Fox News Paid Sarah Palin Well for Babbling

NOW THAT SARAH PALIN HAS VANISHED FROM FOX NEWS it’s hard to say who’s going to miss that zany lady most. Will it be lusty right-wing males of an advanced age, a critical Fox demographic? They’ve been fantasizing about shapely Caribou Barbie since the moment she made her appearance on the national scene during the 2008 election.

In the long run, however, those likely to suffer most will be sensible Americans, who appreciated the comedy of hearing her babble.

We do know now, thanks to a review by Smart Politics, what the going price of right-wing bullshit in America is today. During her three-year tenure as a foxy Fox News political analyst (an oxymoron if there ever was one) Palin pulled down $3 million, appeared on air roughly once every week, and offered up 189,221 words of her own brand of blather. Or, to put it in terms any “maker” can understand, Palin earned $15.85 for every word uttered, or $3.17 per syllable each time she used a five-syllable word.

That was probably never.

(Before we continue, however, let us quash the rumor that the people at Smart Politics who had to sit down and listen to, and keep count of, all those thousands of nonsensical words blew their brains out shortly thereafter.)

How then do we begin to measure the lasting mark Palin left in the long annals of American political discourse? What profound words of wisdom are we left with today? Some of what follows—like Palin, herself, on Fox News—we swear is not just shit we’re totally making up.

Among all those rambling sentences Palin uttered so prettily, some phrases, but not very many real ideas stand out:

“Barrack Hussein Obama” was mentioned 786 times (that’s true); meaning Fox spent $12,458.10 to help convince ignorant people that America’s 44th president was a Muslim usurper with no birth certificate at all.

“You betcha’s,” (surprisingly, uttered but twice on air, or $31.70); “darns,” 9, ($142.65), “heck’s,” 28, ($443.80).


“Amen’s” on 111 occasions ($1759.35); assorted “God’s,” “Christians’,” three “Moses’” and one “Jesus,” 77 total uses, ($1220.45).

Mentioning “tyranny” 695 times, causing angry old white men to rush out and buy more guns ($11,015.75).

“Unplugging granny’s,” 91 times, causing angry old white ladies to clutch at their hearts and send check to Tea Party candidates, ($1,442.35).

Use of the word “terrorist,” as in: “Obama pals around with terrorists,” 496 occasions, or $7,861.60.

Use of the phrase: “Drill, baby, drill.” 16 times ($760.80).

Mentioning the word “newspaper.” Never. (No cost to Fox News.)

Mentioning actual books she read—not counting books without pictures: Never (0 dollars).

“Socialism,” “communism,” “fascism” and or “liberals,” usually in sequence, separated only by commas (Palin never did figure out that these terms were not interchangeable and apparently no Fox News listener has ever actually opened a dictionary), or in changeable combinations: 1,542 uses ($24,440.70).

Times the word “dictionary” was uttered: 0 (0 dollars).

“Thesaurus,” a single usage: “Up here in Alaska we know global warming is fake, drill me baby, that scientists make stuff up, that evolution is not true, heck, that the tyrannosaurus and thesaurus roamed the earth together, 6,000 years ago, with Adam and Eve. But, you betcha,’ not Adam and Steve.” ($744.95).

“Hunting,” 10 times, “fishing,” 9 times, “Don’t fire at that moose until you see the whites of his eyes.” 1 usage (total: $507.20).

Let’s face it, sensible Americans. We’re all going to miss her chats with Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren. These appearances gave us comic gems like this one in regard to U. S. and NATO air strikes in Libya: “I haven’t heard the president state that we’re at war. That’s why I too am not knowing—do we use the term intervention? Do we use war? Do we use squirmish? What is it?” ($538.90).

Or this one, where Governor (Briefly) Palin tried to explain how the government should have responded to the Gulf Oil spill: “What the federal government should have done is accept the assistance of foreign countries, of entrepreneurial Americans who have had solution that they wanted presented...The Dutch and the Norwegians, they are known for dikes and for cleaning up water and for dealing with spills.” ($697.40).

And you had classics like this, on Hannity, when Palin tried to deny charges leveled by the NAACP that the Tea Party movement was rife with racist language and imagery: “[Barack and Michelle Obama] have power in their words. They could refudiate what it is that this group is saying.” ($317.00).

Truly, listening to Palin these last three years—it’s been more than worth the $15.85 she earned for every “who,” “what, “where” and “when.” You might try to make the case that what Rupert Murdoch actually did was waste three million bucks. But for those of us of a liberal persuasion, hearing Palin coin words like “refudiate” and “squirmish?”

Priceless!

A Timely Warning from the Mayans?

USUALLY, AT THIS TIME OF YEAR, Americans are too busy searching for holiday bargains (or, if they watch Fox News, worrying about losing the imaginary “War on Christmas”) to focus on world events. This year it’s different.

Mayan ruins.

Fear is building with each passing hour as we count down to the Mayan Apocalypse, just two days away. You think the fiscal cliff is a concern? Not really a problem. Let them raise your taxes if you’re a millionaire! Who cares! Not one taxpayer is going to be around to pay the bills after December 21, 2012. The planets and stars are going to align and bam!

That will be that.

We’re never going to know if President Obama and Speaker John Boehner might have worked out some kind of compromise. We’ll never learn who would have been this season’s winner on The Voice. The Chicago Cubs will never ever reach the World Series again.

Neither will anyone else.

Some skeptics, of course, may still be saying, “Screw the Mayans. I’m going Christmas shopping.” This writer admits to being skeptical, himself, until he received this ominous letter from his dentist, who claims to be “retiring” after 46 years in the field. Look at the date! My god, he’s just trying not to create a panic:

Now that you understand how short the time you—personally—have left on earth you might like to know a little about these Mayans, who somehow knew, thirteen centuries ago, that we were going to be screwed. First, they were math wizards, expert at charting stars and planets and heavenly cycles. They built impressive temples and developed a written language. They understood the concept of “zero” at a time when our European ancestors were trying to divide and multiply using Roman numerals. The Mayan people were skilled farmers, working communally to build vast reservoirs and irrigation channels. They grew corn and beans and actually liked squash.

An advanced people.

They had a monetary system (involving jade and cacao beans, the stuff of chocolate). They lived in cities like Tikal, population 60,000. They traded for hundreds of miles up and down the coast of what we know as Central America and out across the Caribbean. And they computed time backwards and forwards. According to their figures the first date in human history was August 13, 3114 B.C. Or is it August 10? My history books disagree.

Wikipedia says: August 11.

Who cares! The Mayans knew we we’re doomed. They knew it wouldn’t make any difference, not even if Obama kicked Boehner square in the nuts.

THEN AGAIN, MAYBE THEY WEREN’T SO SMART. Their civilization collapsed around 900 A.D.; and somehow they failed to predict that.

Maybe the Mayans are wrong about December 21; but maybe they still have a warning to offer. From what we know, as Mayan population grew, farmers cut down the forests and planted more and more crops. With forest cover gone there was heavy erosion and fields produced smaller and smaller yields. According to archaeologist Richardson Gill, when a long drought hit their homeland around A.D. 900 water tables dropped so fast, “There was nothing they could do. There was nowhere they could go. Their whole world, as they knew it, was in the throes of a burning, searing, brutal drought...There was nothing to eat. Their water reservoirs were depleted, and there was nothing to drink.”

It might make you feel safer knowing that the Mayans never saw their own collapse coming. Maybe we have plenty of time left. Maybe the Cubs do reach the World Series in this century.

Well, that’s the moral of that story. It’s time to quit worrying and head for the mall to do some serious shopping. When you get home, maybe, turn on the television and relax and watch Fox News. At Fox News, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Well, fear itself and labor unions. 

And Muslims.

Oh, and gay marriage.

Otherwise, Fox News is like a powerful sedative. Gretchen Carlson doesn’t scare fans with stories about melting Arctic ice and rising sea levels. Sean Hannity won’t bring up altered weather patterns and wonder why the Mississippi River was almost unnavigable last summer. The weather babes at Fox aren’t concerned about why Superstorm Sandy packed an unusually powerful punch. Megyn Kelly doesn’t care if the Ogallala aquifer, which underlies the heartland of America, is being drained at a fearful rate putting farming at risk. (Even the Wall Street Journal took note of that story). No one who works for Rupert Murdoch or Roger Ailes is ever going to admit there’s a problem when toxic chemicals show up all over the world in women’s breast milk or when traces of Prozac show up in fish. Nope. Nothing to worry about when it comes to the environment. 

Even the fish are relaxed.

Did you hear? Steve Doocy says Obama is crazy because he’s pushing solar energy. So, sit back and crank up the volume because Sarah Palin is coming on after a commercial. Listen to her coo seductively, “Oh, baby, oh baby, drill me baby, drill me!”

After that, it’s time to listen to Bill O'Reilly fume about the “War on Christmas.” So, yeah, screw those  Mayans.

What did they know?

Buy this t-shirt if you dare.

So Not Hitler: President Obama and the Unreasoning Right-Wing Fear

OKAY, RIGHT-WING TYPES, you’re still confusing thinking Americans and the election for president is just months away. Could you please pick your paranoia and stick with it, at least till November? 

You’ve pretty much run the gamut of all fears. Four years ago, Sarah Palin warned that Obama was going to “pal around with terrorists.” The implication was that we were all going to die in 9/11-like attacks. Glenn Beck predicted next that the president’s enemies would be arrested by the millions and billions and sent to FEMA prison camps. Fox News tried to sell the idea that Obama hated America because back in Chicago he listened to Reverend Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ. 

When thinking Americans shrugged it all off, Rushbo and other right-wing types did an Exorcist-like 360 swivel and started warning that Barack Obama didn’t just pal around with terrorists. 

He was one. 

Now, you want us to believe Obama is Hitler. You color in that little mustache on his picture and slap it up on your Tea Party posters. On Facebook you put up paintings of Obama in storm trooper garb. 

It’s kind of pitiful. 

It’s lame.

 

Perhaps it’s time for a history lesson. What thinking Americans call “using actual facts.” If you haven’t noticed, there are no gas chambers in America and we don't have any Zyklon-B. Your side pretends Obamacare is the same as mass murder, but you can’t find the ditches filled with corpses. The police aren’t even torturing critics. But perhaps you forget: Obama is the one who opposes waterboarding. 

President Obama doesn’t have political goon squads, either. Oh, sure, you quake in your boots when “union thugs” are mentioned. But you’re just pissy because sometimes we outvote you, and you can’t handle that fact. 

You might be relieved to know that Hitler hated unions, just like you do. In May 1933, shortly after he gained power, he ordered unions dissolved and leaders beaten and carted off to concentration camps. Anti-union? Hitler? Check. Right-wing governors like Scott Walker and John Kasich? Check and double check. 

It’s kind of fun, if you carry the comparisons far enough. By 1930, Hitler was already relying on 100,000 brown-shirted bully boys to depress the vote, sending them to attack opponent’s political rallies and murdering rival politicians. But when it comes to voter suppression, in 2012, your side is the bomb. Good try in Ohio, for example, screwing with voting hours, limiting them in Democratic-leaning counties, expanding them in Republican-leaning areas of the state. Yep. You care about freedom. Sure you do. Come to think of it, liberals, in the main, are prone to go around unarmed. If you want weapons at political rallies...you might have noticed that was kind of a Tea Party thing. 

And remember the thrill your side got when Ted Nugent suggested President Obama should suck on his machine gun? 

Admit it. You thought that was cool.

 

LET'S SEE IF WE CAN KEEP SCORE—and see which side in America most leans in the direction of Hitler. Writing in Mein Kampf, before he came to power, the Nazi leader labeled Jews a separate race and called racial pollution “the original sin of humanity.” (624) And what do you know, in a poll this spring, nearly half of Republican voters in Mississippi said interracial marriage should still be illegal. 

In fact, isn’t religious intolerance a trick often found buried deep in your bag? Don’t a lot of Evangelicals, who flock to your side, say Jews are Christ-killers and doomed to burn in Hell? If Obama were like Hitler he’d order attacks on Pat Robertson’s home and Joel Osteen’s church, as the Nazi leader did on Jews’ homes and synagogues during Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”) in 1938. 

So: Is Obama like Hitler? Then which side today hates an entire religion? Which side fears all Muslims, including those born in America, with full citizenship rights? Which side burns down a mosque in Tennessee? Which side shoots down Sikhs? Religious intolerance. Yeah... that's a check for your side. 

How about marriage and reproduction? You might be happy to know that Hitler believed marriage was first and foremost a matter of procreation: “And marriage cannot be an end in itself, but must serve the one higher goal, the increase and preservation of the species and the race. This alone is its meaning and its task.” (252) He was against the right of the individual to decide in matters of reproduction: “We must also do away with the conception that the treatment of the body is the affair of every individual.” (254) Oh my: Your side says if a woman is raped the government can force her to have a baby. 

You fear, with unreasoning fear, a “homosexual agenda.” Hitler didn’t like gays either and sent them to concentration camps. Jews wore yellow stars. Gays wore pink triangles. Today, in America, Charles L. Worley, a Christian minister in North Carolina, can vilify Obama after he comes out in support of gay marriage and say what we need to do is build prison camps for all homosexuals. That way, they’ll die out. 

Remind me again, how is Obama like Hitler?

 

THE RIGHT TALKS ABOUT AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM and complains because Obama is slow to get involved in Syria. He’s unwilling to bomb the hell out of Iran. Hitler believed in exceptionalism, too, but his was the German kind. He could talk patriotism with the best, wave the flag, too, only his flag included a swastika. “We, as guardians of the highest humanity on this earth, are bound by the highest obligation,” he once argued. (646) In other words, what Germany did was always right. What America chooses to do, your side says in similar fashion is always right. Again, a check in your column. 

Hitler wanted to ensure that public schools taught love of country first and foremost. He wanted to foster a nationalist spirit and reinforce hate. “Science, too, must be regarded by the folkish state as an instrument for the advancement of national pride. Not only world history but all cultural history must be taught from this standpoint...The curriculum must be systematically built up along these lines so that when the young man leaves his school he is not a half pacifist, democrat, or something else, but a whole German.” 

Now, the Tennessee Tea Party wants slavery taken out of the textbooks. (Makes America look bad.) In Arizona, ethnic studies are banned. And don’t forget inserting Creationism in the science curriculum or teaching the Bible as “literature” in the public schools. Ignore that kid who thinks different in the front seat. Make him study the Bible because that’s what your side believes. 

How about all those illegal immigrants? What’s the existential fear on the right? Here’s how Hitler might put it: “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.” (289)  He’s talking Aryan superiority. You’re talking fear of brown-skinned peoples, those speaking Spanish, particularly, and Asians, too. You’re afraid for the Anglo-Saxon race. 

Finally, for people who talk so much about the Founding Fathers, have you noticed that we still have three branches of government? Hitler took away lawmaking power from the Reichstag (Germany’s legislature) almost the moment he assumed office. He drummed up unreasoning fear of communists to ram through restrictive laws. And, hold on, now. Isn’t that a specialty of Michele Bachmann and Allen West, running around, warning about all kinds of “Al Qaeda sympathizers” and “commies” in Congress today? 

Sometimes, it’s hard to see how you folks sleep at night. 

Have you forgotten Republican presidents appointed seven of the nine current members of the U.S. Supreme Court? Can't you see you control the U.S. House of Representatives? Don’t you notice your side is pouring hundreds of millions into the current campaign? You have, in all likelihood, a 50-50 chance of regaining control in the Senate and Obama holds only a slim lead over Mitt Romney in all the election polls. So stop with the scary bedtime stories. 

OR, FOR GOD’S SAKE, double your medications.

 

 *** 

(Sunday morning):  The author stands corrected on one point: It’s five of the members of the U.S. Supreme Court. Save for that error, he hopes right-wingers will feel a little better, reading this and knowing they have so little to fear.  

Or as the comic strip character Pogo once said, and as applies more to them than they might imagine: “We have met the enemy and it is us.”



A Liberal Comes Out of the Closet: Will Mitt and Newt Follow?

Okay, Edwards tuned out to be a slime ball.
I admit.

It's probably not accurate to say I'm a liberal coming out of the closet.  Here, in conservative Cincinnati, I'm more a "flaming liberal" than anything else. I still have my Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker on my Honda Civic, because I want people to know I didn't vote for George W. in 2004.
So:  If I'm liberal, does that make me a bad person?  Many of my friends are conservatives and I still like them. 

I guess I'm confused.

Part of the problem with being a liberal in 2012, is that liberals lost a grip on the discussion when we let far-right types start to define us.  You can't use the "N" word in polite company these dasy; but you can vilify opponents by sneering, "He's a liberal."  Too often, that epithet means, even to people who ought to know better:  unpatriotic, advocating socialism/communism, and big, big fans of more government.  Our foes see us not as honest doubters, but in an evil light, as "union thugs," "libertards," "zombies" and the like.  In the mind of Sarah Palin, I'm afraid, we're not even really Americans. 

Oh yeah, and God is on the conservative side, too.

I've got nothing against God, if He's listening, by the way.  But I'm a liberal in part because of my roots as an American history teacher.  I love the U. S. Constitution as much as any conservative, maybe even more than Michelle Bachmann.  A liberal, defined in the proper sense, I believe, is a person "favoring individual liberty and political and social reform."  Or, as I used to explain to students, a liberal looked at the world, saw problems, and "wanted to make the world better."  You could make a rather tidy argument that the Founding Fathers were "liberals" themselves. (And yet:  conservatives love to claim a lineal descent from Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Franklin and Hamilton.)

Let me stress then, that I am both a liberal and a huge, huge fan of Founding Fathers Gunning Bedford Jr., Richard Dobbs Spaight and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, too.

In fact, I believe the Bill of Rights, alone, assures the Founding Fathers a glorious place in history.  It's the devil in the details of what those rights mean, that divides us today.

We live in perhaps the freest society in human history and conservatives want to insure that it remains that way.  So, for example, they fear any kind of gun control. They believe our nation is rooted in Judeo-Christian teachings.  In both positions they are likely half right, at least.

So why am I a liberal?  Well, liberals are full of doubts and prone to question accepted social and religious thinking. I know Massachusetts required tax support of an established church long after the U. S. Constitution was approved.  I know that when the Irish began pouring into this country in the 1840s they were seen as a threat to the American way of life, with their funny religious ideas.  I know Mormons were driven out of New York, Ohio, Missouri and Illinois by conservatives who despised their faith, that their founder, Joseph Smith was murdered.  It wasn't liberals--who have honest doubts about religion--who did it, by the way.

I remember, more recently, when conservatives said John F. Kennedy couldn't be president because of his Catholicism and his insidious ties to the pope.  That very thought ought to make Mitt and Newt and Rick Santorum sit bolt upright in their beds at night.  I mean:  are those three boys actually liberals, believing as they do, that any person of any faith can run for president?  Do they just not know what liberal ground they stand on?

Are they liberals, still hiding in the closet?  My god, what's next? 

A Muslim president? 

I'm old enough to remember the U. S. Supreme Court decision in 1965, overturning Connecticut law, rooted in religious thinking, which held that sending birth control information through the mail was the equivalent of sending pornography through the mails.  I remember the Loving decision, too, which overturned laws in several states, banning interracial marriage.  I remember conservatives standing in college doors and vowing that no Negro would ever enroll at the University of Alabama, except maybe over a few conservative dead bodies.  So, I'm a liberal.  I think if Trent Richardson wants to tote the pigskin for the Crimson Tide, well, then, he's entitled.

In other words, liberals have often stood against big government and conservatives have often stood for it.  I know Newt and some of the folks on the conservative end of the spectrum believe gay-rights activism is going to undermine the American way of life.  But I'm a liberal and tempted to call that paranoia.  I'd like to point out that in the Old Testament both sodomy and adultery were equally offenses in God's eyes and adultery was meant to be punished with stoning.

Newt, be thankful, Man on the Moon GOP presidential candidate (and, yes, Perfect Hair John Edwards, too), that liberals triumphed on that issue long ago.

We might also consider Ms. Michele Bachmann, the rightest of the right candidates in this primary season.  I seem to remember that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were liberals when they launched the fight for womens' rights in 1848.

In fact, if you believe women should be assertive, and that they can work for a living, and that they don't have to get married, yep, Ann Coulter, you, too, are a flaming liberal.

It's funny, actually, because Representative Bachmann is probably the biggest fan of the Founding Fathers now alive.  Yet, in 1789, even those god-like men could not determine how far liberty truly extended.  Unlike Representative Bachmann, I might point out the Three-Fifth's Compromise, which said five slaves equaled three whites in determining state population for purposes--oh, the irony--of state representation in Congress.  I also note the absence of the word, "women" in the document; conservative thinking at the time having no doubt that, like gay people in conservative thinking today, females were second-class citizens.  

Some people serve heroically.
Others serve in their own fashion.
The blogger in "action."

Actually, you don't have to go that far back to argue that liberals are Americans in good standing.  Liberals, again, are full of doubt--even when it comes down to the matter of "patriotism."  A good liberal might argue that if "patriotism" is always right, then Hitler's followers were right and those flaming liberals, Robert E. Lee and Jeff Davis were traitors and probably flag-burners outright.  That concept ought to make a few heads in conservative South Carolina spin.

I enlisted in the Marines, myself, in 1968 and volunteered to go to Vietnam, twice.  (I wasn't sent, though, and maybe this actually proves conservative thinking that all liberals are dumb). 

In fact, I love America for what it stands for:  freedom for all.  I didn't cry liberal  tears when we were attacked on 9/11, I cried red, white and blue.  And I thought, in 2003, that conservatives idealogues were wrong to drag us into war in Iraq, when Osama bin Laden was hiding farther east. 

I hated to see good American boys, of any religion or political persuasion, die, when I thought our government had made a mistake.  See:  I don't trust big government, either. 

Hell, I remember Watergate.

I'm not saying I was right about everything, of course.  I'm a liberal; and liberals always have those doubts.  But I didn't like the idea that some conservatives blamed all Muslims for the 9/11 attack by 19 followers of that faith, either.  I taught history, you see; and I remember that we locked up 110,000 Japanese-Americans, including 77,000 U. S. citizens, after Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941.  Call me a "libertard," I guess, but when I hear people say that all Muslims are terrorists, I think it's like saying Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich bear guilt for the Irish Republican Army bombings in Belfast in the 80s.

The way I see it, you don't have to be a conservative to be a very good American.

Sarah Palin and Real Education Reform: Put Down that Fork!

TODAY THE REALLY BIG TALK IN EDUCATION is all about “higher standards” or “bench-marking” U. S. standards to standards in countries like Finland, Japan and South Korea, where education is supposedly better. 

I’m not much of a believer in “standards” as a solution to school problems; but clearly we need to do a better job teaching American history.

At a stop in New England, during her recent bus tour, Sarah Palin was asked to comment on Paul Revere’s ride. To say that her answer missed the mark and lacked a certain grammatical polish is an understatement. Palin explained:

He who warned, uh, the…the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and um by makin’ sure that as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warnin’ shots and bells that uh we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free…and we were gonna be armed.

I taught American history for 33 years; so I suppose Palin’s teachers could have done better. Then again, maybe it’s not them. We all bear some responsibility for what we know and what we don’t know. In my case I clowned around in school as a teen and don’t know as much chemistry or biology as I could have.

Sometimes, the schools and teachers are doing their jobs. Sometimes it’s students who aren’t working enough.

Changing “standards” so far has had a minimal effect—or no effect at all when it comes to improving our schools. It’s kind of like the change from a “food pyramid” to a “food circle,” shaped like a plate. I support First Lady Michelle Obama’s efforts to promote better eating. I just don’t believe the pyramid was the problem and I doubt the plate is a solution.

IT’S THE SAME WHEN EXPERTS get loose and start slinging their favorite theories of education.

At best, the “standards movement” sweeping the nation will have minimal effect. We know it’s already expensive. My gravest fear is that it will backfire badly and be even more expensive in the end than it already is.

Take my history class, for example. When we covered the American Revolution my students and I spent an entire day on the story of Lexington and Concord. (The girls thought it was interesting because at least one woman was seen by the British to be firing their way.) I then asked my students to write a 300-word “eyewitness account.” Anyone who ever had me for class could tell you, I graded this kind of assignment like I was an English teacher.

In this case, I was trying to give students more writing practice.

The problem, of course, is that on a standardized test a HISTORY teacher won’t ever be credited with successfully teaching writing.

So, teaching writing would technically be a waste of time.

That struck me as nuts when I was still teaching and still does today. It seems like a strange way to “improve” learning outcomes.

So, no. I don’t believe “standards” will be our salvation.

If you want better schools a major part of the problem can only be fixed when we convince students to work harder or begin demanding that they do. If we want to lose weight we don’t need new diet plans or standards.

We need to exercise a little will power. We need to show a bit of restraint. We need to do our part and lay down our forks.