The other day, a Falls Church, VA teacher called up the radio and went on this tirade that he and his fellow hard-working, suffering educators had done enough already. Why, they hadn’t had a pay raise in three years, had endured freezes and partial layoffs. Now it was time for others to step up, pay higher taxes. He was only making $75,000 a year, while Wall Street tycoons made fortunes. It just wasn't fair.
Only $75,000 a year, huh, bub? I’m taking it you want to make a little more, say, $100,000? $125,000? Maybe command a Wall Street salary, $200,000?
Okay, then here’s the deal: you will now work all year round. No summers off. You will get one day off for Christmas and New Year’s. We’ll throw in Thanksgiving Day and Federal holidays, but no more Spring break. You will work a 9-10 hour day, and not just sitting around giggling with your fellow teachers, no. Not only will you teach your own class, but you’ll also manage at least two more after- school classes for the kids not doing so well. You will, also, pay for your own medical and retirement. You will get one week’s vacation a year.
And every child who goes through your class WILL score 2100 on the SATs and graduate with a 3.75 average, or you WILL be fired.
You want Wall Street pay? Then you’re gonna get Wall Street results. ‘Kay?
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011
West of boro
The Supreme Court has, once again, made an incredibly stupid decision that will, once again, flush another portion of our Constitution down that long sewer pipe they, and the rest of the gummint, seem intent on sending it. But, BUT, Schlub says, as with most postmodern legal decisions designed to free us from the oppression of our little bourgeois shopkeeper minds and impose the longed-for civilization of peace and love and humbuggery, there be some unintended consequences a brewin’.
But first, this: allowing Westboro to continue spewing their over-the-top toilet stained crap (lots of sewer references today, but, hey, consider the material) at mourners attending funerals of loved ones who died defending this country is proof that a legal degree and years of making judicial decisions turns you into an idiot. See, it’s like being a sewer (see what I mean?) worker- after awhile, the whole world looks like crap. When all you do is stare at legal writ all day, you think it's, well, real. Holy. Inscribed some hitherto midnight on walls by disembodied fingers or something. And you imbue it with an absoluteness which means those scrawls on parchment are inviolate and apply to every single situation in the universe all the time with absolutely no exceptions regardless of the circumstances they just do so shut up. Result? Judges making completely asinine decisions while saying things like, yes, well, the Westboro people are a vile group, wot? but the purity and divinity of the First Amendment means that people who have come to say goodbye to their young child who was killed fighting crapheads who want to put us all in bags and then behead us, well, they’ll just have to listen to Westborites screaming that America is a fag nation and sonny boy deserved it. That First Amendment is soooo holy that your right to say goodbye to your son just isn’t as important as Westboro’s right to gloat over his death.
From where does such absolutist, legalistic, patristic thinking come from? Why, post-modernist philosophy, of course, which declared God is dead and so is common sense and we are a nation of laws (rules) and you peasants, subsequently, bear watching. Is the source, it is, of the recent rash of unbelievably stupid bureaucratic reactions to stuff, like - this. Kid gets suspended because he recognized a situation and acted with good common sense. Ain’t gonna have that, no we ain’t. There are rules. RULES. And they will be obeyed. All. The. Time. You peasants.
And the same thinking that led to the kid’s suspension led to the Westboro decision.
BUTT, and it is a big but, the SC 9 may have just unleased a rather gigantic bucket of worms. ‘Cause the decision means (drum roll, please)- there are no longer such things as fightin’ words, speech codes, hate speech, politically correct expressions. You may now call a black man the n word* if you wish, a homosexual a faggot** a Democrat a Marxist or Nazi***, carry signs of Obambi with Hitler moustaches, and post banners outside Justice Steven’s house declaring his wife has AIDs. And you can’t be arrested for it. And the news media can’t get the vapors. It’s the law, sonny boy. The SC 9 has just made decent behavior illegal.
It also means prayer is back in school and Ten Commandment tablets are back in court rooms. Because the First Amendment, which is actually written into the Constitution, trumps “church and state separation,” which isn’t.
Fun times, fun times.
*I don‘t much like that word, as Sheriff Langston said, so I don't use it. But you can
**I prefer the term ‘pole smoker’
*** Six of one, half dozen of another
But first, this: allowing Westboro to continue spewing their over-the-top toilet stained crap (lots of sewer references today, but, hey, consider the material) at mourners attending funerals of loved ones who died defending this country is proof that a legal degree and years of making judicial decisions turns you into an idiot. See, it’s like being a sewer (see what I mean?) worker- after awhile, the whole world looks like crap. When all you do is stare at legal writ all day, you think it's, well, real. Holy. Inscribed some hitherto midnight on walls by disembodied fingers or something. And you imbue it with an absoluteness which means those scrawls on parchment are inviolate and apply to every single situation in the universe all the time with absolutely no exceptions regardless of the circumstances they just do so shut up. Result? Judges making completely asinine decisions while saying things like, yes, well, the Westboro people are a vile group, wot? but the purity and divinity of the First Amendment means that people who have come to say goodbye to their young child who was killed fighting crapheads who want to put us all in bags and then behead us, well, they’ll just have to listen to Westborites screaming that America is a fag nation and sonny boy deserved it. That First Amendment is soooo holy that your right to say goodbye to your son just isn’t as important as Westboro’s right to gloat over his death.
From where does such absolutist, legalistic, patristic thinking come from? Why, post-modernist philosophy, of course, which declared God is dead and so is common sense and we are a nation of laws (rules) and you peasants, subsequently, bear watching. Is the source, it is, of the recent rash of unbelievably stupid bureaucratic reactions to stuff, like - this. Kid gets suspended because he recognized a situation and acted with good common sense. Ain’t gonna have that, no we ain’t. There are rules. RULES. And they will be obeyed. All. The. Time. You peasants.
And the same thinking that led to the kid’s suspension led to the Westboro decision.
BUTT, and it is a big but, the SC 9 may have just unleased a rather gigantic bucket of worms. ‘Cause the decision means (drum roll, please)- there are no longer such things as fightin’ words, speech codes, hate speech, politically correct expressions. You may now call a black man the n word* if you wish, a homosexual a faggot** a Democrat a Marxist or Nazi***, carry signs of Obambi with Hitler moustaches, and post banners outside Justice Steven’s house declaring his wife has AIDs. And you can’t be arrested for it. And the news media can’t get the vapors. It’s the law, sonny boy. The SC 9 has just made decent behavior illegal.
It also means prayer is back in school and Ten Commandment tablets are back in court rooms. Because the First Amendment, which is actually written into the Constitution, trumps “church and state separation,” which isn’t.
Fun times, fun times.
*I don‘t much like that word, as Sheriff Langston said, so I don't use it. But you can
**I prefer the term ‘pole smoker’
*** Six of one, half dozen of another
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