Bullying is not just joking around, author explains
New York Times best-selling author Jodee Blanco to address
Scottsdale students, community on the impact of school bullying

You’ve seen the headlines. An angry, lonely school outcast snaps after years of teasing and rejection from his classmates. As the news reports broadcast the horror of it all, people across the nation are perplexed at what could have caused such a thing. For adolescents who are cruelly picked on and teased by their peers, the crime they see on television could very well become their secret fantasy.

For celebrity publicist Jodee Blanco, it nearly became her reality. School was a frightening and awful place for her, where threats, humiliation and physical abuse were as much a part of her daily existence as bubble gum and lip-gloss. Now, two decades later, this same woman who helped well-known figures like Jim Brown, Mickey Rooney, and Dave Pelzer disclose their past goes public with her own in a courageous effort to reach out to teens in crisis and their families.

In her landmark memoir that finally gave the victims of school bullying a voice, Blanco chronicled her dark years from elementary through high school, and how like so many millions of other adolescents, she was shunned, tormented and beaten by her peers simply for being “different.” A shocking and unforgettable testimonial to the lonely, ostracized teen whose cries for help are disregarded or misinterpreted, Please Stop Laughing At Me… allows you to understand what it’s like to be the school outcast and to appreciate why so many of our nation’s young people harm themselves or others.

She will present her seminar, It’s Not Just Joking Around … to students from Saguaro High School and Mohave and Copper Ridge middle schools in seminars held at Saguaro High School on Aug. 18-19. The public is invited to attend seminars at 7 p.m. on both dates. The school is located at 6250 N. 82nd St. in Scottsdale.

Media are invited to any of the presentations. Jodee Blanco also is available for interviews during her time in Scottsdale. Please call Tom Herrmann, 480-484-6188, to make arrangements.

In the seminar, Blanco relates how she was traumatized by other students. But she does not stop with her story. She also offers practical solutions by addressing such issues as:

• The biggest mistakes parents unwittingly make and why it can cost their children’s futures.
   
• Why schools are often unable to prevent disaster.
   
• How bullying has been misdiagnosed by the mental health community.
   
• Why certain children become the most popular kids in their class, and others are picked on and tormented.
   
• The surprising elements that school bullying and social prejudice have in common.
   
• Why even children with smart, caring parents are not immune to the dangerous consequences of school bullying.
   
• Why so many adults fail to recognize the trauma of peer abuse until it’s too late.
   
• The awful inevitability about school bullying that harms those who inflict pain as well as the targets of their torment.
   
• How society at large pays a dear price for bullying.

What Blanco went through is not an isolated incident. It is the terrible reality of millions of students that is too often dismissed as kids being kids. Lit from within by a dignity that couldn’t be extinguished and supported by the love of her family, she not only endured those dark school years, but came to understand that the qualities that made her a teen misfit would become the very reasons for her success as an adult.

“While the rest of the nation watched in shock and horror as news reports of the tragic events at Columbine began to unfold, all I could think of as I stared at the adolescent assassins on my television screen was, but for the grace of God, once upon a time it could have been me squeezing that trigger,” Blanco said. “In that moment, I knew I had to tell my story.”

Jodee Blanco is a seasoned public relations and publishing executive who has worked with New York Times best-selling authors, Academy Award winning actors, Emmy Award winning producers and Hall of Fame professional athletes. She is on the faculties of New York University and The University of Chicago.

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