Ten-Year-Old Forbidden From Singing Pink's Anti-Bush Song at School

Pink- Dear Mr President - Live
By Matthew Rothschild
May 9, 2006

Molly Shoul has appeared in several talent shows at Park Springs Elementary School over the years.

And she was planning on participating again on May 11.

The ten-year-old decided to sing Pink’s new song, “Dear Mr. President,” which the pop star says is one of the most important songs she’s ever written. (The lyrics to the song are at bottom. To hear Pink perform, click here.)

Molly says she got the Pink CD for Easter, and she was attracted to this particular tune.

“It’s a really good song,” she says. “I wanted to sing something meaningful” for the annual talent show.

So she auditioned with it, and she says the music teacher told her it was very good, but that he would have to ask the principal.

And the principal, Camille Pontillo, put the kibosh on it, as Jamie Malernee of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel first reported in an excellent story on May 5.

The biting song includes lines such as: “How do you sleep at night?” and “You don’t know nothing about hard work,” and “You pave the road to hell” and “What kind of father might hate her own daughter if she were gay?” and “You’ve come a long way from whiskey and cocaine.”

Molly says the principal said the song was too political and would be inappropriate because it had the word “hell” in it, along with “whiskey” and “cocaine” and “gay.”

When that decision came down, Molly says she felt “a little bit angry and sad and upset, and a bit confused.”

Her mother, Nancy, was upset, too.

She wrote an e-mail to the principal on May 2, which she shared with The Progressive.