Archive for January, 2012

Jan 29

Jindal’s Plan: Gut Public Education (Part Two of Two)

(I’ve decided to make this into a two-part post, instead of a three-parter).

In my first post on Governor Jindal’s recently announced proposal for education reforms, I focused on my own experience as a student in Louisiana public schools. While I will always value and appreciate the education I received, I also understand, personally, the real and pressing need for reform. I don’t fault Governor Jindal for seeking fundamental reform; I fault him for completely misdiagnosing the problem and for failing to believe in the promise of a robust, equitable, and successful public education system.

When Jindal announced his sweeping package of proposed reforms, he wasn’t in front of a group of educators and students; the speech wasn’t delivered in a high school gymnasium or a middle school auditorium. It was at the annual meeting of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI), which describes itself as “the largest and most effective business lobbying group in Louisiana” (emphasis mine). That’s right: His bold and sweeping vision for education reform wasn’t addressed to public school teachers and students; it was rolled out in front of the largest group of business lobbyists in the State.

Despite the transcendent rhetoric about the economic value of a quality education, the backdrop chosen by Governor Jindal perhaps unwittingly reinforced something many already know: With the right set of policies in place, there is a ton of public money to be made by privatizing education. Some may suggest that this is perfectly acceptable, that it’s about establishing a set of incentives to create “entrepreneurial partnerships” in the free market. And wow, that would sound great, if it were even remotely true.

I wonder what Governor Bobby Jindal thinks about the United States government’s bailout of the automobile industry. Considering his hypocrisy on the stimulus act (opposing it vociferously while criss-crossing the State doling out oversized checks in front of the cameras), I imagine he’d be hard-pressed to provide a direct answer. Because even a man opposed to spending money for volcano monitoring would be hard-pressed to come up with an argument about why the federal bailout of the automobile industry was a failure. Because it wasn’t, and neither, for that matter, was the stimulus, which Jindal milked, more than practically anyone else, for maximum political advantage.

Why do I bring this up in the context of educational reform? Because, for some, when the government loans money to keep private-sector businesses afloat during a time of severe economic calamity, it’s engaging in an insipid form of socialism; it’s undermining the free market. Yet when the government gives money to the private-sector so that it can monetize and capitalize off of public assets and public institutions, it’s somehow capitalism at its core. I’d suggest that you cannot have it both ways. You cannot claim that loaning public money to private companies in peril is socialism, while also holding that giving public money for private companies to undermine and cannibalize public education is capitalism.

That’s what the real fight is about.

Many of Jindal’s announced reforms focus on teacher pay, hiring and firing practices, and tenure. I may disagree with Governor Jindal vehemently on a number of issues, but I have never doubted his political acumen. There’s a good reason he front-loaded his education reform speech with talking points on employment and personnel policies: That’s the fight he wants to have; it’s the one he knows he can win.

For one, on many of these issues, the Governor is actually right: No one questions that we need to reform the ways in which our education system rewards good teachers and gets rid of bad teachers. The question, though, is and has always been: What’s the best and most objective matrix for determining an individual teacher’s success? It can’t simply be how well a teacher’s students performed on a standardized test in any given year. And Governor Jindal wisely acknowledged this, though he didn’t ever explain how, exactly, he planned to evaluate teachers based on “student achievement;” it’s an amorphous and subjective term, and if Jindal were more serious, he would have explained what he meant.

Likely, it’s because he doesn’t actually have a new and innovative plan for evaluating student achievement and teacher performance, aside from giving unelected political appointees (the superintendents) carte blanche authority over hiring and firing while also completely neutering the concept of tenure. I hate to break the news: This is where Jindal wants to take the fight. If the fight is over the way we hire and fire teachers, then the Governor won’t ever have to defend the real meat of his plan: Vouchers.

It’s the business lobbyists versus the teacher unions.

With all due respect to Joyce Haynes, the President of the Louisiana Association of Educators, she’s playing right into the Governor’s hands. Two days ago, while criticizing Jindal’s reform plans, she told WAFB News, “Those that get white collar salaries and look back need to remember teachers teach all professions, yet we pay them like they are slaves.“

The Jindal team were likely salivating after hearing this from the head of the LAE; indeed, Jindal issued an almost instant response to the LAE and Haynes:

This is a blueprint to go backwards and keep Louisiana at the bottom in education. It’s clear that some of these suggestions come from the national education union which goes to show you that Louisiana union leaders are taking their cues from Washington, D.C., not Louisiana teachers. Simply adding more money is not the answer. We are already wasting nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money on failing schools. The reality is that we have increased K-12 funding over the past four years, but we need to be smarter about how we spend these dollars. We also shouldn’t be watering down our teacher evaluation law. Teacher evaluations must be based on student achievement. It’s common sense to reward good teachers and remove failing teachers who refuse to improve. Union leaders continue to ignore the needs of great teachers across the state and are holding them back from being rewarded. That’s offensive to our teachers.

- Gov. Bobby Jindal

To be sure, Ms. Haynes had some legitimate points. She questioned the wisdom of using the Recovery School District (RSD) as a model to be emulated statewide, pointing out that the RSD is still “at the bottom of test scores.” That’s fair, and it’s worth serious discussion considering the recent appointment of John White as the State Superintendent of Public Education.

But it’s completely lost, because Ms. Haynes then made an almost comically tone-deaf and hyperbolic comment about “white collar” folks paying teachers “like they are slaves.” Governor Jindal didn’t even need to address this; all he did, instead, was to issue a blanket criticism of “union leaders.” He should have added, “Thank you for agreeing to play on my home field and for lobbing that enormous softball right over the center of the plate.”

****

I firmly and steadfastly believe that our teachers deserve higher pay, and without any doubt, there is a direct correlation between the salaries we pay our public educators and the overall quality of our public education. But when 44% of Louisiana schools are receiving D’s and F’s, you’re not going to get anywhere by advancing the implied argument that things would be much better if teachers weren’t “paid like they are slaves.” The problem isn’t merely that Ms. Haynes employed provocative and divisive rhetoric. Slaves, after all, weren’t paid; they were treated as human chattel. Our teachers may be underpaid, but let’s be serious adults here.

Governor Jindal wants to take the fight directly to teacher’s unions, and apparently, they are all too willing to oblige. And again, why does he want to fight these unions? Why did he announce his plans for education in front of the largest group of business lobbyists in the State?

Because his plan isn’t about reforming public education; it’s about bankrolling private education, and hopefully, at a healthy profit for at least a few of the clients of LABI.

Joyce Haynes may not get it, but John Maginnis does:

Tenure may be the most personally acrimonious issue, especially when teachers back home start getting in legislators’ faces. But, judging from editorial reaction, potentially the most explosive point advanced by the governor is a massive statewide expansion of education vouchers, or “opportunity scholarships,” as re-coined by proponents. Whatever they are called, the issue will provoke the most heated debate and, on the scale proposed, could tear apart the coalition of progressive reformers and social conservatives that back Jindal’s overall plan.

He proposes offering tuition vouchers for every child in a school graded C, D or F and in a family with an income under 250 percent of the federal poverty level, which comes to 380,000 of the public school enrollment of 705,000.

In plain English, while Ms. Haynes, ostensibly representing the LAE, suggests that teachers are “paid like slaves,” Jindal is advancing and promoting a plan that, if ever fully implemented, would totally and completely obliterate public education and undermine the value of hundreds of millions of dollars in publicly-owned assets.

There are a few major problems with Jindal’s plan to provide vouchers to more than half of Louisiana school children. It’s completely infeasible. We simply don’t have the infrastructure. Governor Jindal likely understands the sheer deficiency in infrastructure– that is, the actual buildings and campuses that house our schools– would prevent the vast majority of those who could qualify for a voucher to attend a nearby private school from ever being able to use the voucher. There simply aren’t enough private school classrooms to ever accommodate such an influx of students, and the overwhelming majority of private schools impose strict caps of enrollment. Thanks for the offer of a State voucher, but this other kid’s family can give us a cashier’s check.

So, if the new Superintendent’s comments about entrepreneurial partnerships are indicative of anything, it is that Jindal and company ultimately seek to steer public dollars in education to help build and maintain a parallel, for-profit infrastructure. While our innercity schools rot, they can point to construction jobs created in collaboration with the “private sector.”

Governor Jindal is not serious about reforming public education; he’s serious about getting applause from LABI.

Jan 25

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There Goes My Hero

No matter what you may feel about the United States Congress, no matter if you believe Washington is broken, no matter how cynical you may be about the gamesmanship and the choreographed pageantry of televised government meetings, if, as an American, this doesn’t move your heart in at least some way, then I doubt nothing else could:

Before the tragedy in Tucson only a year ago, I only knew one thing about Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords: That she was a Blue Dog Democrat. And I’ll be honest, as a proud and outspoken progressive Democrat, I’m not a fan of Blue Dog Democrats. Gabby Giffords may still be a Blue Dog, but either way, to me, she will always be a hero.

As a kid, I spent entire years of my life in and out of surgeries, recuperations, and physical therapy. I didn’t know anything else, really, but there’s absolutely no use feeling sorry for someone like me. It’s not as if I was afflicted with a sudden tragedy, that I’d known life one way and, in an instant, everything had changed. And in a way, I sensed, even as a kid, that I was lucky– not just because I was born into this amazingly supportive and encouraging family– but because I never knew any other reality or state of being.

When I was around ten years old, I had a series of major orthopedic surgeries. My bones were growing in the wrong directions, so they needed to point everything the right way. That’s how it was explained to me at the time. No one ever said, “If we don’t do this, once you’re an adult, you’ll never be able to walk.” But I understood.

It was about four or five days after one of those surgeries. I was in a hospital room in St. Paul, Minnesota, a room I shared with at least two other kids. And I was in severe pain; I had casts plastered around both of legs, from my ankles to my hip. “You have to exercise,” I was told, like a mantra. “Up, up, up.”

And even though I was sometimes reluctant and sometimes slow, I always followed instructions, because I had absolutely no intention of living with those casts. As a kid, it was as simple as that: The sooner I can recover, the better. And I was doubly fortunate because my mother was a trained, registered nurse; she pushed me harder than anyone else.

Across the room from me, there was another little boy, right around my age but with a crop of bright blonde hair; he was also recovering from a major surgery. He’d been in some sort of accident.

His mother kept shuffling in and out of the room. The nurses and the doctors were telling this kid the same things they were telling me: “Up, up, up.” But the kid didn’t want to exercise, and for his mother, this seemed perfectly okay.

“Don’t push him too much,” she said. “He’s been through enough. If my baby wants to rest, let him rest.” She was obviously distraught. She probably hadn’t slept or taken a shower since her child was hurt, yet she remained forceful and adamant.

That afternoon, my mother hoisted me onto a wheelchair and rolled me out of the hospital room and into the common area. All of the rooms in this particular wing encircled an enormous space with every kind of toy a kid can imagine and an endless supply of video games– a reward for doing your exercises and obeying instructions and, looking back, an ingenious way to incentivize a kid recovering from surgery.

After spending a healthy amount of time playing video games, my mother wheeled me into the parent’s break room, which was really just a nook with a small table, three or four chairs, an old vending machine, and a couple of windows that were frozen over with snow and ice.

“That poor kid,” my mom said. “His mother shouldn’t be doing that to him. You have to work to get better.” It wasn’t necessarily advice for me. She was genuinely upset.

“Why is his mom telling him that he doesn’t have to do what the doctors tell him to do?” I asked.

“It must be hard for her,” she said. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

For kids like me, kids that were born with something and never knew life any other way, hospitals become ordinary. Sure, there was always a sense of fear and dread, but after you’ve gone through the experience a few times, it’s easier, almost perfunctory, to believe that things will get better. Time slows down; life sometimes seems to come to a standstill, a holding pattern, and somewhere, you can find solitude in that.

To me, it always seemed more difficult for the kids with ordinary lives who, in a flash, were suddenly sharing the room with kids like me, veterans of the pediatric surgery recovery unit who were surrounded and encouraged by stubborn, battle-tested families.

Gabby Giffords is not my hero because I can relate to her experience. I can’t, at all. She’s my hero because she sets an example for kids and families who confront sudden and unexpected tragedy with overwhelming helplessness and resignation, instead of unwavering hope. She demonstrates the resiliency of the body and the spirit and the absolute necessity of fierce and unrelenting determination.

Find a way to be. Up, up, up.

Jan 25

4 Comments

A Quick Note on CenLamar’s Readership and Hits

A couple of days ago, Mitt Romney released his tax returns for the last two years, and Newt Gingrich disclosed his consulting contract with Freddie Mac. So, in the spirit of full disclosure and upon repeated requests by Greg Aymond who recently wrote, “ A couple of local blogs have been trying to get Freddy (that’s me) for years now to tell us how many people read his blog, to no avail,” I’m more than happy to disclose my readership, and fair warning, this may seem more convoluted than Romney’s tax returns.

But let’s get a couple of things out of the way first: Until I changed blog templates a few months ago, my “hit counter” was clearly visible on the front page. Also, given as frequently as Mr. Aymond has chided and insulted the blogger Ed Hooper for referring to himself as “we” on his blog WeSawThat, Mr. Aymond is, actually, the only local blog to have ever requested my hit count. And lastly and perhaps most importantly, CenLamar is actually hosted on two different platforms, WordPress and Blogspot (really, four, as posts occasionally appear on Facebook and on the website HumidBeings.com).

I migrated to WordPress and stopped publishing the Blogspot site on March 21, 2007, though it has remained open and served as an archive of those early years. On December 12, 2006, my site on Blogspot received its 100,000th unique visitor, which I marked in this post. A little more than three months later, immediately before I migrated to the WordPress platform, CenLamar has received approximately 120,000 total unique visitors.

When I launched the WordPress version, the hit count went down to zero, yet the Blogspot site, because it remains, still, to this day, continues to receive hits. Unfortunately, though, Blogger’s hit counter software had changed in May of 2009, and it’s impossible to precisely know how many visitors the site had received between March of 2007 and May of 2009, So, in fairness and despite the fact that the site likely continued to more receive hits during the first weeks and months before it was migrated, there’s still an easy enough way to extrapolate a total number. Thankfully, Blogger still provides the most current unique visitor hit counts, beginning in June 2009 and ending in January 2012.

Remember, this is from the CenLamar blogspot archives:

Again, we’re beginning in June of 2009 (which is why May is indicated as a zero-baseline) and tracking until last the end of January 2012. So far, in raw numbers, the archives received 14,167 unique viewers during this time.

Either way, extrapolating (conservatively) from this data, the website CenLamar on blogspot, which serves only as an archive, has a monthly average of 746 viewers throughout the last nineteen months. And just to be extremely conservative, we can take that new baseline number and apply it evenly from April 2006 to May 2009: 37 months times 746 average monthly readers equals an additional 27,602 hits (though I have ample reason to believe the CenLamar blogspot site received much more traffic then).

So let’s recap Blogspot:

100,000 hits on December 12, 2006

+ 20,000 hits from January 2007 to late-March 2007

+ 27,602 hits* approximate from late-March 2007 to May 2009

+ 14,161 hits from June 2009- Present

Equals:

Approximately, 161,763 total unique viewers on CenLamar blogspot archives.

Now, we already know the hits Greg Aymond receives on his website; he calls himself the most popular and most read blogger in Central Louisiana. From his website:

And here are my most current stats via WordPress (retrieved at 7:11AM CST):

Simple math involved here, because while Greg Aymond may claim to Central Louisiana’s “most popular” blogger, the real, aggregate numbers tell a much different story.

In plain terms:

CenLamar Blogspot Archives: 161,763 (which still receives between two dozen and 14o unique visitors per day)

CenLamar WordPress: 500,133 (with an average of nearly 11,000 unique visitors per month and an average of 356 unique visitors per day)
661,896 total unique visitors*+#

*A conservative estimate of Blogspot traffic between April 2007 and May 2009
+ Does not include unique viewers who utilize social media applications like Facebook or other news aggregators.
# When including those other platforms and applications, a more accurate number of total unique readers is around 800,000-852,5000 people. (Admittedly, still less than half of Tony Brown’s entire daily audience, according to Greg Aymond).

All told, thus far, CenLamar has attracted between 106,000 – 295,000 MORE unique visitors than Greg Aymond. (If I could only claim, like Mitt Romney, that I was also taxed at a substantially lower rate, maybe then it’d be real news).

Some may suggest it’s disingenuous to include the hit count numbers from the CenLamar archives. No, it’s not, though, because the archives continue to be operated and moderated, and the site continues to attract dozens of readers every single day; it’s merely a different component of the same website.

There’s one other component to this that merits some attention.

Social media presence is equally important, in many ways.

Greg Aymond has 87 friends on Facebook.

I have 1,043 friends and over 115 people subscribed specifically to the CenLamar Facebook group.

Greg Aymond, under the name centrallapoliti, has 84 followers on Twitter.

I, under the name CenLamar, have 611.

According to Klout, an organization that tracks, ranks, and monitors, those most influential in social and online media, Greg Aymond doesn’t even register.

CenLamar, however, is the highest-ranked social media “specialist” in Central Louisiana:

By comparison, my friend Matt Bailey scores a 56, and my friend Zack Kopplin scores a 52. Not to brag on the three of us, but it’s not exactly easy to get a score over 50.

Honestly, this is not just about tooting my own horn.

I am thankful and deeply appreciative for each and every single reader, and building this website and establishing my presence online have been labors of love. I haven’t made a red dime from any of my work on CenLamar; Matt doesn’t make money advocating for progressive policies and helping to cultivate the next generation of progressive leaders in Louisiana, and Zack doesn’t make money fighting for the repeals of laws that undermine the credibility of Louisiana public education.

We all do this because we’re all gluttons for criticism, and more importantly, I think, we’re all deeply and passionately committed to the future of our home state.

I felt compelled to respond and disclose all of this after reading, over and over again, another blogger suggest I was withholding my blog stats because they’d be embarrassing to me or prove, once and for all, that he’s somehow more “popular,” as if this is nothing more than a contest.

No, it’s not. It’s a competition for ideas and discussion.

But guess what? If it was a popularity contest, Greg, you’re still not winning. It’s not even close.

Jan 25

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Alexandria City Attorney Chuck Johnson: Martin Luther King, Jr. And The Mirror That Will Not Shatter

Published with permission.

By: Charles “Chuck” Johnson, City Attorney of Alexandria, Louisiana

How many of you have ever taken the time to consider why the Lord gave you breath?

For what purpose did He smile upon you? Where exactly does your piece fit into the puzzle of life?

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man who had a very unique understanding of his place in the world. He knew why God brought him here. The answer for Dr. King was simple but also profound: God enlisted him to be a living, breathing, walking, and talking messenger of His Divine Will, an earthen vessel tasked with forcing America to glance into a mirror; a mirror which would reflect an unsightly image of institutionalized bigotry and hatred inconsistent with the lofty ideals recited in the Constitution.

That Divine Will- the Will of the Father- is not always consistent with the will of men. Freedom, justice, and equality were Dr. King’s expressions of the Will of God- which America failed to embrace in any real sense before Dr. King lifted the mirror. Slavery, segregation, lynchings, war, holocausts, or any other form of oppression the mind can conjure are all expressions of the will of men.

The message of non-violent resistance which Dr. King communicated by hoisting that mirror was that you can spit on me.

Beat me.

Spray me with fire-hoses.

Unleash your dogs.

Imprison me.

Even fire the bullet which will take my life, but your likeness must nonetheless change.

I need not lift my hand in spite, curse, or fire a single shot at you, “America,” to make you examine yourself and see the face of injustice.

It’s truly a beautiful thing.

One man used the moral force of his words to shake the conscience of a nation; all the while, he knew what fate awaited him.

The bullet which struck Dr. King’s body did not shatter the mirror. Instead, it galvanized the spirits of those who walk in the steps of the righteous. It gave hope to those who only knew hopelessness. It made hard hearts soften. It instilled in the minds of those with power that force and violence cannot silence the conscience. It broke the rusty chains and shackles from the souls of folks without the strength to contest the authority of the state. And it solved the puzzle America has grappled with since the birth of this nation.

Charles “Chuck” Johnson is the City Attorney for the City of Alexandria and a graduate of Southern University Law School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Jan 24

Congressman Rodney Alexander “Comments” on the State of the Union… Thirty Minutes Before It Even Began

H/t to Mike Stagg

Less than thirty minutes before President Barack Obama delivered the State of the Union address tonight, The Town Talk published a press release from Congressman Rodney Alexander (LA-5), with the headline “Congressman Alexander comments on the State of the Union.“

Note: The timestamp is in Central Standard Time, 7:32PM CST. President Obama’s speech began at 8:00PM CST.

In fairness to the Congressman, he likely did not write that headline, but for anyone who, like me, checked The Town Talk during the State of the Union, it seemed a little strange and disingenuous. Representative Alexander, a man who switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party only after he had secured the Democratic nomination and raised thousands of dollars from loyal Democratic donors, wasn’t actually commenting on a speech that hadn’t yet been delivered; he was simply using an opportune time to preemptively criticize the President. And that is certainly his right.

Though considering the timing and the context of his press release, it’s somewhat ironic that Representative Alexander implored the President to “put an end to the political games and rhetoric behind him.” Because “political games” and “rhetoric” are exactly what the Congressman engaged in with this strategically-timed press release, a press release designed to eat up the local headlines during the State of the Union. It’s important to note: This wasn’t a media report about comments made by the Congressman in advance of the speech; it was a press release sent to the media by his office and published less than thirty minutes before the speech, framed by an amazingly misleading headline. That’s what many people would call political gamesmanship.

Jan 23

Tony Brown: If At First You Don’t Succeed, Lie, Lie Again

As the old adage goes, politics makes for strange bedfellows. This is certainly the case in Alexandria.

And there’s another adage that also comes to mind: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I understand that a few folks may have thought that my most recent post about talk radio host Tony Brown was “harsh.” Maybe it was. But I make no apologies. In my opinion, Mr. Brown’s outlandish, public accusations against the City of Alexandria administration deserve a full-throated, thorough, and rigorous response. If you’re going to accuse people of conspiring to suppress African-American voter registration, which is a serious charge, then you should be prepared with the facts, and if you’re going to do so on publicly-owned airwaves, then you should, at the very least, provide those you are accusing with the opportunity to respond.

The simple truth is: Mr. Brown is wrong. He may be entitled to his own opinions, but he’s not entitled to his own facts. As I mentioned previously, the facts are straight forward: It doesn’t matter who you are or how noble your intentions may be; if you seek to use a public facility, then you need an agreement in place. There’s absolutely nothing wrong or pernicious about such a policy; it’s sensible, and it’s fair.

Only hours after I published my post about this, Tony Brown responded. But he didn’t respond on his own show. He responded with an “interview” with the blogger Greg Aymond.

Listen here.

Before I delve into the specifics of this interview, I think readers should be aware of a few things. During the Jena Six protests, Tony Brown, like me, was an outspoken advocate for fair justice. Meanwhile, Greg Aymond was the attorney for Richard Barrett, the leader and founder of the White Nationalist Movement, a recognized hate group that sued the Town of Jena for the right to get a permit to conduct a counter-protest. Indeed, the late Mr. Barrett actually spent the night at Mr. Aymond’s home in Alexandria. Mr. Aymond, a former member of the KKK, may claim he was also interested in fair justice– not necessarily for the Jena Six, though, but for the leader of a white supremacist organization.

Incidentally, Mr. Barrett was later murdered by a young African-American man after Barrett allegedly attempted to have sex with him against his will. Seriously, the whole story is nothing short of bizarre.

During his interview, Tony Brown repeatedly praised Greg Aymond, and Greg Aymond returned the favor, claiming that Tony Brown “has over two million listeners a day.”

Let’s start with that: TWO MILLION LISTENERS A DAY. Here is a list of the most popular radio shows in the country, ranked by WEEKLY listeners:

Program	Weekly Listeners in Millions
American Top 40	20+ worldwide
The Alex Jones Show	15+
The Rush Limbaugh Show	15+
The Sean Hannity Show	14+
Morning Edition	13+
All Things Considered	13+
Glenn Beck Program	9+
The Savage Nation	9+
The Mark Levin Show	8.5+
The Dave Ramsey Show	8.5+
Delilah	8+
The Neal Boortz Show	6+
The Laura Ingraham Show	6+
Fresh Air	5+
Car Talk	4+
Coast to Coast AM	3+ (Most listened to late-night radio show)

Extrapolating from these weekly numbers, Tony Brown, with allegedly two million listeners per day (times five days a week), would be seventh most popular radio show in the United States of America, more popular than Glenn Beck, Delilah, Laura Ingraham, and Fresh Air, among others. It’s an astoundingly ridiculous and embarrassingly laughable claim. It’s difficult to know where that number actually came from. Do two million people even live in the areas that carry his show? Probably not, and probably not by a long-shot.

But, I suppose, using this logic, my blog has an audience of 2.095 BILLION, which is the total number of people connected to the Internet. Impressive, huh? To Mr. Aymond, you asked for my blog stats. Well, there you have it: 2.095 BILLION.

I’m not trying to beat a dead horse here, but this was, literally, the first thing Mr. Aymond claimed about Tony Brown during his interview. And it speaks directly to the integrity, the credibility, and the honesty of both men. Two million listeners per day: That’s nearly half of the entire population of Louisiana; that’s more than 40 times the entire population of the City of Alexandria.

Mr. Brown didn’t dispute this claim; instead, he said that his show was broadcast in the “entire State of Louisiana,” which it isn’t.

I think my pal AlexCenla was much more on target, when he estimated that Tony Brown’s listening audience was closer to around 400 people a day, which, to be fair, is only a difference of 1.999996 million and which that, yes, means my audience is much larger.

Of course, a fair question would be: If Tony Brown receives two million listeners every day, much more than Michael Baisden, then why on earth would he waste nearly thirty minutes of his time interviewing with Greg Aymond about something I published on my completely and totally irrelevant blog? I don’t get it either.

Mr. Brown, interestingly, never really disputed any of the facts I published. He played the “blame the messenger” card by way of blaming the messenger, and he doubled-down on his lies in an attempt to save face, I suppose. He never once got my name right, referring to me alternately as Lamarcus, Lance, Leroy, and Fredricka, and suggesting that we’d never met, that he wouldn’t be able to pick me “out from Adam.” Here’s the thing, though: I’ve met Tony Brown on at least a half of a dozen occasions. I’m not sure what affects his memory or his retention. He said I “lost” my job with the City; no, I resigned to attend law school. He said I was hired as a “computer guy” and that I was nothing more than a “crony.” For someone who claimed he doesn’t know me, he sure seemed to believe he knew a lot about me– none of which is true, by the way.

But ultimately, this has nothing to do with whether Tony Brown “knows” me. He doesn’t really know Jacques Roy either, for what it’s worth. That doesn’t necessarily qualify or disqualify “journalism.” (And believe me, contrary to what Mr. Brown told Mr. Aymond, I don’t dream about being a journalist. If Tony Brown considers himself to be a journalist, then those wouldn’t be dreams; they’d be nightmares). In all seriousness, this is ultimately about the objective, realizable, foreseeable, and currently-appreciable knowable record; it’s about the facts.

Voter disenfranchisement is a serious, criminal accusation. As Mr. Brown’s interview forcefully and almost comically demonstrates, he seeks to have it both ways: Labeling himself as a journalist, but when the facts don’t quite fit with the story he seeks to advance, suggesting that he is only offering his opinions and is, himself, the victim of a conspiracy.

For what it’s worth, Mr. Brown, I’ll interview you on my blog any time you want.

Jan 21

6 Comments

Questioning Tony Brown’s Ethics and Professionalism

Earlier this week, on his radio show, Alexandria talk radio host Tony Brown leveled an explosive and sensational charge against leaders of the City of Alexandria: That they were purposely attempting to deny and suppress African-American voter registration. The accusations were quickly, almost instantly, reposted on Greg Aymond’s website, with Mr. Aymond directly accusing Mayor Roy of responsibility.

The story, in a nutshell, is this:

This year, during the City’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration, members of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, without any prior consent or agreement, showed up at the Alexandria Riverfront Center, the location of the event, and attempted to set up a booth, allegedly with the intention of conducting a voter registration drive. But before they could get their booth set up, they were informed that they did not have permission to use the facility. Indeed, although the City of Alexandria helped to sponsor the festivities, the center had actually been rented out to a non-profit ministerial alliance and the Buffalo Soldiers, both of whom, like the AKA, are African-American-led non-profit organizations.

Both Mr. Brown and Mr. Aymond incorrectly reported or implied that the City of Alexandria is responsible for renting the Alexandria Riverfront Center. To be clear, although the City owns the Riverfront Center, the facility is managed by the Alexandria/Pineville Convention and Visitors Bureau. Either way, though, when an organization seeks to utilize a public facility for any purpose, it is necessary for them to have a written agreement for such use; this not only protects and indemnifies the public from potential liability; it also protects the organization renting the facility. AKA, however noble their intention may have been, did not have an agreement and, apparently, did not even attempt to pursue an agreement; they just showed up. And when they were given the word that they could not use the facility without an agreement, apparently- one can only surmise, some of its members alleged that this denial was a racially-motivated conspiracy to suppress African-American voters.

Without any question and with all due respect to the AKA, if they had actually contacted the good people of the Alexandria/Pineville Convention and Visitors Bureau beforehand and then entered into a written agreement, then they would have been granted the use of the facility at no cost, just as the other groups were on that day.

But the truth doesn’t make for good radio, I suppose, and Tony Brown, a man who was recently paid thousands of dollars to run controversial race-baiting commercials on behalf of William Earl Hilton’s campaign for Sheriff, is apparently never one to let a potentially explosive and racially divisive story go unnoticed, despite the facts. ”This was about not getting more African-Americans to register to vote. I’m not going to give y’all the opportunity to register more black folks to register to vote in this town. Y’all got too many registered voters already,” Brown said on his radio show on Tuesday.

The truth, of course, is much more innocuous than Mr. Brown (and Mr. Aymond) would want people to believe: One group had a public facilities use agreement, and one did not. The City administration is not responsible for executing and enforcing those agreements; the CVB is. And they didn’t do anything wrong. They merely ensured compliance with a legal agreement. This wasn’t about discriminating against the AKA; it was about ensuring the opposite: That no one is unfairly discriminated against, that everyone abides by the same rules when they seek to set up shop in a public building, regardless of however noble their intentions may be.

But Tony Brown makes a living, in part, stoking and promoting the flames of racial divisiveness. He blamed the City administration for seeking to suppress African-American voters, an absurd and hateful allegation, and given the true facts, an allegation that seems antithetical to the life’s work and the legacy of the man being honored that day, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tony Brown spent nearly an hour talking about this story this week, fielding phone calls from several listeners, and doubling down on his sensationalistic and contrived outrage by suggesting that the City of Alexandria requires, in its agreements, that anyone who uses public buildings agree to not criticize the City administration. Sandra Bright, the outgoing leader of the Lower Third Neighborhood Watch Association, was named as the source of this incredibly disturbing news, though, in fairness to Ms. Bright, she never appeared on Mr. Brown’s show; these words were put into her mouth by others. And suffice it to say, as someone who knows exactly and precisely what these agreements look like and how they are structured, this accusation is not just ignorant; it’s maddeningly stupid. If Ms. Bright or Mr. Brown can offer even a scintilla of evidence that this is the case, then I am more than happy to issue a public apology; I’ll put the apology on the front page of my website for an entire year. But this is nothing more than a completely contrived lie.

Alexandria deserves better than Tony Brown’s lies. I don’t really care who he has worked for in the past or how important or influential he may believe himself to be; the man is an unethical, unprofessional, race-baiting liar whose antipathy toward the City of Alexandria and the Mayor has less to do with policy and almost everything to do with money.

And I can back it up, Mr. Brown.

When City Attorney Chuck Johnson, an African-American, asked Mr. Brown if he could appear on his show to clear up the controversy and present the facts, this is what Mr. Brown wrote back:

From: Tony Brown
Date: January 20, 2012 4:18:00 AM CST
To: Chuck Johnson
Subject: Re: Program
Reply-To: Tony Brown

Eyes Open is an open formatt for listeners to tell their story! The AKA’s and Links did just that. The opposing side came from Minister Larry Turner. In my more than 25 years of working as a journalist my ethics and professionalism has never been called into question by any city I ve worked in.

I appreciate your’re interest in coming on the show but no one from your adminsitration has come on eyes open for several years now and certainly has not tried to use this formatt for any radio buys which has been numerous with others who don’t question the ethics or professionalism of the Jacque Roy administration.

When we decide to advance this story we may decide to give you a call, until then, Town Talk, KALB-TV, KBCE Mix 93.9, 102 Jamz, Kiss 97.9 and The On Point Show with Mrs Xmas…those stations and shows that your administration spends money with, I suggest you reach out to them.

T Brown

Eyes Open

In his 25 years of journalism, Mr. Brown says his ethics and professionalism have never been called into question. I’m honored to be the first person to do so: Tony Brown, I call your ethics and professionalism into question.

Tony Brown believes he can spend as much time as he wants to on publicly-owned, publicly-regulated airwaves making baseless, defamatory, divisive, and race-baiting accusations about specific individuals in the City of Alexandria, but that he does not owe them an opportunity to counter these claims on air and on the same forum. Reverend Larry Turner, incidentally, does not and has never represented the City of Alexandria; he was an organizer of the Martin Luther King Day event, but it’s completely disingenuous and dishonest for Tony Brown to assert that Reverend Turner represented the “opposing side.” Reverend Turner was not asked and was under no obligation to oppose the numerous and sensationalistic lies espoused and advanced by Tony Brown against the City of Alexandria; Reverend Turner was simply defending himself, and righteously so, I may add.

But perhaps most insidiously, Tony Brown reveals that he is not interested in hearing from the City Attorney– on a story that he broke and manufactured almost entirely on his own– because the City of Alexandria doesn’t spend advertising dollars lining his pockets. Read between the lines, folks. Read this with your eyes wide open. A few years ago, as I recall, the City took out an ad on Mr. Brown’s radio show promoting the Que’in on the Red festival, and Mr. Brown, despite this, actually discouraged his listeners from attending the very festival his show had been paid to help promote. Maybe it was an act of righteous defiance, but more than likely, I believe, it was nothing more than a reflection of Mr. Brown’s arrogance: He didn’t approve of the musical line-up for some inane reason. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I ever spent thousands of dollars advertising my business or my event on someone’s radio show, only to have the show host then discourage people from supporting my business or my event, I’d never spend another dime with that person. That’s what happened to Tony Brown, and apparently, he is still bitter.

Again, I don’t think Tony Brown is ethical or professional, and frankly, I am surprised no one has questioned his integrity until now. There’s a treasure trove of evidence out there that he simply cannot avoid.

There’s one other thing, which is extremely important for Alexandrians and for listeners of Mr. Brown’s radio show to understand: He operates on a noncommercial, educational radio station. That’s right. And as such, he and his station are beholden to a completely different set of rules and criteria, particularly as it relates to advertising and the free and open exchange of ideas.

For some reason, Tony Brown apparently believes he can accuse others of committing crimes– serious crimes; he can suggest that an entire City administration believes and endorses the suppression of African-American voters; he can broadcast lies over and over and over again. But if you want to respond, then please, send in your check first. I’m sure he’d take cash as well.

Sue me, Tony. I’d love to get you under oath. It’d be fun. You could call Greg Aymond as a character witness.

PS: Senator Landrieu and Mayor Landrieu, do the good and decent people of Alexandria and Central Louisiana a favor– the people who actually supported you and actually campaigned for you and actually gave you money– STOP giving this man credibility. Seriously. My audience, without any doubt, is bigger than his, and unlike him, I (perhaps stupidly) do all of this for free. Maybe I should have taken lessons from Tony Brown.

Jan 19

Alexandria, Louisiana

Jan 19

Jindal’s Plan: Gut Public Education (Part One of Two)

Part One: The Personal Essay

During the summer between sixth and seventh grade, my parents sat me down one evening and told me they had made a decision.

“We’re enrolling you in Country Day,” my mother said.

Up until that point, I’d attended public schools for my entire life. I went to Nachman Elementary from kindergarten through fifth grade, and in sixth grade, I attended the now-defunct South Alexandria Sixth Grade Center. At one point, the Rapides Parish School Board decided to experiment with “sixth grade centers,” with the notion that it could better insulate and prepare pre-adolescent kids for the rough-and-tumble years of middle school. Needless to say, it didn’t work as planned.

When I was there, South Alexandria Sixth Grade Center still dealt with its fair share of school fights. I will never forget the day my friend Tommy and I were playing during recess, and someone threw a rock at him, hitting him directly in the eye. Ambulances were called in; when our teacher explained what had happened (drawing a picture of a bloodied eyeball on the chalkboard as an illustration), all of the girls in my class erupted in tears. Thankfully, Tommy was okay, but he had to wear an eyepatch for the better part of the second semester.

Still, I hated the whole idea of attending Country Day. I’d grown up around many of those private-school kids, and I’d always thought they were spoiled and snobby little brats, kids whose parents had made them believe they belonged to a superior social status and were receiving a far better education than anyone else. I didn’t dislike those kids because I was jealous, though; I disliked them because they were sheltered and because they were wrong. The smartest kids in town were in public schools. And honestly, my family was relatively wealthy; I grew up in a big house with my own bedroom. I never once considered this to mean that I belonged to a superior social class; that’s just not how I was reared. I tried to make friends with everyone. I didn’t like those kids because I thought they didn’t understand, and looking back on it, for the most part, as kind and compassionate as some of them were, I think I was right; they didn’t.

When my parents broke the news to me, I cried, the full production: a flood of righteous tears, sobbing, and screaming back, “You can’t do this to me. I don’t want to go there. You’re just trying to shield me from reality,” I said.

There is an untold truth about private schools in Louisiana: Many of them, like Alexandria Country Day School, were created in the immediate aftermath of school desegregation. Alexandria is a majority African-American city; its public schools are majority African-American, but my class at Country Day had only one African-American.

I’d been preparing to follow my friends to Brame Junior High, the public school, but at the time, there’d been a rash of stories and rumors about school fighting and violent bullying. And my parents knew that I would probably have to spend the majority of my seventh grade year in a wheelchair; I needed a couple of major surgeries that year. Looking back, I cannot blame or fault them for wanting to enroll me in a much smaller private school with only 32 classmates, but at the time, I was indignant.

As it turns out, I loved Country Day. Aside from the one person who continually bullied me, everyone treated me with respect and dignity. My friend Tommy, the kid whose eye was nearly taken out by a bully at the sixth grade center, also enrolled, and in those two years, I forged some lifelong friendships. (I should mention that Tommy was my best friend in junior high, my first debate partner, and he remained one of my closest friends until he passed away at the age of 24. And I still miss him and think about him all the time).

After County Day, I re-entered the Louisiana public education system, spending my four years of high school at Alexandria Senior High, the alma mater of both my father and my mother. I had some amazing teachers at ASH, but ASH suffered from an incompetent administration.

It didn’t award academic achievement; it didn’t understand that smart kids, in high school, like to challenge convention. During my sophomore year, ASH had a record number of National Merit Scholarship finalists, the majority of whom were excluded from the faculty-selected National Honors Society because of “character issues.” These students were smarter than some of their teachers, and those teachers, in my opinion, seemed to resent this. So, these kids courageously, defiantly formed the “National Dishonor Society.” They made their own t-shirts, which, before the Draconian, post-Columbine era of mandatory school uniforms, they proudly wore to school nearly every day.

By the time I was a junior and eligible for inclusion in the National Honor Society, I, like the kids who graduated before me, was also rejected. It devastated me; I felt humiliated and dejected, completely and totally abandoned by the school I had fought so hard to represent.

I had stellar grades. I wrote for the school newspaper and even earned a spot on the Youth Council of the local newspaper, The Town Talk. I’d won state championships in forensics events. I’d even competed nationally in declamation and original oratory. I was captain of the quiz bowl team, co-captain of the debate team, and captain of the mock trial team. And not to brag even more, but our debate team was one of the best in the state; our quiz bowl team finished third in the state, and our mock trial team had also finished third. We were competing against the wealthiest and most exclusive private schools and the largest and most accomplished public schools in Louisiana, and we were winning.

But I wasn’t good enough for the National Honor Society at ASH. I know, now, who opposed me– the 16-year-old me– from joining the National Honor Society, a woman who has never had the courage or the integrity to admit this to me and who, instead, showered me with praise and good grades while criticizing me behind my back primarily because she never liked my grandparents. (Incidentally, they let me into the National Honor Society when I was a senior, but it was too little, too late).

If I still seem a little bitter about all of this, it’s because I am. It’s because I can point to my years in public high school and know, beyond any doubt, that while our students were excelling, our schools, our school boards, and many of our teachers, administrators, and principals were establishing a culture of blind favoritism, nepotism, and failure; they promoted coaches instead of educators; they thought public high schools could be run like an NCAA football program.

But either way, I feel incredibly fortunate that I attended ASH. At the time I was there, despite what the kids and teachers at other local high schools may have claimed, ASH was the leading academic powerhouse in Central Louisiana, outperforming every private school in the region. A couple of years ago, I spoke to the incoming freshmen class at ASH about my affection for the school and my belief in their future success.

And it’s why I am confident that Governor Jindal is dangerously clueless. His recent plan to change Louisiana public education is, in my personal opinion, the greatest threat ever to the future of Louisiana and the most convincing reason why fair-minded Louisianans should seriously consider a recall effort against him, our popular governor who claims a mandate because the only opposition he faced was a schoolteacher who voted for him in the previous election, a woman who was actually the beneficiary of his largesse, even after she announced that she was running against him. Pathetic.

Make no mistake: Governor Jindal seeks to destroy the institution of real public education, plain and simple.

Jan 17

6 Comments

Everyone Has A Disability

Less than two weeks ago, on the night of January 5th, I was hanging out with some friends at the Blue Nile on Frenchman Street in New Orleans. For many reasons, it’s become one of my favorite places in New Orleans, though, admittedly it’s primarily because I’m good friends with a handful of its employees, and whenever I am there, they treat me like family.

I’m also an unabashed fan of Frenchman Street. For someone like me, someone who can only visit New Orleans sporadically and who can’t stand the stench, the obnoxious public drunkenness, and the claustrophobia of Bourbon Street, for example, Frenchman is vastly superior, at least in my opinion. There’s a reason Austin needs to remind people to “Keep Austin Weird,” an underlying fear that the unique, cultured, and urbane enclave it has become could easily be eroded and destroyed and, with that, a tacit acknowledgment that its “weirdness” is relatively new and fragile. New Orleans may have its fair share of gimmicky slogans, but if the storm and the recovery have proven anything, it’s that the city’s culture is deeply engrained in its DNA. There are, of course, hugely important discussions about the nature and the direction of the city’s ongoing recovery and the need for historic preservation, yet New Orleans proves, at least to me, that culture is more resilient than buildings; real culture is weatherproof, and as threatened and as fearful as some of New Orleans’s biggest champions may have been about the potential of losing that culture– of Disneyfication or corporatization (some of which, no doubt, has occurred), New Orleanians don’t have to remind themselves of the fierce urgency of maintaining their own “weirdness.” Baby, they were born that way.

But I digress.

It was the night of January 5th, and I was upstairs at the Blue Nile, sitting on the balcony outside and catching up with my friend Daniel. At some point, we moved back inside to visit with our friend, who was tending the bar. And I was happy, ebullient even, thankful to be reunited with so many of my friends, many of whom I hadn’t seen in seven or eight months, and I was marveling at New Orleans.

I can pinpoint the exact moment this occurred, because immediately beforehand, I sent out the following sentimentally ridiculous tweet:

I pressed send, I walked to the bathroom, and then, while making my way back to my seat, I accidentally bumped into a girl. I’ve never been particularly skilled at walking through crowds; every stranger seems like a potential landmine, and when your balance is as bad as mine is, there is a real fear that you could miss a step or drag a foot and end up causing yourself and others to fall like a chain of dominos. But thankfully, I didn’t hurt the girl. She was just nudged, and I could tell, immediately, that she thought I had intentionally tried to bump into her.

And obviously, I was in a particularly great mood, and in no way did I want to cause any trouble. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

She was a petite, blonde-haired white girl, around twenty-two or twenty-three years old, and she’d obviously had a little too much to drink. “No, you’re not.” She was standing next to a young white guy wearing a polo with an upturned collar. “He bumped me,” she told him.

“No, look, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m clumsy. I’m disabled, and I’m not really great at walking around crowds.”

She rolled her eyes and laughed. “No, you’re a liar.”

“No, no, I have cerebral palsy. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bump into you,” I said.

We were standing only two feet apart, and she reached over and grabbed me by the neckline of my shirt. “You’re a liar. You don’t have cerebral palsy,” she spat. And then, with her hand still holding my shirt, she shoved me as hard as she could, and suddenly, I was on my back, surrounded by a few dozen people on the dance floor, pointing and laughing (which is what most people do when someone falls flat on their back in the middle of a crowded dance floor).

Within seconds, though, two people hoisted me to my feet, and I stood, once again, face-to-face with this girl. “You need to leave this place right now,” I said. “Leave.” And before she could even muster a response, two security guards walked over to her and escorted her out.

Her friend, the guy in the polo shirt, didn’t follow her. “I can’t believe she did that,” he said.

“It’s okay. It happens.”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “My brother has cerebral palsy. I’m so sorry she did that.”

“Don’t worry about it. I fall all the time. I’m made of rubber,” I said.

*****

According to a 2008 study by the British Journal of Learning Support, nearly 25% of students, at some point, are the victims of bullying; among kids who live with physical or developmental disabilities, the number is closer to 60%. Other studies have suggested that disabled children are two to three times more likely to be chronically bullied, and in a “landmark” study conducted in 1994, researchers found that children with conditions like cerebral palsy were “more likely to be called names and aggressively excluded from social activities.”

Last September, 11-year-old Mitchell Wilson, who suffered from muscular dystrophy, committed suicide after a group of kids beat him to the ground, smashed out some of teeth, and stole his iPhone. Mitchell suffocated himself to death.

Mitchell Wilson

My heart aches for Mitchell and his family, because I know, first-hand, what it feels like to be bullied as a child because you walk differently or move more slowly than other kids.

Whenever this happened to me, whenever I felt sorry for myself or wondered why, existentially, I was born with a disability, my father would tell me, “Everyone has a disability. You’re fortunate, in many ways, because most people can see yours. Sometimes, it’s even more difficult for people who suffer from things that you can’t see.”

It’s advice that has carried me through life. It’s made me stronger. It’s made me more resilient, and I think it’s made me more understanding of those who think it’s funny to bully and humiliate the physically and mentally disabled– the notion that they too must be suffering from something, something so pernicious that they feel the need to hurt and humiliate people simply because they were born with a condition over which they have no control.

*****

I am 29 years old now, and even today, I still am sometimes ridiculed and bullied by strangers. I won’t pretend that it doesn’t bother me; of course it does. But at this point in my life, I’ve shaken off the last bit of self-pity that I may have ever possessed as a child. The girl at the Blue Nile, she didn’t upset me personally. I’ve learned, through time, to be headstrong and to understand that the problem belonged exclusively to her. Still, when things like this happen to me (and they still do, more frequently than even my closest friends and family may imagine), I’m not bothered because I feel any sense of embarrassment or shame. At my age, when you’ve fallen in public as often as I have, you tend to develop an almost matter-of-factness about the whole thing. I’m bothered because I know that if a person is willing to make fun of me for my disability, to call me a liar and throw me on the ground, then they’re also capable of doing the same thing to people who are much more vulnerable than I am.

*****

I am who I am, and I have just as much of a right to share my perspective and my story as anyone else. If you think that I write about these issues in order to garner sympathy, then I seriously feel sorry for you. During the last year, one outspoken member of my hometown has publicly claimed on the Internet that I deserve to be labeled a “gimp” because I write about my disability to drum up sympathy.

I am not, have not, and have never written about my disability for sympathy. This is my life; it’s sometimes a big part of my life; it’s informed my opinions on certain issues. And now that I am adult, I feel more obligated than ever to share my perspective, to raise awareness, and to stand up to those bullies who think it’s perfectly acceptable to shove kids onto the ground, literally or figuratively, simply because they walk or talk differently.

The same person who has called me a “gimp” has also altered photos of me to make it appear as if I am wheelchair-bound. I would submit to him and to others who may think like him: The men and women, the boys and girls who must navigate through life in a wheelchair possess more courage, more strength, more integrity, and more compassion than anyone who would ever attempt to use a wheelchair as a symbol of inferiority or ridicule. And whenever you do something like this, whenever you encourage someone who believes this is perfectly acceptable, you are contributing to a culture of hatred and bigotry; you are endorsing a climate of intolerance that makes kids like Mitchell Wilson feel there’s no way out, that no matter what a kid like him could do in his life– graduate from college or become a doctor or a lawyer or a physicist– he’ll always be nothing more than a “gimp” in want of sympathy.

But kids like Mitchell remind me of my special obligation to stand up to bullies. Sure, sometimes, they may knock me down, but with a little help from my friends, I’ll always be back on my feet in seconds.

Jan 15

A Short Preview of An Interview With Daniel and I In The Upcoming Documentary Film “The American Way”

A few weeks before we both moved from Alexandria, my friend Daniel T. Smith and I were interviewed for the upcoming documentary film, “The American Way.” Quoting from the movie’s official website:

The American Way, a documentary chronicling the journey of one man across the country in search of the genuine American voice, has begun shooting. Joshua Cook, who created the project, will serve as director and will be conducting the interviews. Dane Kroll will serve as cinematographer and Adam Macy will be producing the project through Temporary Productions, his production company based out of Los Angeles. In each city that they visit, the crew will interview average Americans on the state of the union, the state of political discourse and what they see and want for the future. Between destinations, the crew will both film the natural beauty of the American landscape and interview fellow travelers. The final produced film will juxtapose the words of Americans from a variety of backgrounds and iconic images of the nation with the narrative of Joshua’s quest to find the common ground and shared experience that defines America in the 21st Century.

Daniel and I spent a couple of hours with Joshua, giving him a tour of Alexandria, and then, we sat down with him for an interview at the Alexandria Riverfront Amphitheater. This is, literally, the last minute and a half of a forty-five minute interview, an interview that focused, primarily, on the ways in which the corporate consolidation of small to mid-sized media markets has affected the democratic process, the fair and accurate reporting of news, and the nature of civic engagement.

So, if we appear to be somewhat tongue-tied, blame it on the fact that we had been talking on camera nearly non-stop for 45 minutes.

Regardless, it was an honor to be able to participate, and I wish Joshua and the rest of his team the best of luck as they prepare for the festival circuit. Here’s the short preview:

And here’s a short clip of me ranting about the relationship between money and small, local elections:

Jan 14

2 Comments

A Response to AlexCenla On the State of the Central Louisiana Blogosphere

Update: Today, on his website, Greg Aymond responded to this post. He wrote:

As you probably know, Freddy’s first job after he got his degree in English and Theology from Rice University in Texas was with his mother, who is rumored to have fired him for not working. He then worked for Mayor Roy, on the public dole, before he resigned last Summer to enter law school at S.M.U.

I did call Freddy a “gimp” after I got tired of his constantly writing about his disability in a clear effort to gain sympathy among his fellow liberal travellers outside of Cenla.

I know this is may boring the heck out of some of you, but it is important to me, as I imagine it would be to anyone, that a man who has never met me is publicly and definitively corrected for his repeated and persistent lies about my education, my job experience, and my personal essays and blog posts that I have published referencing my disability.

With respect to my work experience: I actually launched my first business, along with a friend of mine, when I was in fifth grade. It didn’t make any money. I didn’t have any real business model. But I knew what I wanted to do: I wanted to get kids more involved in the political process. Looking back, it’s all somewhat embarrassing; I named my company “Politics and Business for Kids,” and the good people at Dixie Blueprint even supplied me with a deck of business cards. I would ride around my neighborhood in an oversized tricycle (because I’ve never had the balance necessary for a bicycle), stringing along my friends and my little brother, and together, we would pass out fliers and literature about politics, while also peddling magazine subscriptions. Magazine sales were the extent of the “business” aspect of the enterprise. And no, of course, that was never a real job. It was a hobby, and thankfully, I had great parents who supported their strange kid’s nascent entrepreneurship.

In high school, I made a few dollars helping companies promote their websites on the Internet; this was way back in the day when search engines required you to add your website to their databases, before there were sophisticated algorithms that could scour all of cyberspace. When I was in college, I worked for a software company that developed a peer-to-peer collaborative program, specializing particularly in architectural and planning work, and I also tutored a couple of high school students in English and creative writing. And after college, after my father had died, my family and I created a company to manage some of his rental residential real estate investments, Elm Tree Properties. It’s called Elm Tree, because E, L, and M are the initials of the given names of my siblings and I.

I moved back to Alexandria in late 2005 and began working for my family’s company. It was an awesome and invaluable experience. I helped to manage the homes and apartments for at least 150 families in Alexandria and Pineville. It was eye-opening, getting to know and learn about the lives and the daily struggles and triumphs of so many of my neighbors. In large part, this experience is what inspired me to begin writing a blog and become more engaged in the civic discourse in Alexandria. About seven or eight months later, I graduated from Louisiana Real Estate School, but I never became a licensed realtor. Around this time– less than a month after I graduated real estate school– I became involved in Jacques Roy’s campaign for Mayor. And, as most of you already know, once he was elected, I joined his administration and worked for the City of Alexandria for nearly five years. I resigned last August in order to enroll in law school.

Throughout my life, my mother has always been my fiercest and strongest champion and supporter, and anyone who knows her and who knows me also knows the absurdity of the claim that my own mother “fired” me. My mother has always encouraged me to follow my passions, and I did. I took a job in public service, and a few months later, my family and I (wisely I believe) sold the vast majority of our single-family rental homes. I still maintain and have always maintained an active interest in my family’s business. So, to Greg Aymond, whoever your source is: You are wrong, and you should stop repeating these insipid and mean-spirited lies about my work experience, my mother, and my family’s business.

Also, I really think it’s the height of hypocrisy for Greg Aymond to ridicule the professional legitimacy of a person who actually worked, day in and day out, for the government, as if I was somehow on the “public dole” while, Greg Aymond, who actually owes the government money in tax liens yet lives off of checks cut at the United States Treasury Department, is not. I know what he’ll say: He paid into the system. And guess what? So have I.

With respect to my education, one minor correct: English and Religious Studies. Theology and Religious Studies are too different discourses.

And his statements about my disability and his justification for calling me a “gimp,” I’ll deal with that in another post

******

Today, my friend “AlexCenla” on his website AlexCenla’s Rants and Ravings published an insightful and provocative piece about the state of the Central Louisiana blogosphere. I recommend reading it in its entirety. As “AlexCenla” has mentioned before, we do actually know one another in real life, and I respect his desire to maintain his anonymity. He is, without question, a true champion of the history and a true believer in the future of the City of Alexandria. We have, at times, disagreed on certain issues, but he has always treated me fairly, respectfully, and with a healthy dose of good-natured humor. And I like to think I have reciprocated in kind.

Quoting from his post today:

Why do blog authors (in Central Louisiana) attack and try to discredit any one person or a group of people? Sometimes it is for a noble cause… to correct a real dysfunction in government or in social life. These people sometimes achieve a miracle of sorts. But this happens very seldom.

I am seeing a trend more and more in the local Alexandria blogs. They seem to get some sort of perverted pleasure in attacking each other. I want to be the last to judge, but the whole thing is getting away from being constructive and is on a downhill destructive nosedive.

In reality, very few people are affected by the learned writings of bloggers.

Of course, “AlexCenla” is completely right. Without question, there has been an uptick in blogger-on-blogger attacks, or, as Alex puts it, “a destructive nosedive” in the overall discourse. There are only a handful of political bloggers in Central Louisiana, and I’m fairly certain that, of those bloggers, Alex and I are the only two who have never been involved in any sort of local blogosphere-related litigation, which is a strange and remarkable statement.

As a recap, for those unaware, the blogger Greg Aymond, operator of the website Central LA Politics, sued the blogger Ed Hooper, operator of the website WeSawThat, for defamation of character. And, for some reason, as a part of that lawsuit, the blogger Steve Coco, operator of the website CenlaNews, was deposed as a witness for Mr. Aymond.

Currently, blogger Danny Slayter, one of the contributors to the website Cenla Briar Patch, is involved in a couple of lawsuits against local attorney Thomas “Tommy” Davenport. Slayter, among other things, alleges that Davenport defamed him while blogging under the online pseudonym “TheClearTruth.”

And earlier this week, Greg Aymond threatened to sue Danny Slayter for defamation, after Cenla Briar Patch re-published and essentially endorsed the same claims Hooper had made against Aymond.

You got all of that?

There are only a half of a dozen or so political bloggers in Central Louisiana, and the majority of them have either been a party to or involved with defamation lawsuits. Obviously, with all due respect to my fellow bloggers, they seem to be a litigious bunch.

I thought about Alex’s comments for quite some time. I know I’ve injected myself into many of these discussions, and as I mentioned earlier in the week, I recognize that I sometimes have made mistakes on my blog.

Alex’s post attracted a comment from Greg Aymond, a man who has written about me more frequently and with more ferocity than anyone else, ever, in my entire life, despite the fact that he has never actually met me. I won’t publish Mr. Aymond’s comment; you can read it for yourself if you wish on Alex’s website. But after reading him proclaim himself to be an “issues-oriented” “political activist,” I felt compelled to respond.

I anticipate that some of you may think I am merely contributing to the very discourse I seek to reject, but after being involved in the local blogosphere since March of 2006, I have a slightly different perspective on the root causes of the current and persistent dysfunction and acrimony. Here are my comments, reposted in full:

Alex, thank you for your level-headedness and for putting things in the proper context. I do not believe Mr. Aymond is fair or accurate, however, and I sometimes feel obligated to defend both myself and others from some of the things he posts. He has repeatedly called me a “gimp,” for example, and has mined my personal Facebook account in order to alter photographs of me, making me appear as a Klansman, a Nazi, and Mao Tse Tung, among others. He has publicly suggested that I do not believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, and he has repeatedly misrepresented my education, my employment background, and my experience.

If these things were said about you or someone you love by a stranger — a man you’ve never even met once in your life– on an Internet website that claims to be the most popular blog in Central Louisiana, would you simply sit idly by or would you defend yourself? I know it is easy enough to say, “Just ignore it, and this person will eventually ignore you.” But I tried that approach– for months, actually– and Mr. Aymond never relented. If I posted a positive story on my website about Alexandria, Mr. Aymond would, like clockwork, respond with a personal attack against me.

It is fair, I think, to point out that Mr. Aymond, who fashions himself as a “political activist,” actually began his activism as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, particularly when he accuses others of being racists or alters photographs of others to make it appear as if they were actually Klansmen. During the last Mayor’s race, Mr. Aymond posted an untrue and completely unsubstantiated claim that Mayor Roy once appeared in blackface. Ironically, the same accusation had only recently been leveled against John Georges, then a candidate for Mayor of New Orleans. The difference, of course, is that there was actually a photograph of John Georges. But because Mr. Aymond’s story about Mayor Roy was a ridiculous lie– and despite his pleas for readers to submit an incriminating photograph, Mr. Aymond, instead, created his own photograph. More recently, I reminded readers of the tactics employed by the pro-Von Jennings website JacquesBarack and the way in which this person used a photograph of the Mayor’s four-year-old daughter as a part of an attack piece. Incredibly, Mr. Aymond responded by suggesting that Mayor Roy was actually at fault because his campaign brochures contained a picture of his family. Of course, family photographs are a standard part of nearly every political campaign, and it is absurd, almost deranged, to suggest that a four-year-old child is “fair game” because she appeared in a candidate’s family photograph.

A few other things: I have never denied the fact that I am an unabashed supporter of Mayor Roy. I know him, personally and professionally, to be a man of the utmost integrity. Having worked alongside him for five years, I saw this every single day. So yes, maybe I am biased: I’ll fully concede that. But, throughout the last few years, reading the ways in which Mr. Aymond attacks and criticizes Mayor Roy, it seems to me that he is not really interested in raising political awareness or offering legitimate or substantive policy criticisms, he’s interested in waging a one-man smear campaign.

I don’t respond to him or engage in discussions like this one with the hope of receiving more hits on my website. My responses to Greg Aymond aren’t intended to promote myself or stroke my own ego or ingratiate myself to anyone else. I was reared to stand up to bullies; for me, this entire back-and-forth isn’t about promoting myself or others; it has always been about defending myself and others from attacks I know to be wrong, hurtful, and painful.

And you’re absolutely right: I am just as guilty as others of making mistakes. I have my own obvious faults. Sometimes, I can be hot-headed and quick to the punch, and when that happens, when cooler heads prevail, I have no problem admitting my mistakes and apologizing. But what I will never do is merely roll over and allow someone that I don’t even know, a man who has never even met me personally, to continually lie about me and spread vicious lies– sometimes carefully couched as “rumors”– about people I know to be good, decent, and compassionate.

I absolutely support Mr. Aymond’s fundamental right to free speech, but the First Amendment works both ways. This is not some game we’re all playing; it’s not a competition to see who can say the worst and most hateful things about one another without actually committing defamation, as if readers or the public award style points for the person who can press as far up against the line between free speech and defamation.

And it’s a lesson I have had to learn the hard way– that when I criticize someone publicly, I am criticizing a real human being, with a family for whom he or she loves. Sometimes, it’s difficult to know how to criticize someone’s political opinions or professional judgment without calling into question their basic and fundamental humanity. This, however, does not mean that we should simply ignore bullies or smear artists.

In my opinion, more often than not, Mr. Aymond– however earnest he may be about his political opinions– fails to appreciate or, perhaps, fails to even care for this distinction.

I am not interested in a blog war. I’m interested in a robust and respectful conversation. Several months ago, when you posted an item about the Great Wall of Alexandria, as you may recall, I completely disagreed with your analysis. But I didn’t call you names. I tried, to the best of my ability, to respond passionately but respectfully with my criticism. And I think that is the way the conversation should always be.

But it’s difficult, if not impossible, when you’re dealing with a man whose style of political activism is “yelling in (your) face,” someone who recently wrote that, “ethics among blacks is usually a lacking character trait,” someone who paints anyone who disagrees with him or with whom he disagrees in the most vile and contemptible language– all while championing himself as an activist and a watchdog. Mr. Aymond may like to present himself as a defender of the First Amendment. He can call me a “gimp;” that’s protected, of course. But ironically, when the blogger Ed Hooper called Mr. Aymond “an unethical attorney,” Mr. Aymond took Mr. Hooper to court– a process, by the way, that we all had to pay for, at least in part, as taxpayers– to sue Mr. Hooper for defamation, submitting his medical records as evidence (one can only presume) of the physical trauma he experienced as a result of Mr. Hooper’s blogposts. And throughout this whole process, Mr. Aymond taunted Mr. Hooper repeatedly on his website. Ultimately, an out-of-town judge awarded Mr. Aymond nominal damages– $500, a hollow and meaningless victory for a case that, I believe, should have been thrown out from the very beginning.

My point, in bringing this up, is that, for Mr. Aymond, what is good for the goose is not good for the gander. The local blogosphere should not be considered one man’s bully pulpit– particularly a man who attacks others on a daily basis but who holds up his law degree and his willingness to sue anyone who dares to criticize his professionalism and his ethics.

Instead of being a place for robust and honest discussion, the local blogosphere has become a caricature of everything wrong with the American political discourse; it’s like a junior high school rumor mill, except instead of passing notes, people threaten lawsuits against one another for the VERY behavior they are engaging in themselves.

I know this website is titled Alex’s Rants and Ravings, so Alex, please forgive my rant. It seemed like the most appropriate venue. Thank you again for your level-headedness and for sharing your obvious love for the people and the history of Alexandria.

Jan 13

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Pro-Von Jennings Blogger Continues to Lie About Councilman Jerry Jones

Update: Thank you, Greg Aymond, for confirming what many people had long suspected, that you and Von Jennings had “many conversations” about the website JacquesBarack. No doubt, you two have had “many conversations” about other things as well.

Despite her complete and total lack of intellectual honesty, ethics, and integrity, despite the fact that she is willing to align herself with a man, a former Klansman, who once publicly referred to some her best friends as “N**** street thugs,” and despite her apparent belief in the efficacy of online smear, Von Jennings possesses one thing that Greg Aymond has never quite understood: She sure knows how to play people. At this point, it seems, all Ms. Jennings needs to do is place a phone call or shoot off an e-mail to Greg Aymond and voila, it’s online. Von Jennings is, apparently, playing Greg Aymond as her own useful idiot, with the hope that she can keep her distance while, simultaneously, maintain a relationship with a man who is more than willing to parrot any and every tidbit she provides him, so long as he frames it as a “rumor from the street” and protects her anonymity.

Unfortunately for Von, even a useful idiot is still an idiot, and Mr. Aymond, perhaps unwittingly, exposed Von Jennings as his source. Quoting from Mr. Aymond:

Von was not behind Jacques Barack’s website. In fact, we had many conversations on who was really behind that website and neither of us knew for sure. When Freddy gets a little further along with his Texas legal studies, he will learn that Von cannot possibly prove a negative. It should be up to Freddy to prove that she was behind that website.

I have never asked and would never ask Von Jennings to “prove a negative.” Here’s what she can do. It’s easy. I dare her. She can sign and publish the following statement. I’ll pay personally for the statement to be run as an advertisement in The Town Talk:

I, Von Jennings, pledge and swear that I do not know, have never communicated with, and have absolutely and definitely never had any connection, relationship, or coordination with the person or persons who created, operated, and maintained the website www.jacquesbarack.blogspot.com. I make this statement with the full and complete understanding that if electronic or personal communication records prove otherwise, I may be held personally responsible for perjury and could be also subjected to litigation and held liable for the defamation published about both public and private citizens on that website.

I am not asking Von Jennings to “prove a negative;” I am simply saying there is no possible way for her to validate a “positive.” She is likely responsible for JacquesBarack, regardless of what she tells her friend Greg Aymond during their regular conversations. It’s easy enough to prove, Greg and Von. (One of my best friends in the world works for the legal division of the company who would likely be a key part of demonstrating culpability, and I hate to break it to you: They keep track of these things; again, the Internet is written in ink).

*******

As many regular readers know, when former City employee Von Jennings ran for Mayor of Alexandria in 2010, her campaign surrogate(s) attempted to promote her candidacy on what may be the most hateful and incendiary website in Alexandria history, www.jacquesbarack.blogspot.com. Ms. Jennings has never confirmed or denied her involvement in the website, but considering Ms. Jennings received only 836 votes (8%), it is almost inconceivable that she wasn’t intimately involved in the website. I have absolutely no doubt that if placed under penalty of perjury, Ms. Jennings would be forced to admit her direct involvement, particularly considering that the IP addresses associated with the creation and development of the website could be easily discoverable upon a court order.

And if I am wrong, if Von Jennings had nothing to do with the website JacquesBarack, then I challenge her to publicly prove it. Because if I am wrong, if somehow a candidate who couldn’t muster even 1,000 votes was the unwitting victim of a blogger who defamed others in an attempt to promote her, then she is, without question, also the victim of defamation.

Make no mistake: JacquesBarack will follow and haunt Von Jennings for the rest of her political career.

But, until then, I’ll rely on Occam’s Razor. The simplest explanation makes far more sense. I believe Von Jennings is ultimately responsible for JacquesBarack.

Among other things, JacquesBarack published photographs of and satire about the Mayor’s then-four-year-old daughter; it published the private cell phone number of the Mayor’s then-pregnant wife and encouraged readers to call and harass her, and, as I’ve written about repeatedly, it claimed that I suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome. For those of you unaware, I was born with a very mild form of cerebral palsy, and the accusations about my condition were not only intended to defame me, they were also aimed at defaming the integrity of my late father. JacquesBarack was nothing more than a cesspool of hatred, bigotry, and, dare I say, evil, with the ostensible hope that voters would believe in this hatred and support Ms. Jennings.

Of course, it did not work. Ms. Jennings was roundly defeated, but unfortunately for her, to quote the movie The Social Network, “the Internet is written in ink.”

But JacquesBarack was not Ms. Jennings’s only online supporter. She was also endorsed by a frequent subject of my blog, the former member of the Ku Klux Klan, Gregory Aymond. Between JacquesBarack and Greg Aymond, Ms. Jennings’s only strategy seemed to be one of embracing bigotry and hatefulness. The two of them, it seems, specialize in smear.

Ms. Jennings has already announced her intention to run for Alexandria City Council District Three, a position currently held by Jerry Jones. Mr. Jones was appointed, after a split decision by the City Council, to fill the vacancy left as a result of Jonathan Goins’s resignation.

Immediately after Mr. Jones was appointed, Ms. Jennings announced her intention to run for the seat; she was not exactly gracious in her defeat. Then again, she doesn’t have a track record of graciousness. Ask Malcolm Larvadain what Von Jennings allegedly did to the front lawn of his home, for example.

And almost immediately thereafter, Greg Aymond began posting a series of unsubstantiated, defamatory, and ridiculous lies about Councilman Jones, which seems to perfectly mimic the strategy Ms. Jennings’s campaign employed in her quest to become Mayor.

Alexandria is a small town, and frankly, I wonder who, exactly, Mr. Aymond and Ms. Jennings think they are fooling.

So far, Greg Aymond has posted two stories, both titled “Rumors From The Street,” concerning Councilman Jones. The first post accused Councilman Jones of being gay, which he is not. Indeed, on Christmas Day, Councilman Jones became engaged to his long-time girlfriend, a lovely woman, and anyone who knows Councilman Jones knows how smitten he is over his fiancee. Of course, Greg Aymond offered absolutely no evidence whatsoever supporting this accusation– only that it was a “rumor.” Then again, as I mentioned in a recent post, Mr. Aymond seems to have a strange obsession with homosexuality.

And yesterday, Mr. Aymond posted a follow-up, which accused Councilman Jones of having a City cell phone, visiting the City-owned Central Louisiana Business Incubator, and maintaining a City e-mail address.Quoting (and no, I no longer am linking to his website, as a public educational service):

Rumor on the street, which is unproven and I do not know if it is true, has it that Alexandria City Councilman Jerry Jones has a City of Alexandria paid for cell phone, still has an Incubator, his former employer, e-mail account that he uses, and still goes by the Incubator several times per week.

I have also heard, but again not proven, that Councilman Jones is using his cell phone to solicit money for a church.

Of course if this is true, Jerry could have learned it from his master, Alexandria Mayor Jacques Roy.

Mr. Aymond, your rumors do not come from “the street.” You don’t talk to people on “the street.” You rarely leave your home. Your “rumors,” more than likely, come directly from the same person whose campaign was likely responsible for the website JacquesBarack, Von Jennings.

But let’s first clear up a few things:

Councilman Jones does not and has never had a City cell phone. He never called anyone to solicit funding for a church, but if he had been, it should have attempted to raise money, with the immediate goal of helping Alexandria’s “most” “brilliant” “legal” “scholar” figure out how to square away his debts with the IRS, considering you owe nearly $2,000 in taxes.

Eh. Good riddance.

Since resigning from his job with the Central Louisiana Business Incubator, Councilman Jones now works full-time in an academy that educates and mentors at-risk youth. I spoke with the Councilman earlier, and of course, he has visited his friends and former colleagues at the Incubator. Funny enough, the last time he visited, he ran into Von Jennings. (This begs the question: When you claim you’re merely reporting “rumors from the street,” aren’t you really parroting the misinformation fed to you by Von Jennings herself)?

I am not certain what Ms. Jennings was doing at the Incubator, but I, for one, see absolutely no problem at all with Councilman Jones checking up on the ongoing work at the Incubator. Right before he resigned in order to become a City Councilman, Mr. Jones had secured a substantial grant to provide for the construction of a commercial kitchen training facility, which will aid and empower small and emerging entrepreneurs with the resources and training needed to establish private-sector businesses. Indeed, in his time at the Incubator, Mr. Jones secured and leveraged more funding than Von Jennings ever secured during her tenure as the City’s Director of Workforce Development.

And yes, Mr. Jones does maintain a City of Alexandria e-mail address. He is a City Councilman, and his willingness to utilize a public e-mail account is not untoward; it’s actually the opposite. It’s a reflection of his commitment to transparency. For example, every single member of the New Orleans City Council maintains a nola.gov e-mail account.

I know Von Jennings. I take full responsibility for her being hired by the City of Alexandria, because, more than anyone else, I vocally fought for her, and I believed in her. My late grandmother also believed in her, at least at one point. And even at the risk of sounding petty and personal, I can’t help but feel profoundly disappointed by Von Jennings. In my opinion, she was the worst employee ever hired by the City of Alexandria administration, and again, I blame myself; I had no way of anticipating how monstrous she and her apparent cohorts at JacquesBarack actually were. It wasn’t merely a political thing; it was inhumane, and I blame Von Jennings.

I understand that she may still be embittered about being fired, but she has never been honest with the people of Alexandria. She has never taken responsibility for her own failures, and instead, she has lied about her record, lied about the City’s commitment toward small, emerging, minority, and women-owned businesses, lied about statistics and basic facts, and engaged in a scorched-earth policy against anyone and everyone who stands in her way.

A week after she was fired, I sat in a meeting with a top official from the State and learned that Alexandria was in jeopardy of losing $40,000 in grant funding, funding Ms. Jennings was directly responsible for administering. A month later, I watched Ms. Jennings appear before the City Council and distort the City’s success with the very program with which she was tasked.

Ironically, had she been honest, she could have presented herself as successful; instead, she manipulated the data, implied a type of racial bias, and allowed her friend Bridgett Brown– a woman who seeks to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees from the public for a case in which she performed minimal work– to hold up a sign that read “LIE.” Hilariously, Ms. Brown, perhaps demonstrating her laziness and sloppy indignation, held the sign upside-down, so it looked like “317,” which invites the obvious joke: Bridgett, it’s John 3:16, not 3:17.

But it’s a fitting metaphor: the word “LIE” upside-down.

Jan 12

John White, The New Superintendent of Louisiana Public Education, Speaks About His Vision For The State Public Education System

I have my own opinions, but I’m curious to hear what others think first.

From The Wall Street Journal (bold mine):

The results are encouraging. Five years ago, 23% of children scored at or above “basic” on state tests; now 48% do. Before Katrina, 62% attended failing schools; less than a fifth do today. The gap between city kids and the rest of the state is narrowing.

But New Orleans schools still have a ways to go. A state report this week based on scores, graduation rates and attendance records said the majority of the city’s schools merited a D grade or worse.

Enter Mr. White, a sort of reform superintendent 2.0., to try to take New Orleans to the next level. Predecessors Paul Vallas and Paul Pastorek shook up the schools, in the way the charismatic Michelle Rhee did in Washington, D.C. Mr. White spent five years working for another trailblazer, Joel Klein in New York. As deputy superintendent, Mr. White weeded out bad schools and nurtured the charter school zone in Harlem. His task here is to hold and build on the gains so far.

….

For generations, money was thrown at urban school systems; regulations were strengthened; school boards were empowered. Unions won tenure and other great benefits for their teachers. All of these efforts came from the top down. None improved outcomes for minority students. “We have tended as a country to solve problems like this more through generating energy by way of our entrepreneurs,” says Mr. White. “The approach [in New Orleans] is just government facilitating an entrepreneurial solution to this inequity.”

….

“In terms of just ‘we take every single kid and educate them in a way that is reasonably rigorous and addresses both career needs and college prep needs,’ they are the hallmark school right now,” says Mr. White. “I wouldn’t say they are, by [Ms. Laurie's] admission, anywhere close to where they need to be and want to be.” The state report card gave Walker a C+. John Mac failed.

Older black educators like Ms. Laurie started New Orleans down the reform path after Katrina, says Ms. Jacobs: “They were the ones who did the turnarounds, not the young punks.” As word spread, young college graduates and outside charter groups flooded the zone. New Orleans has one of the country’s largest TFA contingents.

….

The Southern Poverty Law Center, in a lawsuit against the Recovery District, alleges that special-needs kids are systematically excluded and badly served by charters. Independent schools blanche at the high cost and can’t draw on help from a central school system. Mr. White says the district is in talks with the Center, and defends the charters, which he adds have found “innovative” solutions for special-needs students. Walker, for example, specializes in kids with verbal problems. In an all-charter system, no students will be excluded. And before Katrina, 11% of special-needs students tested at grade level, 36% do now.

….

“Recovery” was always supposed to be temporary. At some point, direct oversight over schools will return to local, probably elected, authorities.

….

Charismatic leadership broke taboos and brought a sense of urgency. Mr. White is trying something else—to help an open system of independent public schools mature and outlive him in the Big Easy.

Jan 10

2 Comments

G.Ay’mon!

A few months ago, researchers at the University of Georgia published a provocative study that suggested that homophobic men were actually “most aroused” by gay male pornography. I won’t get into the details, but if you care to learn more about the methodology and the science behind the study, you can read about it on the website Psychology Today.

At the very least, it should make most rational people think about the true nature of homophobia, whether it is really an earnest and moralistic belief in the sanctity and superiority of Levitical law or whether the “phobia” is actually a fear of succumbing to an apparently shameful desire, a desire that could potentially place someone out of the mainstream of their community.

Nearly every week, we read stories about so-called “family values” conservative leaders being exposed for living a double-life as a closeted homosexual. Recently, there was the State Senator in Indiana, who campaigned against gay rights and then attempted to pay an 18-year-old boy to have sex with him in an Indianapolis hotel room. Last month, an anti-gay Alabama politician admitted he had donated his own sperm to a lesbian couple in New Zealand. And lest we forget about Larry Craig, Mark Foley, and the megachurch pastors Eddie Long and Ted Haggard. “The lady (in this case, the men),” to quote Shakespeare, “doth protest too much, methinks.”

Throughout my entire life, I have had the privilege and the blessing of being friends with a number of exceptional, brilliant, and talented gay and lesbian human beings. Many of them are like family to me, and my life has been continually enriched by their friendships. I am fortunate to have these people in my life, and I feel even more fortunate to belong to a generation that, by and large, has rejected the narrow-minded bigotry of the past and accepted our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters as members of the American community, deserving of equal rights, equal respect, and dignity.

I am more than happy to debate the merits of Levitical law with anyone, but be warned, if you expect me to respect your hermeneutical interpretation, then you must also be willing to denounce the entire sport of American football, which, contrary to Leviticus, requires touching the hide of a pig.

I mention all of this because a friend of mine was recently defamed by Greg Aymond. Without any proof whatsoever, without any corroborating evidence at all, Greg Aymond accused my friend, who just recently became engaged to the woman of his dreams, of being gay. First, of course, it’s not true. But perhaps more importantly, secondly, it’s creepy.

Greg Aymond writes more about being gay than my good friends at the Forum for Equality. He alters more photographs of men than the editors of Playgirl. A few months ago, he wrote:

He’s a “proudly anti-queer” blogger who “don’t wanna be (sic) a homosexual,” yet oddly, bafflingly, claims that he “was straight” until his stroke. Dan Savage would blush at this foolishness.

I like this headline too:

Thanks for the update, Hamlet.

And most recently:

Honestly, I wonder if that makes him more motivated. As a word of advice, from my gay friends, there is apparently this new iPhone app, Greg; it’s called Grindr.

On a final note:

If you want to know who is spreading the vicious, bigoted, and divisive lies about my friend, I’m willing to bet $1,000 that it’s the same woman whose campaign claimed I didn’t actually have cerebral palsy and that I, instead, suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome. She made the unfortunate mistake of wearing her last name on her t-shirt and standing directly next to a former member of the Ku Klux Klan– that’d be the fashionista with his glittering shirt, Greg Aymond.

Archive for January, 2012

Jindal’s Plan: Gut Public Education (Part Two of Two)

There Goes My Hero

Congressman Rodney Alexander “Comments” on the State of the Union… Thirty Minutes Before It Even Began

Alexandria, Louisiana

Jindal’s Plan: Gut Public Education (Part One of Two)

Everyone Has A Disability

A Response to AlexCenla On the State of the Central Louisiana Blogosphere

Pro-Von Jennings Blogger Continues to Lie About Councilman Jerry Jones

John White, The New Superintendent of Louisiana Public Education, Speaks About His Vision For The State Public Education System

G.Ay’mon!

Dimtwitted

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