Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.

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Dan Casey

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Thursday I received a bunch of e-mails from people who called me a creep, a sleaze bucket, a pervert and many other unkind names.

One expressed the fervent hope that I never procreate. But if I already have, he continued, I should give up my children for adoption so they would avoid my evil influence.

Those came from a couple dozen readers of the nutzoid news Web site, World Net Daily, after its editor, Joe Farah, called me a "twisted individual" in his column.

That stuff's part of the territory that comes with opinion writing. We columnists need a thick skin.

Schoolteachers do not sign up for such garbage.

But that's what was heaped upon Kathleen Renard, the William Byrd High School English teacher who loaned a copy of "The Perks of Being A Wallflower" to a student.

Renard, 25, also was the subject of a story on World Net Daily.

As a result, her school-system inbox was so flooded with vile, nasty and unkind messages that the school administration had to create a second e-mail address for her.

Roanoke County Schools gave me copies of some of those e-mails. We shall review excerpts here.

• "You obviously admire the acts of rape, molestation, masterbation[sic] and beastiality[sic]," wrote one e-mailer who identified herself as a high school teacher.

• "Ms. Renard, what road of perversion are you leading them into?" wrote another.

• "You are a very satanic loving person to give young people this vial[sic] material to read."

• "You should never be allowed any contact with children, and I will make this known to your superiors."

• "I can't imagine you have any children and if you do I would wonder what kind of parent you are. Shame on you."

• "You should resign -- you are not fit to be a teacher."

• "There is essentially no difference between your actions and those of a pervert in a public park who exposes/imposes himself on an innocent child."

• "ARE YOU STUPID? YOU ARE whats[sic] WRONG with our school system in America."

• "Obviously you were abused as a child by parents or siblings since no right thinking, moral, straight female would ever be guilty of such twisted thinking. I'll pray for you."

• "We home-school our kids because of filthy predators like you."

• "If I were an administrator in your school system, I would immediately do a background check on you to see if you have been charged or convicted of any crimes toward children. I would also insist that you have a psychiatric evaluation."

Hundreds of other disgraceful e-mails from World Net Daily readers poured in to Renard, other Roanoke County schoolteachers and administrators, said Lorraine Lange, Roanoke County's superintendent. Almost all of them were from outside this valley.

Kathleen Renard graduated college at age 21. This is her fifth year teaching. She is married and she has a 10-month-old daughter.

Does she wish she hadn't loaned the student that book? Yes, she told me Friday. At the least she wishes she had given it more thought.

"I understand both sides of it," she said. "I understand the positive literary side, and I understand the parents who were upset about the parts taken out of context."

The onslaught of vitriol cost her some sleep and made her sick to her stomach at one point.

"It was hard for a couple weeks," she said. "I think I'm getting through it."

The absurd controversy over her loaning out a book that any student could have borrowed from the William Byrd library has been a major distraction. ("Wallflower" is now off those shelves, pending a review by the school system).

Renard has plenty of work to do, after all.

She has lesson plans to prepare, classes to conduct, assignments to make and papers to grade for scores of students.

They are now reading "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury and "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller, by the way. Idiot book-banners have tried to get both of those yanked from school shelves elsewhere.

There are a couple of points to keep in mind from all this.

First, we should feel sorry for the readers of World Net Daily -- at least the ones inclined to fire off coarse e-mails like those above.

They are nuts and zealots who apparently never got a lesson in good manners. If they did, maybe it's been squeezed out of their brains by the weird and fearful things they read on that Web site.

Second, teachers have much more important things to do than to put up with nonsense like this. They work long hours for low pay and little glory in the most noble of all professions.

A surgeon will fix what is wrong with you. A lawyer will get you out of trouble. An actor will amuse you, a journalist will inform you, and an accountant will save you some money in taxes.

What those professionals have in common is they all are products of selfless and nurturing teachers.

In that respect, teachers are this society's common denominator. They deserve our support and gratitude.

And so does Kathleen Renard.