Jeff Bryant asks whether Michelle Rhee is the Ann Coulter of education.
Rhee expends great energy insisting that Democrats support the hard-right agenda of ALEC. She tries to sell the idea of a bipartisan consensus to eliminate collective bargaining rights, teacher tenure, test-based evaluation, and privatization via charters and vouchers.
Democrats would be wise to stick to their historic agenda of equality of educational opportunity and public education.
Rhee has no popular base for her agenda. Although she claims two million members, most of those “members” seem to be people (like me) who innocently signed an online petition supporting teachers. When she held a rally in Hartford, Connecticut, last fall, no one showed but media and a handful of onlookers.
What she does have is a load of money, contributed by Rupert Murdoch, the Waltons, and assorted rightwing billionaires. She uses it to support Republican candidates and the few Democrats who endorse vouchers or promise to oppose unions.
Her relentless promotion of the anti-union film “Won’t Back Down” demonstrated her lack of any popular backing. The film had the worst opening weekend in thirty years of any movie in wide distribution (2500 screens), and immediately died at the box office, despite heavy marketing and advertising. The Regal cinema chain (owned by Philip Anschutz, whose company Walden Media produced the film) is now offering two tickets for the price of one. But in these hard economic times, it’s tough to sell a story in which the union members are the bad guys and the entrepreneurs are the good ones.
May we all celebrate the day her balloon bursts.
I must repost. We all need to laugh…pay attention to the posted words about halfway through.
Teachbad sings: “Rhee Came Down From The Mountain” Song
http://teachbad.com/2012/10/13/rhee-came-down-from-the-mountain-song/
I think that gets it backwards. Ann Coulter is merely a loud-mouthed fool. No one has to read or buy her books or watch her vapid appearances on TV. She does no material damage other than rousing readily-stirred up rabble and taking up good air.
Rhee does real damage and has been doing so for years. She may very well have been involved in criminal behavior surrounding the DC cheating scandal. She continues to promote deceptive practices on-line in her attempt to inflate the number of people who allegedly support her views and work. I suspect that before things are done, she and her beau, Kevin Johnson, will be indicted for some sort of wrongdoing.
So shouldn’t it be, “Is Ann Coulter the Michelle Rhee of Right-Wing Punditry?”
I suspect that before things are done, she and her beau, Kevin Johnson, will be indicted for some sort of wrongdoing.
One can only hope. I ‘m thinking St. Hope (how ironic) and Kevin “Are You 16, Girl?” Johnson. Let us not forget the duct-tape incident in Baltimore.
I can’t stand either, but Coulter is easier on the eyes. She just seems more human/humane than Rhee. If I hear Rhee’s voice and Cali slur again, I truly believe I’ll have a seizure.
Yikes, may have to find a new movie theater chain. I didn’t know that about Regal.
Rheegal.
Be careful, Rhee has a petition on change.org to stand up against bullying. It is only if one is familiar with her and her group, students first, would anyone know not to sign. I contacted change.org telling them who she was and her mission of dismantling public education.
Possibly the Rheeject should practice what she preaches. Maybe we should start one against her for bullying teachers.
She has hated us ever since she was unable to perfect the craft herself. This is one huge vendetta against the millions of competent teachers who surpassed her ability to connect with students.
That feat is usually difficult for a narcissist to accomplish.
I’ve often wondered if Rhee’s continuing-to-the-point-of-ridiculous teacher bashing had anything to do with her own failure as a teacher. Was filming and broadcasting a principal being fired a way to get back at an administrator who dared criticize her as a teacher?
Really, I wish she’d just ponied up the money for some good therapy to get over the fact that she wasn’t cut out to be an educator and that she was unable to control a group of eight year-olds, even after she shamed them by taping their mouths shut.
Stranger things have happened….
Or take a Xanax, smoke a joint…do something besides berate and demean an entire profession.
I’ve often felt the same thing; she doth protest too much.
I will also avoid Regal Cinemas now. Thanks for the info.
Michelle Rhee is a propagandist whose time has come after 30 yrs of war on the public sector of America. She is a perfect fit for the corporate campaign to seize the valuable assets and budgets of public education and to break the teacher unions which sustain a barely living wage for teachers. The billionaires have a great treasure at stake in capturing public education not only b/c it will permanently lower wages in schools for decades to come while allowing pvt corp charters to extract profits from school funds, but it will also enable an exponential growth in the ed market for high-tech firms like Gates’s MS and Murdoch’s Media, once all 15,000 pub schl districts and all 50 mil public schl kids are locked into computer-graded testing all year every year and taught to exchange books for nifty computer tablets filled with memorizable items for the tests. At heart, this is an economic war to dispossess the 99% of our public sector–schools, parks, housing, playgrounds, transit, health care, Big Bird, etc. And Michelle Rhee–a woman, an ethnic minority, an icon invented by vast media promotion–is the lead rhetorical asset for the billionaires.
Wow… What an outstanding, pithy summation! Thank you Ira.
I honestly think at this point, it would help if you would take that soap-box and start demanding a high quality academic education.
This ship has sailed and it’s time to compete and win. Otherwise the teachers will sink with this ship.
Parents are fed up with the extreme political agenda pushed on their kids, condoms and sex ed, drug ed, dumbed down Social studies which should be U.S. History/Civics, real math and grammar.
IT’s time to abandon the fads that have been sold to these schools by those who’ve contributed to the destruction in public education.
Public schools cannot parent children. When they do, parents leave. Educate these kids. Give them the tools to be successful in life.
I know the teachers try so hard to fill in for those lousy parents out there and GOD bless them all. But when you water down the academics in favor of social engineering and the STATE becoming the parent, parents will leave.
I understand the enormous challenge people face in these schools. BUT it’s NO excuse for teaching graphic sex ed, fuzzy math, Outcome Based Ed, revisionist history, etc.
Go back to the basics. YES, drill the kids on basic math and grammar. Teach them vocabulary words and authentic science that leaves out the global warming political agenda.
You clearly understood the nonsense from the 21st century skills crowd that wanted to ignore the basics. Isn’t it time to start guiding your followers in a way that will actually save this ship?
When I look at what kids learned in the 1800’s compared to this nonsense they learn now, I sit here and wonder when the teachers and the real reformers will DEMAND better. Demand ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE: http://rense.com/general75/pass.htm
I am running out of patience and I don’t see the connection although I will admit that I just skimmed your post. But here is some advice….it is time to rethink your moniker.
Thank you for that, Linda. I, too, am tired of being painted with a broad brush, by both MOM and Rhee. I teach and expect excellence for my students, and so do all of my colleagues. I don’t want to be everyone’s whipping boy. I just want to teach….
Don’t worry, MOM; there are plenty of academically serious teachers around. However, there are also plenty of fuzzy parents who are quite resistant to serious academics when their kids aren’t guaranteed a steady stream of A’s. it is best not to use a broad brush with either group.
@Alan & @Mom:
From what I’ve read of MOM’s oeuvre, her notions of “real math” have very little connection to real math, but they’re no doubt very compatible with the same lousy version of K-12 arithmetic, etc., that has been foisted on the public as “real math” for over a century. Read Keith Devlin, Paul Lockhart, Paul Halmos, James Tanton, and lots of others to find out the difference. Or don’t. It won’t penetrate concrete.
As for who and what exactly is fuzzy and who is serious, when I need your take on that, I’ll know it’s time to retire.
Bam…right between the eyes….don’t mess with CT teachers!
Strong piece by Bryant but we heard Coulter was suing him for defamation. #satire http://studentslast.blogspot.com/2012/10/who-should-be-more-insulted-let-courts.html