the end of the night, I gave my original speech and did not receive a single complaint. Several readers left comments on my original post about this situation, which was on a blog that has long since been deleted.

One of the comments follows:

Sonja Brown is the universe’s biggest whack job. I was at a friend’s house last summer for a going away to college party, and Sonja Brown was also there. I had barely walked in the door, and was saying hi to everybody… she cornered me and asked who I was planning to vote for in the upcoming presidential election. I don’t even know why I answered, but I told her Kerry. The bitch proceeded to tell me (very loudly, to ensure that all of my friend’s parent’s friends were made aware of my “ignorance”) that I was morally reprehensible and that I was doing my country a great diservice, not to mention that I was a prime example of why 18 year olds shouldn’t be allowed to vote- because they were too easily coerced by the democratic propoganda (sic). Who does that?

So, my experience with her was almost four years ago, and it doesn’t really shock me that she’s now the face of Proposition 8, which bases its argument on the value of “tradition”. The last place I remember the word, “tradition”, being used to mask something sinister like hazing and violence was in the setting of the generic college fraternity. Oh, and the Civil Rights Movement; I seem to recall that back then, both segregation and racist violence were traditions. And now “tradition” is being used to justify Proposition 8, which also violates very basic and fundamental civil rights. I find it disconcerting that it only takes a simply majority and a meager petition to change our State Constitution while it takes a two-thirds majority to approve funding for transportation. Right, that’s like saying it’s easier for me to change my belief system than it is to clothe and feed myself. I think the idiocy in that reality is self-evident.

Sonja is truly gifted at spinning and making up “facts,” and it’s showcased as she drowns out reason with pithy and abstracted phrases like “free speech” and “parental rights,” phrases that ironically contradict her crusade to deny basic rights to other people. I certainly hope that she will never serve public office. She’s emblematic of the several and memorable Palinesque political figures with persistent desires to overstep the limits of their office and substantially limit the rights of others, propensities to bully young adults half her age, and positions that are less thoughtful, coherent, and rational than those of many eighteen year-olds. These are people whose right to vote and hold different beliefs should never be questioned if they are the same young adults Sonja Eddings Brown salutes for serving our country.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• What SHE said
• High Court to Hear ‘Bong Hits 4 Jesus’ Case
• Censorship 101: High School Shuts Down Student Newspaper Over Flag-Burning…
• Obama Unscripted: The Q & A With Students