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July 1, 2007
Sunday Morning Chatter on a Sunday Afternoon
Sec "Homeland Security" Chertoff was on both This Week and MtP today. George tried to get him to give up the deets on Britain - the way he's done in previous crises - and this time he demurred. Here's the deal on his constant reiteration of "I'll let the Brits determine when they say what:" that's how the Brits deal with the press. They don't try cases in the Court of the Media, the way the Shrub administration has done since they got the White House bully pulpit. For goodness sake, they regrouped domestic security units into the biggest misnomer ever - "homeland" security. If its really security for the homeland, I guess only Native Americans deserve to be secure in this country. Let's go talk to the folks who hacked up the sacred Black Hills to create Mount Rushmore (and steal the gold) about that idea...
Right. Back to the Sunday morning blather. George gathered an all-female panel. Appears the men were too busy bbq-ing. There was still only one woman of color on the panel and they seemed to all be over 50. I've got nothing against my older, DC-conservative sisters, but for goodness sake, are there no younger, articulate females available to ramble for an hour in the morning?
The maternalistic white women tried to explain to the lone black woman on the panel that the Supreme Court decision that over-turned Brown v. the Board of Education was actually a good thing. Because, you see, the important thing is to create great public education in all communities, not integration or color-blind openings. It's Appalling. Simple Appalling that more of the country is not renouncing this horrific, racist decision. Public education has taken another blow. Our problems started when we made it dependent on real estate tax revenue which makes it inherently unfair. Next, we have completely unreasonable expectations of public schools: for a variety of reasons, public schools have never had higher than 50% high school graduation rates when all students who started in first grade are counted. We want quick fixes: so instead of dismantling bloated bureaucracies, we grant charters and privatize larger and larger chunks of our public system. We treat students like cattle and force them to "learn" to standardized tests, rather than learning in depth on multiple subjects.
In Memoriam told me Joel Siegel died. I didn't even know he was sick.
Onto MtP - Chertoff blathered and managed to say even less he did on This Week. Then Tim talked with Senator Patrick Leahy...and then he had his own round table that included one of the most annoying men in politics - Tavis Smiley. The man who named himself the Communicator for All Black People. They rehashed the recent Dem Pres candidates debate, which occurred on the campus of a historically black college.
Other things happened. But it all happened yesterday and by today, most of the banter seeped out of my head.
Posted by cj at July 1, 2007 2:39 PM
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