So it all comes down to this. As schools across the nation are winding up their academic calendars, test scores are ruling the lives of educators and families to an unprecedented extent. Some kids -- especially those enrolled in special education programs or those whose primary language isn't English -- are having their futures forever altered by a score from a single test given on a single day. And teachers' lives are also being thrown into turmoil as "technical glitches" delay test results and sew confusion. From my own perspective, high-stakes tests meant that my child could take the last of school week off from classes so teachers could use that time to drill and retest students who failed end-of-year exams.
So as teachers dutifully marched through their orders to impose a test-driven approach to education that is antithetical to everything they believe to be in their students' best interests, they are nevertheless being told that that their jobs must be made harder and their work held to an ever tougher scrutiny.
Leading pundits such as David Brooks hailed this year as the year that public school teachers have rightly become "fair game." According to Brooks, the whole reason for 27 years of school reform failure is that we haven't been tough enough on teachers. What's needed is to get "Patton-esque" on these lay-abouts and adopt "stubborn, data-driven" policies that have a "low tolerance for bullshit."
The recurrent call to "get tough" on teachers and schools now dominates the discourse on education in our country. Time and time again, we are told that the solution to boosting student test scores is to ratchet-up the pressure on educators. Teachers are told that they have to work harder and for longer hours; their training has to be tougher, and their jobs made less secure.
From their cushy chairs and air-conditioned offices in DC thinktanks and corporate headquarters, education reformists chant the get-tough mantra to make standards "tougher" and make teaching more "rigorous." Addressing an audience of educators that is mostly female, their prose bristles with masculine exhortations to be tough-minded with teachers and "stiffen" requirements.
And some wonder why teachers feel they are being beat up on?
I once heard conservative columnist David Brooks refer to a Republican Party political miscalculation as stupidity on stilts. Well, courtesy of the national media, the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has provided a few prominent people on the right with a new opportunity to once again make fools of themselves.
Just days after the Deepwater Horizon collapsed and sank, Rush Limbaugh opined on his April 29th show: "Now, lest we forget, ladies and gentlemen, the carbon tax bill, cap and trade that was scheduled to be announced on Earth Day... But this bill, the cap-and-trade bill, was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist wackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants, nuclear plant investment. So, since they're sending SWAT teams down there, folks, since they're sending SWAT teams to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I'm just noting the timing here." Okay Rush, I'll play the game, who actually blew up the Deepwater Horizon, environmentalists or the "Federal Swat Teams" that are supposed to be securing the oil patch? I know that Greenpeace has a ship it employs to disrupt whaling, but which environmentalist group has the capability to pull off an act of sabotage a mile down on the ocean floor? Could it be that this act of environmental sabotage is actually for the purposes of furthering a secret green agenda or could it be that having recently endorsed offshore oil exploration as a component of a new energy policy; Barack Obama has now destroyed an oilrig as a means of achieving energy independence?
Appearing days later on Fox and Friends former Bush White House spokesperson Dana Perino, suggested a conspiracy was afoot: "I'm not trying to introduce a conspiracy theory, but was this deliberate? You have to wonder...if there was sabotage involved." Well that's certainly a prescient line of logic coming from someone who publicly admitted that she "didn't really know much about the Cuban Missile Crisis", what was arguably the most dangerous two weeks in history. Is it not more than a little comical that fresh from her regular pratfalls in the White House, Ms. Perino feels rather qualified to comment on offshore oil drilling and underwater pyrotechnics? I mean, after all it's pretty impressive for someone who majored in mass communications and public affairs to now have such a firm grasp on the particulars of ocean engineering and underwater ordinance. Is it me or is some of this stuff is just too ridiculous to be taken seriously?
However, in what may be the most ironic commentary of all, Michael Brown the former Director of FEMA during the Bush Administration contends that Obama wants to capitalize on the Deepwater Horizon disaster so as to pander to environmentalists. Quoting Brown: "They want this crisis so they can respond to it and shut down oil and gas drilling for being too dangerous." Brown went on to suggest that Obama will use the current disaster to impose new restrictions on the coal industry. Well coming from a guy who's primary qualification for being Director of FEMA was his experience with the International Arabian Horse Association, this sort of commentary is more than just a bit comical. After all, in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina, Brown had been given sufficent warning of impending disaster by the National Weather Service whereas the Deepwater Horizon disaster was unpredicted. Thus the two events are not exactly congruent, except perhaps, for the geography. Who could ever forget Bush's praise for Brown during the Katrina Crisis: "Brownie, you're doing a hell of a job." Days later, Brown was sacked and yet today he feels qualified to second guess the Obama Administration based on his own botched handling of Katrina and it's aftermath.
If stupidity makes you laugh, well Limbaugh, Perino and Brown can certainly be considered headline acts in what has become a fully booked and never ending theater of the absurd on the far right. Don't get me wrong, thus far the Obama Administration has definitely made mistakes in handling the Deepwater Horizon crisis and there is nothing funny in that. But to suggest that Obama and his consort are destroying oilrigs to further an agenda friendly to the environment is beyond absurd and borders on the surreal. Like those crackpots on the far left, who continue to maintain that the Bush Administration was either behind the 9/11 attacks or knew something of them, these characters are just as absurd and moronic in their claims that Obama has a hand in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. I can't help but laugh as the jokes not on the Obama Administration, but on Limbaugh, Perino and Brown for believing their own content free cackle. Likewise the laughs on those people who turn to the likes of Limbaugh or Fox News for serious political analysis or commentary and take much of what they hear as gospel. Just a few weeks ago Bill O'Reilly claimed that comedian Jon Stewart of the Daily Show had become the point man for left-wing attacks on the right and asked why there were no conservative comedians on the air to counteract Stewart and the rest of the left leaning late night comedy crowd. Well Bill, their out there, you just need to know where to look for them.
Conservative columnist, David Brooks once pointed out that the Internet has had the net effect of not bringing us closer together, but rather, driving us further apart. By allowing individuals to coalesce into narrower, self-reinforcing groups - based on political, ideological, religious or regional sentiments - the Internet has created a society that is characterized by many separate groups where communication is largely within and between group members. Brooks went on to say that one could get up and watch Fox News from dawn to dusk, read conservative newspapers or magazines and listen to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity on talk radio and thus, never come across a competing idea all day. Likewise, the same sort of thing happens amongst the denizens of the left. It reminds me of a comment made by Norman Mailer after the Bush victory in 2004: "How could Bush have won, I don't know anyone who voted for him." Mailer was reflecting the fact that as a resident of New York City, one of the Bluest in America, you would never find a Bush supporter, unless you deliberately left the insularity of your own social group.
That brings me to the point of this piece. Many of us who utilize the blogs to traffic in political thought tend to stay on those blogs that are user friendly. We tend to blog on those sites that are supportive of the ideas we ourselves promote and favor. At the same time there are those on the far right who are doing the same thing, peddling their ideas or attacks against the current administration and Progressive ideas in general. These attacks on the very essence of Progressive thought go largely unchallenged with no more than a handful of stalwart progressives waging a counterattack and enduring a tremendous amount of vitriol and abuse in the process. Thus it is time for us to sally forth and bring the battle to the opponent's home turf. Anyone who has had a peek at the latest trio of reports from the Southern Poverty Law Center knows full well just how violent the rhetoric on the right has become. All one need do is to look at the attacks against those who voted for health care or consider the case of the Hutaree Militia as proof positive that things are getting more confrontational and vicious.
I regularly dust it up with the wing nuts on TownHall.com but there are also several others like AmericanThinker.com; Human Events, and RedState.com to name just a few.
It would be great if we could get some help battling lies and misinformation on these sites and others like them. Townhall.com in particular is easy to deal with, as they don't restrict your participation unless you engage in bona-fide hate speech. AmericanThinker.com screens your input and RedState.com will redact your comments if they don't agree with you. I had an article dispelling the lies on health care redacted and I have since been barred from this site so you may only be able to get one shot at them and then you are done. If you're up for the fight, and you ought to be, considering the stakes, the links are below.
We just fought and won some semblance of a health care reform program and there are plenty of other important battles ahead. As Progressives we need to learn how to throw a punch, figuratively, and stop being seen as a bunch of kumbaya signing pushovers who let the right push us around. My advice to you is the same that Stonewall Jackson gave a group of cadets at the outset of the Civil War. When asked just how bad he expected things to get he replied: "If I were you I would draw my sword and throw away the scabbard."
There's been a fair amount of commentary in the blogosphere about David Brooks column in the New York Times the other day asserting that not one, not two, but four different "senior" Obama officials reached out to him after a critical column to assure him that, in Brooks' words, they are not "a group of liberal crusaders," and that they are not "engaged in an ideological project to overturn the Reagan Revolution."
Blaming sub-prime borrowers is a common mistake being made by most media reporting and the pundits. On the Friday, Oct. 10th, edition of NPR's All Things Considered, David Brooks was commenting on what the presidential candidates' were blaming as the cause of the economic meltdown, and he said, "They totally excuse the American people as if these sub-prime mortgages were forced upon people."
What I have been learning is that the titans of finance who created and traded unregulated securities of debt instruments and derivatives called Credit Default Swaps involving some $62 trillion are much more likely culprits in the worldwide financial collapse. Common sense tells me that bad mortgage loans, even in large numbers, could not be responsible for the tremendous losses required to affect the entire world markets, including bankrupting the country of Iceland. The Credit Default Swap market, however, was large enough to have this effect when that house of cards crumbled.
On behalf of sub-prime borrowers who must be feeling the guilt of causing the next great depression, I wrote the following letter to Mr. Brooks at the New York Times and to All Things Considered. A sub-prime borrower's apology for causing the crash.
Dear Mr. Brooks:
I heard you say on National Public Radio All Things Considered that sub-prime borrowers should take their share of the blame for the economic crash. At first, I thought things wouldn't get so bad, but now it seems that the entire world economy is collapsing. Frankly, I was just going to keep quite and hope no one would notice that I am one of the sub-prime borrowers. But listening to your explanation of the cause of this crisis has made me feel ashamed of what my wife and I have done. I want to come clean.
Being the history buff that I am, I always perk up when a columnist discusses history to make a political point. The other day, David Brooks did that, and boy did he screw it up.
David Brooks has a dream, a dream of conservatism reborn. For those of us rightly angered at Obama's FISA betrayal, Brooksie can be quite instructive in at least two ways. First of all, he reminds us that the ideological rot we see reflected in Barack Obama is endemic to the entire political class. Of course we already know it's true of conservatives, but reading brooks in the aftermath of Obama's FISA betrayal, what we're reminded of-remember the "post-partisan" thingie?-is that this rot is endemic to an entire class, not just the rightwing segment of it.
Brooks, you see, spies a bright spot amidst all the carnage that is the GOP and the conservative movement-a new crew of young conservative writers and their ideas, or at least the idea of their ideas, since Brooksis-in true conservative "intellectual" fashion we never actually tells us any of these fascinating new ideas, beyond the slogan of "Sam's Club, not the country club"-a profound insight traced to Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.
Which, to be honest, is surprisingly honest of him, since conservatives don't really have ideas-at least not anymore--they have slogans. Once they have the slogans, they rent or steal the ideas to back them up as needed. Though, to be honest again (nasty habit, must resolve to break it soon), they steal the slogans, too, when they can-"No Child Left Behind," anyone?
And why shouldn't they steal slogans, if they can get away with it? That "Sam's Club, not the country club" line just doesn't hold up more than five seconds. I mean, aren't they already the party of Sam's Club? Low wages, vast subsidies, cheap imports, no future-that's the GOP in a nutshell!
Anyway, here's Brooks:
The Sam's Club Agenda
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: June 27, 2008
Among the many dark tidings for American conservatism, there is one genuine bright spot. Over the past five years, a group of young and unpredictable rightward-leaning writers has emerged on the scene.
These writers came of age as official conservatism slipped into decrepitude. Most of them were dismayed by what the Republican Party had become under Tom DeLay and seemed put off by the shock-jock rhetorical style of Ann Coulter. As a result, most have the conviction - which was rare in earlier generations - that something is fundamentally wrong with the right, and it needs to be fixed.
Notice that Bush, Cheney, Rove, Iraq, Katrina, $4 gas, the War On Terra all are strikingly absent from Brooksies lips, I mean list...
Both Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have seductively hinted that they would withdraw almost all U.S. troops within 12 to 16 months. But if either of them actually did that...[t]here would be private but powerful opposition from Arab leaders, who would fear a return to 2006 chaos. There would be irate opposition from important sections of the military, who would feel that the U.S. was squandering the gains of the previous year. A Democratic president with few military credentials would confront outraged and highly photogenic colonels screaming betrayal.
There would be important criticism from nonpartisan military experts. In his latest report, the much-cited Anthony Cordesman describes an improving Iraqi security situation that still requires "strategic patience" and another five years to become self-sustaining.
There would be furious opposition from Republicans and many independents.
Rather than reinvent the wheel and dissect all the lies and misrepresentations in this excremental burst, I'll link to Eric Martin at American Footprints, a foreign affairs blog.
One point that Eric doesn't address is the accusation of betrayal, a rightwing frame I diaried about yesterday under Dolchstosslegende: the rightwing's vote-winning myth of the treasonous left. Again, any effort to reduce American military exposure in Iraq will be meet with the Dolchstosslegende. Will Democrats instinctively fear it, and flinch away, or will they confront it head on and neutralize it?
No matter how much Americans say they want us out of Iraq and no matter how divorced from reality the political discourse gets in Washington, you can always count on Beltway pundits to warn Democrats not to get "too liberal." These elites want nothing more than to have Hillary Clinton be the party's presidential nominee to squelch those "rabid bloggers," because she's the kind of Democrat that makes them feel comfortable. In yesterday's New York Times, right-wing columnist David Brooks gloated about Hillary's current lead in the polls - because it vindicates his thinking that the netroots don't represent America. As Clinton courts Democratic primary voters with progressive rhetoric, keep in mind who in the media is cheering her on - because they're not the type of people that liberals should be taking their cues from.
