It is not within the school's authority to adjudicate crime, though. They are merely required to report incidents.

There might be some among us who would say the principal should not even report the incident, even in a town where the big news had been the throwing of a pig's head into a mosque attended by Somali immigrants. We don't know, though, exactly what the school is required to report.

What fascinates me far more about this story, though, is that some whacky web sites, and even an off-kilter but widely distributed entity such as Fox, would and could so successfully create a windstorm of outrage over such a minor incident. A kid who was doing nothing more than eating his lunch at school has provided proof, nationally and internationally, that we just won't put up with "their" crap anymore. It's quite bizarre, really, and disturbing.

Excerpt from SunJournal.com :

"Fox has figured out, from the calls we've gotten, that they've made a big mistake," Wessler said.

"This is a wake-up call that the level of hate and anger, among a small population, is vibrant," he added.

Levesque said he was bothered not only that the parody took aim at a sensitive issue in Lewiston, but also that Fox and others reported the information as fact without checking. The national media, Levesque said, sees information posted online and "uses it as gospel."

In this case, reporting false information is getting in the way of the city and the school's continued work to build community understanding and tolerance for immigrants, said Phil Nadeau, Lewiston's assistant city administrator. The parodied news account cast a false impression of an overwhelmingly tolerant city and its population, Nadeau said, and of the Somali population in particular.

"The last thing [the Somali immigrants] want is to be above the fold" of a front page or featured on the evening news, Nadeau said.

Watching the parody and news reports unfold Tuesday, Levesque said is proof media "is interested in entertaining and playing on people's emotions," which gets in the way of building community relations.