Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wrote a hilarious column about the DeVos Interview on 60 Minutes.
Many of you can’t read the Post because of a paywall, so I will quote what I can. (I subscribe to the Post and love their news coverage and opinion columns.)
Milbank surmised that the “unappreciated genius” of DeVos was that she would convince many people that getting an education was a waste of time and money, and Trump needs the votes of uneducated people. So, the worse she is, the more it degrades education and helps Trump.
Milbank wrote:
”Betsy DeVos gives every indication that she is, to borrow President Trump’s phrase, a “low-IQ individual.” Her interview with Lesley Stahl of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” broadcast Sunday night, is being mocked as the most disastrous televised tete-a-tete since Palin met Couric.
But this unabashed ignorance is DeVos’s hidden genius — and precisely why she is a perfect choice to be Trump’s secretary of education.
Whenever DeVos speaks, it feels as though the sum total of human knowledge is somehow diminished. During her confirmation hearing last year, she was utterly defeated by complex subjects such as “teachers” and “students” but was certain that schools need guns to repel attacks by “potential grizzlies.”
DeVos responded to question after question, “I don’t know.” When Stahl suggested she might visit some low-perming schools, DeVos “expressed her reluctance “to talk about all schools in general, because schools are made up of individual students.”
“Yes, and brains are made up of individual brain cells, many of which self-destruct upon hearing DeVos speak. Listen to her for five minutes and you will no longer be able to complete the New York Times crossword puzzle. After 10 minutes of DeVos, the human brain loses the ability to perform simple arithmetic. After 15 minutes, those in the presence of DeVos report forgetting the answers to their security questions, including first pet and first car.
“All this proves that it is sheer (if perhaps unintentional) genius to have DeVos, who married into the Amway fortune, in her role in the Trump administration. If this is the caliber of the top education official in the land, it hardly speaks well for getting an education. People could quite reasonably conclude that education isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and they wouldn’t go to all the trouble of attending school.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I would amend Milbank’s satire piece to read: People could quite reasonably conclude that [a private religious education] isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and they wouldn’t go to all the trouble of attending a [private religious school].
DeVos went to Holland Christian Schools (a private Christian school system located in Holland, Michigan).
She did say at her Brookings event last year that she is not a “numbers person.” She proved it.
She clearly isn’t a “words person” either.
Nor is she a ” feelings person”
What’s left?
Colors? Smells? Sounds? Pictures?
None of ’em: there’s just appetites left…
SDP:
A monied person.
Leaving satire aside for a moment, perhaps another Christian perspective would be helpful in this thread:
“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” [Martin Luther King Jr]
😎
“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
Somehow I think that could be turned into a great discussion question.
But do have another look at Peter Green’s piece:
Peter Greene: The DeVosian Dilemma
and I can’t highlight it
title:
Peter Greene: Betsy DeVos Is Not of This World
DeVos isn’t just wealthy because she married Amway. She was wealthy at birth. Her father sold his company to Johnson Controls for billions of dollars.
It was a merger of 2 wealthy families.
Another example of the evil of monopolies.
She has no problem talking about schools in general when she is condemning public schools.
Bingo! We only talk about public schools when using the word failure if we are Betsy and the reformers. Sounds like a perverted do wop group.
“. . .if we are Betsy and the reformers.”
Nope, just can’t wrap my head around that one!
“She has no problem talking about schools in general when she is condemning public schools.”
Good catch.