We seek an elite player in the draft
That's what all sports fans say. The top 8 college basketball teams in the tournament are in the Elite Eight.
We want elite doctors to treat us and elite judges to reason clearly and we should want the best of our best to lead our government.
But we don't want our national leaders not to understand us, not to "get" the core of the American Dream: the urge and opportunity to improve one's own life and the lives of the next generation.
I think Obama gets us. Read his words:
It's hard for me to figure that out, given that I was raised with far fewer advantages than any of my two remaining opponents. That my work started off on the streets of Chicago as a community organizer, that my wife, Michelle, grew up in that same neighborhood whose parents never went to college... that we financed all our education on student loans, that I was raised in a setting with my grandparents who grew up in small-town Kansas where, you know, the dinner table would have been familiar to anyone here in Indiana. A lot of pot roasts and potatoes and jello molds... People know me. People who've worked with me know that the reason I'm in this race is that my life history and my professional history working as a community organizer, as a civil rights lawyer, as a legislator, is to fight so people can take those same ladders of opportunity that I was able to take as a kid, and right now, this country is not providing those same ladders. That's why I'm in this race.
What's an idiot! It expalins why Michelle Obama is proud of her country for the first time in her adult life.
Last 30 years were the best years in the history of US and the world. Our country is so much bettter then it was 30 years ago and Barack and Michelle somehow are unable to see it.
Only an idiot can say that this country is not providing those same ladders that were avaliable 30 years ago for people like Obama.
April 27, 2008 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Last 30 years were the best years in U.S. history..."
Egads! yeah! the S&L bailout was one highlight in the GREATNESS of our country, as well as Iran/Contra, stagnant wages ( for what around 30 YEARS now?)and the dismantling of the FCC.
Hell the last 8 years alone shows us why Obama is out of touch, it has all gone so swimmingly!
Baffling.
April 27, 2008 3:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can you name better 30 years in American History?
April 27, 2008 6:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
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January 18, 2011 3:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
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December 22, 2010 3:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
I would prefer the best trained snob to do my brain surgery, thank you, but no, I would not want him as the highest representative of the American people. Obama is running on change like everyone else, but his change (transcendence and transformation of politics, race, etc.) has to do with things that are luxuries right now to many people. The average joe is looking for specific drastic changes in health care, jobs, inflation, etc. and at times Obama doesn't really appear to relate to those fundamental necessities.
April 27, 2008 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
PS I do think Obama is running on his "story" and that is what has drawn so many to him. But some see his career path and redefining of his identity as climbing more of a political ladder than some kind of Horatio Algers story.
April 27, 2008 3:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
So Obama is still being defended against the elitism charge. It must have stuck.
April 27, 2008 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
still being defended
Here we have, at last, the bizarre power of the Rovian Gambit (Nimzovich variation): "Where your opponent is strongest, point your lie".
!. Raise presposterously incoherent and incongruous smoke and mirror "doubts" in re:credentials.
2. Elicit defense.
3. Cite defense as evidence of inner weakness of conviction by defenders, who, after all, did not laugh in your face but actually tried to reason with your sorry self.
April 27, 2008 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Both Barack and Michelle Obama have pointed out that one of the most important "ladders of opportunity" that allows poor, working-class and middle-class kids to access economic mobility and even political power is excellent public education. Economic mobility today is also much lower than it was in the 1960s and 1970s -- today, a kid born into the lowest quintile of income has a greater than 50% chance of remaining in lowest income-quintile as an adult.
If you think that the average public school of today is greatly improved over that of the 1970s, and that poor kids on the whole have better prospects for economic mobility than they did in the '60s -- please do share whatever you're smoking.
April 27, 2008 3:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
scofflaw,
Please stop repeating the right wing attacks against public education. It’s obvious that 18 old Americas today are better educated then 20, 30, 50, 100, 200 years ago.
If you don’t agree , tell me when 18 year Americans were best educated?
Let me ask you specifically as African-American, (according to your picture), Do you think that today 18 year old blacks are less educated then 100, 500, 25 years ago?
April 27, 2008 3:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
according to your picture
That is Angela Davis, you ignorant troll.
April 27, 2008 4:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hee hee. Thanks, jollyroger. And no, I am not Angela Davis. I am black, but I'm not American (though I live here now). Although I came from a modest family background, I, like jollyroger (as well as Barack and Michelle Obama), benefited from an excellent public education that afforded me economic (and geographic) mobility.
Obviously, the racial segregation that existed 50 years ago stigmatized black students. Hate to break it to you, but most black and Latina/o students continue to attend public schools that are overwhelmingly, if unofficially, segregated. Today, unlike in the 1970s, these kids face demoralized and unqualified teachers, prison-like school conditions, searches and patdowns, crumbling buildings, shortages of basic educational tools like books and computers, and completely inadequate educational facilities.
My experience of public education in Canada in the 1970s and '80s, like the experiences of my academic colleagues who attended US public schools during the same era, was completely different from the experience that, say, the cash-starved Los Angeles USB offers its students today. We had good libraries, and full-time librarians, in our schools. My teachers, who were unionized and made good salaries, taught the students the curriculum in the ways they thought were effective, and were not under pressure to sacrifice learning to maximize results on standardized tests. Our schools offered had academic enrichment programs, science labs, language instruction, visual arts, school band, choir and orchestra, and physical education in real gyms and sports fields (not asphalt-paved yards). School violence meant fistfights, not guns. We weren't treated like prisoners.
These schools were far from perfect. Black and Native students, in particular, were disproportionately streamed into non-academic vocational programs. The school administration tolerated a lot of homophobia and sexism among students. But it is hardly plausible to suggest that the public school education available to kids of modest means is better today than it was in the 1970s and 1980s.
When I got to university after completing my public education in "gifted" programs at public schools, I found that I was as well or better prepared for college work than my peers who had attended private schools. That is what I mean by an excellent public education. If you tell me that the average LA or NYC public school student has access to that quality of education today, well, either you're wearing some powerful rose-colored glasses, or you're trolling.
April 27, 2008 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Er, what I meant to say in my second sentence was that, as jollyroger can see, my avatar is Angela Davis, but I'm not her.
I am now finished with engaging with tnathan, who apparently thinks contemporary public schools are just fine, because in the early nineteenth century, there was no public education. Whatever.
April 27, 2008 6:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not her.
We do get some uptown traffic here...that said, I confess to having scoped your profile, and, yes, I know that Angela is not 37, and I think,/b> she's in Santa Cruz.
April 27, 2008 8:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Heh, I knew you knew that, jollyroger. The explanation was for tnathan, who seems a little uninformed.
April 27, 2008 8:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not saying they are fine. I'm saying that
only an idiot can say that this country is not providing those same ladders that were avaliable 30 years ago for people like Obama.
I'm not saying that we can't do better, yes, we can, but if you think that Carter years were better than Clinton years, please do share whatever you're smoking.
April 27, 2008 9:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
excellent public education
Thank you.
I went to ghetto public schools (P.S.20, JHS117) in Brooklyn, and got a spectacular education.
Unfortunately, that came at the cost of exploiting a generation of women whose daughters went to Law School instead of Teacher's College.
When that low cost pool of labor disappeared, the "free market" message was:quality teaching costs money.
The answer from the American people: "We will treat our children like shit". (by comparison, say, with other civilized nations)
April 27, 2008 4:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
*P.S.20, **JHS117
sorry. You being from LA, don't know from Brooklyn.
*Fort Greene and **Bedford Stuyvesant.
April 27, 2008 4:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 27, 2008 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
cash-starved Los Angeles USB
Thank you Mr. Jarvis.
California public schools were gutted by Prop. 13, and the list of programs that no longer exist is incredible.
Because schools are tied to local property taxes (in general) it is a truism of sociology that you can predict the eductional outcome (in terms of highest level of education achieved) in direct proportion to the number of square feet per person in the residence of the child at time of entering kindergarten.
April 27, 2008 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.newsweek.com/id/134316
April 28, 2008 12:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Partner T. (for "troll") neglects the all important attribution of his quote:
Screed scrawled in feces upon wall of George Will.
April 28, 2008 12:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Madison believed that we should have separation of church and state throughout the land, federal and local. There was a fascinating moment during the congressional debate over what became the First Amendment. How could the beloved First Amendment be harmful to religion? Huntington feared that it would overturn or interfere with Connecticut’s approach, which was to have state-supported religion.
Chat | Chat
March 2, 2011 4:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Madison believed that we should have separation of church and state throughout the land, federal and local. There was a fascinating moment during the congressional debate over what became the First Amendment. How could the beloved First Amendment be harmful to religion? Huntington feared that it would overturn or interfere with Connecticut’s approach, which was to have state-supported religion.
Chat | Chat
March 2, 2011 4:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
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May 4, 2011 8:09 AM | Reply | Permalink