Found on Yahoo and posted by the Web-Ed 03/05/2010
This is a fairly well-known item in spanking circles, but since our younger readers may never have seen it we're going to re-post it now. The setting was a Los Angeles school board meeting in the late 70's, and the lady getting paddled is board member Bobbi Fiedler (later Congresswoman Fiedler!). The board was voting on whether or not to reinstate corporal punishment, and Fiedler had decided to do something unusual for a politician - keep her campaign promises. In this case, odd as it sounds, Fiedler had promised to accept three swats before voting on the issue, which is how she wound up bent over a chair (though not far enough) and getting swats from the deputy superintendant, Harry Handler. Handler is standing way too far back and consequently has to bend his wrist sharply in an attempt to align the paddle with the target properly (see this article for more on proper positioning). The photo's caption is wrong about one important detail: that's a platform tennis paddle, not a ping-pong paddle, and there's a big difference! See our All About Paddles article if you want to know more. This particular photo has been reprinted in various places over the years (we first saw it in a spanking mag back in the 80's), but the next one is much less well-known...
This photo, shot from a different angle, was reprinted in a spanking mag (which one we don't know), and it is that page we see here. The narrative is interesting if true, since apparently Fiedler insisted on receiving a good hard whack after the first two failed to make an impression on her. We have to agree with the writer that "we could use more [politicians] like this lady."
Actually, more than the angle was changed - it looks like the furniture was rearranged, and a different paddle used, which suggests that one of these pictures was staged. Great publicity shot for Fiedler, though, and we'd like to think she felt at least one of the swats! We also can't help noticing the big smiles on her and Handler's faces.
Back to the story: after Fiedler's paddling, the board voted to reinstate CP, as recounted by former student Dennis Randall: "Thirty years ago, I was a student at Henry Clay Junior High School in Los Angeles, and I have vivid memories of being told to bend over and grab my ankles while a teacher administered three blows with a paddle. When I think back I can't remember why I was punished and the only thing it taught me was to loathe that teacher."
Fiedler was later elected to the Ninety-seventh and to the two succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1981-January 3, 1987). California later banned corporal punishment in the public schools, superseding any local district policies that permitted its use.
