EDITORIALS / OPINION
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Rhee in hot water
The georgetowner
January 2010
It’s been a bumpy week or so for District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.
Item #1: “I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school. Why wouldn’t we take those things into consideration?”
That’s a quote by Rhee from a brief item in the February edition of “Fast Company,” a publication aimed at young entrepreneurs. She was responding to accusations about the fairness of the controversial firings of 266 teachers over a budget crunch in the falls. Questions about the layoffs still linger, but they are officially a done deal.
When the quote surfaced last Friday, there was immediate outrage and protest from the D.C. Teachers Union and a call for an appearance before the council by D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray, all signs of a billowing, major controversy brewing. Rhee officially remained silent for days, finally giving an interview to a local television newsman.
When the firings incurred demonstrations, two hearings and heated, angry comments from teachers and students, Rhee promised to improve communications with the council. The latest contretemps isn’t going to help much. The comment seems, on its surface, unnecessary, reckless and thoughtless and appears to tar the fired teachers with a generalized brush.
In the interview with Tom Sherwood, Rhee said one teacher had been on administrative leave for sexual misconduct, six served suspensions for corporal punishment and two were suspended for unauthorized absences. All of them had been part of the teachers that were fired in the fall. She did not apologize for her comments.
At the time of writing, Councilmen Harry Thomas (Ward 5) and Marion Barry (Ward 8) were holding a press conference on Rhee’s comments.
Item #2: Earlier in January, a report leaked out that there were plans afoot to move Duke Ellington School for the Arts to a Northeast Elementary School site, making way for a high school that would serve Ward 2 residents. No comments were given by either the Fenty administration or from Rhee, although Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans praised the idea.
Less than a week later, Rhee said the district had no plans to move the school out of Georgetown after being hit with scores of e-mails and telephone calls from parents protesting the move.
With her support crumbling, Rhee will have to work fast to convince constituents she isn’t a completely loose cannon. The events of this next week may make or break her tenure as education czar. Stay tuned.
A Day to remember
By David Roffman
January 2010
Georgetowner Frida Burling spoke to the congregation at Georgetown’s St. John’s Episcopal Church on Sunday, Jan. 17. She was asked to talk about her memories of that day in 1963 when Rev. Martin Luther King spoke at the Lincoln Memorial.
Frida Burling was born in 1915, and remembers what a sleepy little southern town Washington, D.C. was in the ’20s and ’30s. She also remembers the total segregation in the city: schools, restaurants, bathrooms. She remembers the signs at public drinking fountain labeled “white only,” and the fact that her black friends could not be served a Coca-Cola at the drug store lunch counters.
But Burling recalled how the Great Depression brought Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the White House, and with him lots of bright young men to Washington “to save the world,” which “especially awakened Georgetown to a whole new life.”
Burling told the young congregants at St. John’s: “I married one of these Yankees, a Boston blueblood, who gently showed me that my acceptance of this apartheid was totally unfair and morally wrong. This is important, the fact that I changed completely proves that one can change, and there are still many changes that need to be made.”
Although a heart attack ended her husband’s life much too early, Burling had learned her lesson well, still feeling strongly against segregation. Four years later she married her late husband’s good friend, whose feelings were similar, and “we even did some integrated entertaining.”
She recalled watching on television the horrific pictures of blacks being lynched, children being bombed at church, angry dogs and firehoses breaking up nonviolent protests and marches. “Much of the country began to be aware of the two strong forces on opposite sides. Martin Luther King spoke out, preaching non-violence, but TV showed clearly angry Southern women spitting at well-behaved children peacefully trying to integrate their school even under the protection of the state troopers.”
When Dr. King and other leaders called for a peaceful March in August 1963 to be held in D.C., Mrs. Burling knew she had to be there to stand up for what she believed. “We were enjoying summer in Middleburg but I packed some sandwiches and my camera and drove into Georgetown to pick up my mother, who felt as I did. She was about 60 and I about 40. We rode a bus partway downtown, not sure where we were headed, nor what we faced. Would we be attacked by spitting counter-demonstrators or dogs or worse? But we had to show up for the good guys, to make our peaceful protest.”
“We hopped off the bus when we heard fabulous singing and music coming out of St. John’s Church at Lafayette Square. We stayed awhile but then most of us moved on, down beside the Square, where we saw lines of buses pulled up, marked Selma, Birmingham, etc. We were very moved by this sight, realizing these people had dared to come even though they might well lose their job, or their home, for daring to make this long tiring trip all night on their buses.
“Then on down past the White House to the [Washington] Monument, where I paid a dollar for a placard on a stick to carry, which read: “I Have a Dream” ... Crowds increasing all along the way, the friendliest, happiest crowd I had ever encountered. I was glad to see Craig Eder and Canon Martin from St.Albans School. We all walked on together towards the Lincoln Memorial. We had been there early enough so were able to sit on the grass near and below the platform where the leaders and singers would be. We ate sandwiches and chatted with everyone else. We were all one united group, black and white, old and young, all ‘brothers.’
“We heard the speeches and songs, but even King’s wonderful famous speech was not the main item that day. It was the atmosphere of love being shared, the strong feeling of the brotherhood of man. I felt that on this one day in that one place, we all shared the grace of God which passeth all understanding. It was an unforgettable day.”
Saying no to emperor obama
By Alan Caruba
January 2010
Yes, it’s true. The emperor has no clothes. Even in a State where you cannot swing a dead cat without hitting a dozen Democrats, the voters said “No.”
“We don’t want your odious Medicare ‘reform.’ We don’t want to be forced to buy insurance. We don’t want a bill that exists only because every sweetheart deal and other form of bribery was used to get it to this point in the Senate.” And, ignored by the media, it was no to amnesty for illegal aliens as well, another issue of Scott Brown’s race.
The significance of the Massachusetts victory for Scott Brown is the repudiation of Barack Hussein Obama, his policies, and his performance in office.
It wasn’t the first time the voters sent the White House this message. They told him to buzz off in Virginia and they told him to get lost in New Jersey. This is a tangible voter backlash against profligate spending and excessive taxation.
Come November, the voters, Democrats, Republicans, and independents will come together to clean house in Washington, D.C. It takes no great punditry to see that coming. If the midterms were held tomorrow, the result would be the same.
It is almost beyond comprehension how Obama could have engineered a failed presidency within the space of just one year. He got a lot of help from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as mendacious and imperious an individual to have ever held that office. He got a lot of help from Majority Leader Harry Reid, a scowling, malicious cockroach whom the voters of Nevada will remove in November.
Obama’s narcissism and arrogance will blind him to the message of the Massachusetts victory. He and his press secretary, Robert “Glib” Gibbs, will put out a statement that will dismiss the historic event as just an aberration, but the aberration is Obama!
So, stand up and take a bow, Massachusetts: home to the pilgrims; home to the Boston massacre when British troops fired on protesters in 1770; home to the 1773 tea party to protest taxes; and birthplace of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Sam Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Josiah Bartlett, Roger Sherman, and John Hancock, signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Those first Americans led the resistance to the greatest power of their day, Great Britain, and its king.
For all the years Obama taught the U.S. Constitution at the University of Chicago Law School, he either never really understood it or never believed it means what it says.
He never understood that real Americans will not be pushed around, cheated of their Constitutional birthright, or be lied to.
They will push back.
A former emperor, Napoleon of France, spent his last days as an exile on St. Helena. It would not surprise me if Emperor Obama spends his on one of Hawaii’s islands.
The author blogs at factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.
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