AS I RECALL it all started one morning probably about ten or a dozen years ago, after Barack Obama's Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan did something to piss me off and I posted a comment at Eschaton that it should be an article in the Democratic Platform from now on and a mandatory pledge gotten from every Democratic presidential candidate that he would never appoint a Secretary of Education who had not,
a. attended, b. taught in, c. sent their children to PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
I think I said they should have had to have graduated from a public college or university, too. Simps got really worked up that I'd said something so violative of the standards of middle-brow, college credentialed snobbery as to diss the Ivy League-Ivy Equivalent class. He asked if I meant that they should be have "gone to a community college" to which I provocatively said and entirely meant that I'd welcome a competent 2-year college graduate who had proven their abilities in practice as a cabinet secretary more than one who had bought their credentials - or their daddy had - especially in that position because they'd probably do a better job of assisting public education, the first obligation for someone on the job. Arne Duncan, like Barack Obama proved they had absolutely no idea of what was needed or how to do that. The snobbery and cluelessness of Race To The Top was what you could expect from a couple of preppy jocks, not someone who cared about those who would never reach the top and what they needed. I think The Reverend Jeremiah Wright may have been correct that Obama appointed Duncan so they could play basketball together.
From there he started trolling me constantly, things came to a head when he made a couple of disgusting racist "jokes" along with a couple of other would-be wits who are only nits at Duncans and I answered in a way that set him off libeling me there for the past decade. Someone used to tell me about it but a while ago those messages stopped, I never knew who sent them. Sometimes I go for months ignoring him but I'm by nature a scrappy guy and when I can refute the common received non-wisdom I feel an obligation to do so. You do learn things along the way, looking for contemporaneous evidence to test my beliefs and predictions of what there is to support or what would be needed to refute it, I read a lot of interesting things that I'd probably not have gotten round to reading. The Harvey Pekar review of Maus I linked to yesterday is one of those, it is a remarkably cogent and insightful critique, the kind you don't much see today, when everything is either merely negative or, more likely, positive PR.
Like so much that is fun, there are regrets to be had in the aftermath, though he's never once refuted a single point I've ever made - HINT: get your primary sources and citations in order and they'll almost never come up with something to refute those. You don't often need to get to the analysis of it, the online trolls seldom if ever get that far, in my experience.
If I'd been wiser I'd have taken this advice when it was given during an earlier brawl because it was right.
You can't fix stupid.
You can't educate it, either.
