It seems as if Michael Jackson has done the impossible. That is, he appears to be getting more media coverage — and more of the favorable variety — in death than Barack Obama does in life.

Should expressing pro-life sentiments make you a pariah behind schoolhouse doors? Well, whether it should or not, a case out of Scotland indicates that it certainly can — and does.

We all remember the infamous Duke University rape frame-up case, in which three white lacrosse players were falsely accused of raping a black female stripper. It was front-page news coast to coast, as it had all the elements of a mainstream-media cause célèbre: the perfect victim and the perfect villains, a “downtrodden” black woman of modest means and three “privileged” white college boys. Thus did the hard-left alliance of media, academia, and a Democrat prosecutor try its best to lynch the three, and if the stripper’s story hadn’t changed with the wind, the students could very well be sitting in prison currently.

First there were “inclusive language” Bibles, which extended a bizarre form of chivalry to feminists with lexical peculiarities such as “Our Mother/Father who art in Heaven.” Now, there is something equally bizarre: a Bible illustrated with pictures of celebrities who supposedly exemplify goodness and compassion. Writes Beliefnet.com:

If the Chinese need any help with their crackdown on the Falun Gong religious group, perhaps they should try to recruit San Diego County bureaucrats. Because if a recent attempt on the municipality’s part to stifle Bible study in a private home in Bonita, California, is any indication, there are at least some in its employ who have missed their dark calling.

The Penn State University sex-abuse scandal certainly seems unique. College-football defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky (shown at left) could have been investigated as early as 1995 for abusing young boys, but instead was allowed to commit his crimes for another 10 years. School athletic director Tim Curley and senior vice president for business and finance Gary Schultz face charges of lying to a grand jury investigating Sandusky, and university president Graham Spanier has been fired. And even more headline-grabbing, famed head football coach Joe Paterno has also been discharged. While not accused of any criminally actionable behavior, the gridiron legend is condemned for failing to do enough to stop the abuse after becoming aware of it.

Perhaps the best case study in leftism run amuck is England, which in two generations has gone from Churchill and churches to hate-speech laws and halal ritual. For example, in recent times the U.K. has treated us to stories about a school guide stating that toddlers who say “yuck” in response to foreign food may have bigoted tendencies, about a 66-year-old pet shop owner and grandmother forced to wear an electronic tracking bracelet because she sold a goldfish to a 14-year-old, and a police officer who was harassed because he wouldn’t don a pink ribbon to mark a homosexual event.

First it was coeducation.Then it was young men and women in different wings of the same dormitories. Next we had the sexes sharing the same hallways and bathrooms. Now, this evolution (devolution?) has brought us sex-neutral housing, where male and female students can share the same room.

There was a time when boys of easy virtue had to content themselves with sneaking a peek at the girls’ swim team during practice. But social engineers may make this passé with a proposal to allow boys to use girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms.

There are some things you just can’t make up — and many of them seem to originate in Berkeley, California. Berkeley really is stranger than fiction, and the latest example is, unbelievably, a proposal to eliminate science classes at the city’s high school because, get the Digitalis, they’re too white.