Monthly Archives: October 2012

Louisiana Education Superintendent Spends $145,000/Year On California-Based “Motivational Speaker” To Promote Privatization 3

by • Education, Local Political News, Media Studies, National News

Just in case you required any additional evidence that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and State Superintendent of Education John White are attempting to implement a large-scale privatization of the state’s public education system, consider this: Earlier this month, it was revealed that Superintendent White is paying Doug “Lefty” Lefkowith, a California-based, self-identified “motivational speaker,” $145,000 a year to serve as a “Director of Content” in the Louisiana Department of Education. To be sure, Lefkowith’s actual title remains somewhat ambiguous, but his record is pretty straightforward. Thanks, in large part, to the yeomen’s effort of Tom Aswell at the Louisiana Voice, we know that Lefkowith has built his career as a consultant promoting privatization initiatives. Quoting:

It turns out that Dave “Lefty” Lefkowith, DOE’s new Director of the Office of Portfolio, has quite a past, with strong connections to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the infamous Enron Corp. and a spinoff company called Azurix. ….

Our initial request for public records resulted in the disclosure that Lefty was an employee of DOE. The obligatory follow up request for information revealed that the Louisiana taxpayers got him for a mere $144,999.88 a year, with a “free” Youtube video to boot, albeit a largely amateurish effort to hype DOE’s computer Course Content.

It might also be worth noting that on that video, Lefkowith gives himself a promotion—from being Director of the Office of Portfolio to Deputy Superintendent.

Mr. Lefkowith, according to Aswell, also worked to deregulate energy and privatize water in Florida, failed efforts that nonetheless earned him a consultancy position with the Florida Public Service Commission. In fairness, Mr. Lefkowith is, unquestionably, well-educated, having earned degrees at both Yale and Stanford, but his position and his work with the Louisiana Department of Education should be questioned: He appears to be a political consultant who specializes in privatization initiatives and who possesses none of the requisite experience one would ordinarily need to become a “Director of Content” or a “Deputy Superintendent” of a statewide public education department. So why, exactly, was Mr. Lefkowith hired? Tom Aswell references an “amateurish” YouTube video; “amateurish,” it turns out, is an understatement:

Aside from the criticisms of the videography, there is a much bigger story here. For months, I have focused on the ways in which the Louisiana voucher program intends to facilitate the privatization of our public education system. As Mr. Lefkowith’s video reveals, however, the voucher program is only a piece in the puzzle: The Course Choice program, which will be rolled out in 2013, is also about diverting public resources to prop up the same type of private, unaccountable education system, a system more concerned with profit than with results, a system that provides “licenses to hunt” instead of licenses to educate. Here’s a partial transcript of Mr. Lefkowith’s remarks (bold mine):

I’m going to leave the development of the course offering to your best judgment.

You’re going to need to operate like a business. You’re going to need to create a business. Now, the first thing you’re going to have to do is determine what your costs are going to be to create this service and to provide it. There’s instruction cost, there’s facility cost – you may be used to the school, just showing up and there’s your classroom. Well, in this world you’re going to have to make arrangements for your facility – it may be in a school, it may be in a mall, it could be anywhere – it could be online. You have to figure out what you’re going to spend in terms of facilities, or virtual facilities.

You’re going to have to do some marketing and selling. Even if you go through the process of applying for Course Choice and getting accepted and going through the interview and getting final approval from BESE, that’s just a license to hunt. You’ve got to go out and get students to sign up for your course offering. You’re going to have to figure out how you’re going to do that. Maybe you’re going to fly an airplane over the LSU stadium saying “take my course,” maybe not.

And if you have no idea what you’re doing, fear not: Doug Lefkowith and his support staff at the Louisiana Department of Education will hold your hand through the entire application process.

The wonder of the market, right? Quoting from Education Week’s article on the Lefkowitz video:

In Louisiana, the marketplace approach is allowing taxpayer dollars to flow to parochial schools that teach creationism rather than evolution. And the Course Choice program allows all sorts of entrepreneurs to set up anywhere, or offer courses online.

This is the wonder of the market. It allows anyone access to public funds for whatever sort of education they want. It allows parents to use public funding to send their children to largely segregated schools, private schools, religious schools, or to stay at home and take virtual courses. These systems were first promoted back in the early 1960s, when the government began actively pushing for desegregation. How this advances the cause of Civil Rights is a mystery to me, and one that advocates of “choice” need to explain, especially as the consequences of privatization manifest themselves.

Louisiana Voucher Program Props Up Propaganda, Funds Fundamentalists 3

by • Education, Local Political News, Media Studies, National News

This Thursday, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) will meet to discuss the “criteria for school participation in the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Programs (sic),” more commonly known as the Louisiana voucher program. At this point, it should be abundantly clear to anyone paying attention that Louisiana’s school voucher program, a program that had been touted a few months ago by The Wall Street Journal as Governor Bobby Jindal’s “moon shot,” is already an epic failure, a grand and almost comical embarrassment, and one of the best examples of government incompetence and dereliction in modern Louisiana history, which is saying a lot. It is also a program that Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has looked to as a model for the entire country, a claim that seems to be based more on Romney’s support of Governor Jindal as a campaign surrogate than anything else.

I am not being unnecessarily hyperbolic or flippant: The Louisiana voucher program has, from its very beginning, been controversial; the real problem, however, is that its implementation has been plagued and defined by executive and institutional failures. It’s been embarrassing and disheartening, and as I will later explain, it’s even worse than you may think.

Conservative policymakers believe that taxpayer-funded school vouchers may be a panacea, a sure-fire way for Louisiana to finally provide public school kids with the opportunity to attend good schools. This, of course, is a complete lie: Vouchers disinvest from public education, better ensuring that the failure of public education becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

But even more importantly, private schools in Louisiana– the parallel education system that Governor Bobby Jindal and Superintendent John White seek to prop up–  are actually among the worst-performing schools in the entire country. To be sure, there are a very small handful of great private schools in Louisiana, none of which ever even considered applying for voucher slots.

The incontroverible truth is that private schools in Louisiana are, on the whole, significantly worse than public schools, and Governor Bobby Jindal and Superintendent John White, along with the support of the majority of the Louisiana legislature, have decided, as a matter of policy, to strip public funding away from struggling public schools and give taxpayer money to unaccountable, underperforming, and fly-by-night private schools. Stated another way, their policy, as public servants, is to take money away from publicly-owned assets and institutions, and provide those resources to failing and unaccountable religious institutions.

The Louisiana voucher program isn’t concerned with saving education; it’s primarily focused on using public funds to build and promote radical fundamentalist churches.

I’ve previously written about what many of these voucher schools teach.  A few months ago, my friend Zack Kopplin uncovered a treasure trove, twenty voucher schools that each boasted and advertised their promotion of New Earth Creationism as legitimate science. In only a couple of days, Zack discovered that nearly 17% of the schools participating in the Louisiana voucher program were self-identified creationists, taxpayer-funded schools who promote the stupid, absurd, and offensive beliefs that science is illegitimate, the universe is only 6,000 years old, dinosaurs were assigned a dorm on Noah’s Ark, and evolution is a liberal conspiracy.

And I’ll give credit where credit is due: Yesterday, Zack uncovered something crazy about these schools, something even he, at first, couldn’t initially believe; it’s that unexpectedly crazy. 

Both Zack and I have written about the curricula and the educational standards of private schools that qualified for voucher funding: Schools that teach the Loch Ness Monster is a living dinosaur in Scotland whose existence disproves the theory of evolution, schools that suggest the Ku Klux Klan promoted morality, and schools that reject certain types of “math” as unfaithful, among many other incredible things.

We were not exaggerating. This is not a joke, and these schools are not isolated.

As it turns out, numerous voucher schools use this curriculum. All together, they represent a sizable minority, if not a majority, of schools qualified for voucher funding. Again, this is crazier than we’d anticipated, and thankfully, it’s all in writing.

Behold, the philosophy behind their history curriculum:

Ever since H. G. Wells published his Outline of History in 1920, the theme of world history texts has been man’s supposed progress from savagery toward socialism, from tribal religions toward one-world government. American history is usually presented as a series of conflicts—rich vs. poor, black vs. white, North vs. South, labor vs. management, male vs. female, etc.

A Beka Book history texts reject the Marxist/Hegelian conflict theory of history in favor of a truthful portrayal of peoples, lands, religions, ideals, heroes, triumphs, and setbacks. The result is positive, uplifting history texts that give students an historical perspective and instill within them an intelligent pride for their own country and a desire to help it back to its traditional values.

We present government as ordained by God for the maintenance of law and order, not as a cure-all for humanity’s problems. We present free-enterprise economics without apology and point out the dangers of Communism, socialism, and liberalism to the well-being of people across the globe. In short, A Beka Book offers a traditional, conservative approach to the study of what man has done with the time he has been given.

H.G. Wells, the man who wrote The Time Machine, is responsible for perverting history. History, apparently, has nothing to do with conflict; it’s all about how God ordained American government.

Here’s how these schools teach science:

While secular science textbooks present modern science as the opposite of faith, the A Beka Book science texts teach that modern science is the product of Western man’s return to the Scriptures after the Protestant Reformation, leading to his desire to understand and subdue the earth, which he saw as the orderly, law-­abiding creation of the God of the Bible.

The A Beka Book Science and Health Program presents the universe as the direct creation of God and refutes the man-made idea of evolution. Further, the books present God as the Great Designer and Lawgiver, without Whom the evident design and laws of nature would be inexplicable. They give a solid foundation in all areas of science—a foundation firmly anchored to Scriptural truth. Teachability is assured through accurate, interesting writing, carefully planned demonstrations that can be performed with a minimum of equipment, chapter terms and questions, full-color illustrations, consideration of the interests and comprehension skills of students at each grade level, and detailed Curriculum/Lesson Plans.

Let’s all be clear: This is Bobby Jindal’s education system; this is what Bobby Jindal values and seeks to promote. And it’s pathetic. It’s completely fair to blame Governor Jindal for this fiasco; he is responsible for propping up and funding this nonsense. This is his “moon shot.”

If, like me, you’ve followed Bobby Jindal’s career, it’s difficult to not feel painfully embarrassed for him, and it’s perhaps even more difficult to ignore the awkward shame he has carried about his own definitively American story. During the last thirty years, Bobby Jindal has continually disavowed his own ethnic, cultural, and religious identity.

As Jindal’s own biography reveals, he’s never seemed comfortable with his ethnicity or his heritage. He changed his name, on his own, when he was a child, anglicizing it, renaming himself after the little boy on the “Brady Bunch.” He refused to be known by his given name, Piyush, and insisted instead on being called “Bobby.” When his critics refer to him as “Piyush,” his legal name, they are sometimes accused of being racist, and to be honest, I get it; sometimes, the critics of Jindal do sound racist.

But I also think it’s bizarre: Jindal renamed himself; that is unusual. (For what it’s worth, in my opinion, “Pi” is a much better and much cooler nickname than “Bobby”). As a teenager, Jindal also converted from Hinduism to Catholicism, and his conversion was not a quiet, contemplative, personal experience: Jindal was loud, obnoxious, and purposely public about it. Among other things, he bragged about participating in a comically absurd “exorcism,” not only to his friends but also to the readers of a major worldwide Catholic journal.

Jindal’s exorcism essay continues to be one of the weirdest things published by a major American political leader (it may be THE single weirdest thing), and not surprisingly, Jindal’s never spoken a single word on the subject. I’ll take his reticence at face value: He’s embarrassed; it’s embarrassing.

When he ran for Governor in 2007, the Louisiana Democratic Party was pummeled after it ran commercials criticizing Jindal on religion; the ads essentially accused Jindal of being a hardline, anti-abortion Catholic, and they may have been the dumbest political attacks ads in Louisiana history.  The Louisiana Democratic Party sat on this enormously weird, nationally significant story about Bobby Jindal participating in an unsanctioned exorcism, a story that Jindal actually decided to tell himself, a story that, upon closer inspection, revealed itself to be self-incriminating, demonstrating that Jindal and his peers were guilty of at least one count of false imprisonment. Instead of criticizing Jindal for his disingenuousness, radicalism, and his own written statements, the Louisiana Democratic Party somehow managed to avoid the exorcism narrative altogether and come across as vehemently anti-Catholic. (Thankfully, the party is now under new leadership and management). Forgive my extended digression, but I’ve never believed in Bobby Jindal’s exorcism story. It’s manifestly false. I’ve taken more than my fair share of college writing workshops: Jindal’s a liar. His story is a lie, an obvious, enormous, flat-out, disqualifying, self-aggrandizing lie. Give me a break: Bobby Jindal never participated in an exorcism; he was at Brown for crying out loud. Seriously. At this point, you’d think that at least one of the dozen plus people that Jindal claimed witnessed this exorcism would have already come forward to confirm this insanity. The truth is, as tough as it may be for some to stomach, Jindal’s been trying so hard for his entire life to present himself as a true believer; the Louisiana Democratic Party didn’t need to run ads about Jindal’s Catholicism. They only did that because they were terrified to run anything about his exorcism story.

I’ll make it easy: Bobby Jindal lied about participating in an exorcism, and the moment a real journalist asks Governor Jindal to be honest about this, we’ll be better. (Pro-tip: Ask 1. Who is Susan and what is she doing today? 2. Did any ordained Catholic priest supervise your so-called exorcism? 3. WHY? Seriously, why? It’s so weird and unusual. And frankly, no one believes you exorcised a girl who had a crush on you at Brown or that you cured her of skin cancer. 4. No question. Just a reminder: You won’t be able to ignore this forever, Governor Jindal).

Regardless, let’s not be mistaken here: Bobby Jindal is a self-identified religious wingnut, and as Governor of Louisiana, he’s promoted and endorsed a series of radical, fundamentalist policies; his plan for school vouchers has nothing to do with education and almost everything to do with funding far-right churches. To be sure, I am remain unsure about whether Jindal’s religiosity is authentic or whether he’s merely an exploitative, self-hating political hack.

Considering Governor Jindal still can’t figure out what church he belongs and considering he continues to spend tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on Sunday morning helicopter tours of rural North Louisiana churches, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt: I’ll assume that he is and always been an opportunistic fraud, because the alternative is even worse.

Barack Obama Deserves A Second Term 1

by • Local Political News, Media Studies, National News, Self-referential drivel

A couple of months ago, I volunteered to teach law and government, for an hour every week, at a nearby public elementary school. Already, I can say, without hesitation, that this was one of the best decisions I have ever made. It’s reinforced my belief in public education. First, I work with an exceptional teacher, a woman who exemplifies the absolute best of her profession, one of those teachers who, years later, will be remembered by her students as a person who made a difference in their lives. She also immediately reminded me of one of my best friends, Maggie Dyer, who has been teaching in the Louisiana public school system for the last several years, one of those rare people who treat their students with the same kindness and discipline as they would give to their own children.

There’s another thing: It’s an inner city school for the gifted and talented. 90% of students are either Hispanic or African-American. And they are all brilliant and precocious and incredibly eager to learn. You can’t help but be inspired.

Before I started volunteering, I attended a briefing on the program: This is what you need to teach; this is how you need to teach it, and this is who you’ll be teaching. And during this briefing, the instructor said, more than once, to remember that every single kid we’d be teaching was born after September 11, 2001. “They’ve never known what it is like to live in peacetime. We have been at war for their entire lives.”

It stung me: American children only know a country at war.

In 2007, I decided to support then-Senator Barack Obama over any other candidate for a very simple reason: He had initially, consistently, and publicly opposed the War in Iraq. That was, to me, the only logical position one could have possibly taken. It is easy, now, to engage in revisionist history, to suggest that we merely acted on intelligence that subsequently proved to be faulty. The truth, however difficult it may be for some to stomach, is that when America decided to invade Iraq, we knew or should have known that it was bound to be a fiasco; we knew that Saddam Hussein, however nefarious and awful he may have been, never possessed any weapons of mass destruction. He was gloating and purposely insincere, and he was hedging his bets that we’d see right through his charade. He underestimated the steely resolve of a United States President who believed that the attacks of 9/11 provided him with a carte blanche mandate to vindicate, regardless of the facts.

At the time, it wasn’t politically popular to oppose the War in Iraq. Indeed, for some, opposition amounted to political suicide. But President George W. Bush and the Republicans spent almost all of their political capital, over a trillion dollars, and thousands of American lives in waging a war against Iraq, and by God, that had to mean something, even if the entire premise of the war was based on an easily-refuted lie.

Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda attacked America on September 11, 2001. President Bush and the Republicans scared much of the country into believing otherwise, conflating the entire Muslim world as some monolithic terrorist enterprise, while paying lip-service to religious freedom.

If Hillary Clinton hadn’t voted in favor of the War in Iraq, she would be running for her second-term as President.

The notion that Americans favored Barack Obama merely because he could deliver a great speech or because he represented a “symbolic” change makes for a compelling media narrative, but it’s simply not accurate: More than anything else, Barack Obama became the standard-bearer for the Democratic Party because he, very early on, took an intellectually honest position against the War in Iraq. We needed an intellectually honest and intellectually consistent leader, and that is precisely why Democrats gravitated to Barack Obama in 2007 and 2008.

Four years after his historic election, there should be no doubt: Barack Obama deserves a second term.

We will never have a perfect President, but right now, Americans are led by a smart and principled man, a man who is revered around the world, and a man who, though he and his campaign will not brandish it, won the Nobel Peace Prize during his first year.

Throughout the last four years, the attacks against President Obama have, for the most part, lacked in substance. They’ve centered on his “otherness,” the easily disputed theories of his birthplace and his religion, theories that have been floated and perpetuated primarily by wealthy white people like Donald Trump and Andrew Breitbart. It’s politics as entertainment, and as fun as it may be, it’s not serious. President Obama has also, more recently, been criticized for a slower-than-expected economic recovery. That is a more legitimate critique, but it still falls short. For one, his Republican opponents are much more responsible for the nation’s economic mess: Their policies during the Bush administration created this fiasco, and their recent intransigence has only exacerbated it. We need to be honest with one another on this. The stimulus worked; the auto bailout saved over a million jobs; housing starts are up; consumer confidence is up; we’ve created more than 5 million private-sector jobs, and the stock market has doubled since he took office.

Obamacare, his signature legislative achievement, will likely be remembered as one of the greatest accomplishments in American history, an idea that was ironically co-opted from Mitt Romney. In only a decade, Americans won’t debate the merits of health care as a fundamental right; it will be enshrined as plainly obvious.

President Obama’s work on civil rights is also worthy of praise: He’s boldly taken a stand in favor of gay marriage. He’s ended the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. And the very first piece of legislation that he signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which ensures equal pay protection for women.

And on foreign policy, President Obama has been even more impressive. He ordered the mission that killed Osama bin Laden; he’s obliterated America’s number one enemy, Al Qaeda; he’s ended the War in Iraq; he’s currently ending the War in Afghanistan, thank God.

Now, has he been everything we had hoped he’d be? Of course not. I, for one, am still troubled by the suspension of due process against suspected terrorists, the proliferation of drone attacks, and the increased enforcement in the misguided War on Drugs. But I know this: Barack Obama is and will always be a better President than Mitt Romney could ever become. Romney would take this country backwards; if elected, he would install the same political and policy machinery that propped up George W. Bush for eight years. If you seriously care more about a three percent increase in the federal income tax for American millionaires– if you think that will destroy the country– then vote for Romney. Go ahead. If, like me, you understand that American wealth is a function of American ingenuity and that shared sacrifice is a virtue and not a curse, then vote for the incumbent.

I think about that class of fifth graders, who have never known America not at war. I think about their futures. I’m voting for the guy who wants to end war. He’s not a perfect candidate, but he’s earned my trust.

The Big Lie About Curriculum Standards in Louisiana Private Schools 2

by • Education, Local Political News, National News

In an effort to push back against the mounting criticisms over the credentials of schools that qualified for Louisiana’s experimental school voucher program, Education Superintendent John White recently announced a “more detailed account… to revamp the way Louisiana approves private schools that want public funding.” Quoting from The Times-Picayune:

White laid out three different tiers of scrutiny for private schools that want state approval, based primarily on whether they’ve already been through a third-party accrediting process. Getting state approval gives private schools access to state money for textbooks and transportation services from their local public school district, but now also serves as their first bar to clear for participating in the voucher program, which provides tuition for any student from a low-income family in Louisiana attending a public school rated C or below.

White said private schools will win an automatic, five-year state approval if they already maintain an annual accreditation from either the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools or another third-party accrediting body approved by the National Association of Independent Schools.

On the surface, this may sound like a step in the right direction. It even won praise from Leslie Jacobs, a former BESE member who, in 2009, dropped out of the race for New Orleans mayor shortly after Mitch Landrieu announced his candidacy.

“This is unequivocally a better process,” said former BESE member Leslie Jacobs, a frequent critic of the pilot voucher program in New Orleans and plans for expanding it statewide. “The process that BESE had before was really a joke.”

With all respect to Ms. Jacobs, Superintendent White’s plan to ensure a “more detailed account” of the schools that qualify for taxpayer subsidization is, unfortunately, nothing more than a gimmick, a smoke and mirrors parlor trick that belies his department’s and the Jindal administration’s interpretation of the law.

Last month, Louisiana Public Broadcasting aired this report:

Louisiana Progress and others have rightfully focused on the private school curriculum standards prescribed by the Louisiana Department of Education. Quoting from the Southern Education Desk:

Louisiana Department of Education policy on the curricula to be used by non-public schools is contained in Bulletin 741, put out by the Division of Curriculum Standards. It states that “only nonpublic schools that meet and maintain a sustained curriculum or specialized course of study of quality that is at least equal to that prescribed for similar public schools are eligible for state approval, and thus state funding.” The Department of Education does not review a non-public school’s curriculum, but the bulletin does state that religious studies and electives combined are not to exceed 25-percent of the daily instruction. Textbooks put out by A.C.E., Answers in Genesis and Bob Jones University Press all weave Biblical teachings through what is generally considered “secular” coursework, i.e., science, history, and social studies.

This is, without question, a legitimate criticism: Many of the schools admitted into the Louisiana voucher program are, very obviously, failing to provide students with a “quality of study that is at least equal to” public schools, a requirement that is not only stated in Bulletin 741 but one that is also enshrined in Article 8, Section 4 of the Louisiana State Constitution.

But here’s where it gets tricky and potentially perilous for Superintendent White and defenders of Louisiana’s voucher program: While they are likely embarrassed by reports of voucher schools teaching, among other things, that the Loch Ness monster is real and disproves evolution (schools that reject the overwhelming fossil record in favor of a mythical ancient dinosaur that still lives under a lake in Scotland), Superintendent White and voucher advocates are also inconveniently and ironically constrained by their own interpretation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Again, quoting from the Southern Education Desk (which is quoting from the LPB report) (bold mine):

We asked Louisiana Superintendent of Education John White about the controversial curricula, and whether the voucher program would prompt greater scrutiny of these materials. Here’s his answer:

“Well, the law is very clear about—in private schools that receive no public funding, in private schools that receive some public funding, and then private schools that receive a more significant amount of public funding—what can be reviewed and—on the other hand—where schools have discretion to do what they want to do,” says White. “We’re going to follow the law.”

But White has also announced that the regulations for licensing private schools in Louisiana are being revised, and will be presented to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education at their October meeting. He is adamant that the process won’t be delving into the curricula private schools are offering.

First and most importantly, Superintendent White seeks to have it both ways: He suggests that the law is “very clear” on this issue and implies that schools that receive a “more significant amount of funding” may be subject to greater scrutiny, and then, almost in the same breath, he adamantly opposes “delving into the curricula private schools are offering.” There is a reason that Superintendent White is being so ambiguous and disingenuous. He seems to argue that he does have the authority to determine the quality of curricula offered in private voucher schools, but he then immediately abdicates this authority.

Here’s why: Back in the early 1990s, a group of public school students sued the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. See Rankins v. Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Because these students had failed the Graduate Exit Exam (the GEE), they were not awarded diplomas, even though they passed the requisite coursework. Their complaint was simple and compelling: They were denied their state-issued high school diplomas because they had failed the GEE, even though private school students were able to receive state-issued diplomas without ever taking the GEE.  The case only made it to Louisiana’s First Circuit, and in what must have seemed like a major victory for religious conservatives, a single judge ruled against the students, holding that the State could require the GEE for public schools while waiving the requirement for private schools. But the judge wasn’t only concerned with the GEE. Despite over two decades of Attorney General opinions and despite the plain language of the Louisiana State Constitution, the judge also wrote that the State had no authority to evaluate the “content” of curriculum. Curriculum, he suggested, should not be measured by content; it should, instead, be measured entirely by the amount of time a student sits behind a desk, the controversial “Carnegie unit” of measurement. If BESE were allowed to evaluate the “content” of curricula offered in private schools, then, in this one judge’s opinion, they would be violating the Establishment Clause.

To be sure, most rational, literate people recognize that “curriculum,” by its very definition, means content, and this judge’s opinion is not mandatory authority in Louisiana. But, even though it seems to completely contradict the plain language meaning of the Louisiana State Constitution, it nonetheless provides the blueprint of an escape hatch for Superintendent John White, a way for him to justify his uneven equivocations on his own actions and authority.

Nationally, voucher advocates point to the 2002 United States Supreme Court decision in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, which narrowly held that the voucher program in Cleveland, Ohio passed constitutional muster. But in its 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that Cleveland’s program was legal because it met the following criteria, most of which is not present in Louisiana’s voucher program:

Under the Private Choice Test developed by the court, for a voucher program to be constitutional it must meet all of the following criteria:

  • the program must have a valid secular purpose,
  • aid must go to parents and not to the schools,
  • a broad class of beneficiaries must be covered,
  • the program must be neutral with respect to religion, and
  • there must be adequate nonreligious options.

There may be a legitimate argument about whether Louisiana’s program has a “valid secular purpose,” whether it covers a “broad class of beneficiaries,” and whether it is “neutral with respect to religion.” But, in my opinion, Louisiana’s program was not designed around parents; it was designed around private schools. Private schools have completely determined the construction and the composition of this program; they set the number of voucher “slots,” and the “aid” provided by the program does not “go to parents;” it goes to these schools, in the form of a government check written on “behalf” of parents.

And even if you reject this criticism of Louisiana’s program, you must acknowledge that Louisiana’s voucher program does not offer “adequate nonreligious options.” For the Zelman court, the determinative factor wasn’t the percentage of religiously-affiliated schools in the Cleveland program; it was whether students had the opportunity to attend a nonreligious school in an adjacent district. Clearly, Louisiana’s program does not afford students the same opportunity; in the overwhelming majority of the State, the program can only be accessed by students attending religious schools. Outside of New Orleans, there are no nonreligious options.

The truth is: Superintendent John White has the authority to determine the content of curricula offered in Louisiana’s voucher schools, and he also has the legal responsibility of ensuring that the program offers adequate “nonreligious options.” He has continually failed to do either of these things; he has equivocated and ducked for cover; he has, most recently, attempted to assert that he’s “increasing” accountability, even though he’s actually, for all intents and purposes, doing nothing. Louisiana should not be misled by Superintendent White’s parlor trick: He’s not actually providing a more thorough process for reviewing the qualifications and curricula of voucher schools. That’s not what he said. He’s merely giving a “more detailed account” of an already-flawed process.

Reminder: Bobby Jindal Is Mooning Louisiana Reply

by • Education, Health Care, Local Political News, Media Studies

Originally posted on February 5, 2012:

A few days ago, The Wall Street Journal compared Governor Bobby Jindal’s plans for education reform to Newt Gingrich’s plans for a moon colony. And they weren’t being facetious or ironic. Quoting from their article “Jindal’s Education Moon Shot“:

Newt Gingrich wants the U.S. to return to the moon, but as challenges go he has nothing on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s school reform plans.

Mr. Jindal wants to create America’s largest school voucher program, broadest parental choice system, and toughest teacher accountability regime—all in one legislative session. Any one of those would be a big win, but all three could make the state the first to effectively dismantle a public education monopoly.

In an attempt at praising Jindal’s “reform” efforts, The Wall Street Journal unwittingly reinforced something most rational people already understand: Like Gingrich’s pitch for a colony on the moon, Jindal’s plan for education is irrational, untested, grandiose, and absurd. But at least they got one thing right: While Jindal and company attempt to convince us that they’re merely proposing scholarships, the simple and obvious truth is that they are calling for “America’s largest school voucher program.” Let’s get this out of the way: Jindal’s voucher plan is comically infeasible and impractical. From The Times-Picayune:

Under Jindal’s plan, about 380,000 students would qualify to receive state aid for tuition at a private or religious school, (Senator) Landrieu pointed out.

But even if every private elementary school in the state could immediately grow its enrollment by 10 percent to accommodate an influx of voucher recipients, only about 8,000 seats would be available. Include private high schools and that figure rises to about 11,200.

Jindal, by the way, did not dispute these numbers. He didn’t dispute that his voucher plan cannot and will not work, that there is no possible way he could ever deliver on his promise. Instead, his spokesperson said that Senator Landrieu was “missing the point.” No, no, she’s not. She’s speaking precisely on point: Jindal cannot deliver right now.

Thus far, unfortunately, teacher unions and the superintendents are playing right into Jindal’s hands. The teacher unions are harping on teacher pay and benefits; the superintendents, who stand to gain even more discretionary powers, are distancing themselves as quickly as possible, hoping to appear as apolitical as possible. I wonder, though: Are any of these people aware of the end-game here? Because Jindal’s proposals about performance-based pay and tenure are just window-dressing. On their own, they’re radical, to be sure, but not nearly as radical as Jindal’s end-game. Ultimately, Jindal’s goal, as The Wall Street Journal notes, is not merely to create the country’s “largest voucher program;” it’s about using taxpayer dollars to establish an undemocratic, unprotected parallel education system.

Senator Landrieu points out that we simply don’t have enough private-school openings to accommodate even a fraction of the kids to whom Jindal plans to give vouchers. She’s right, and on its surface, this makes Jindal’s plan foolish. Except vouchers aren’t really the issue either. Surely, Jindal is smart enough to know his numbers simply don’t add up, that there is no possible way he could ever deliver vouchers to even 5% of the kids who qualify. It’s a sham. And it’s meant to be a sham. It’s meant to provide the Governor with the ability to establish a threshold of public dollars per student that Louisianans would be willing to contribute toward the development of a parallel charter and for-profit education system and infrastructure. And he’s aiming at $8,500 per student per year. Again, this is precisely why Mr. Jindal unveiled his program in front of the largest group of business lobbyists in the State of Louisiana; there is a ton of money to be made in privatizing public education.

Mr. Jindal’s proponents will likely point to the charter school model created in New Orleans after the storm. There are many good people doing exceptional things in charter schools and in the Recovery School District, but sorry, it’s absolutely absurd to attribute any marginal successes in New Orleans education to a business model. When charters fail and when charters go bankrupt, which is the case more often than proponents would have us believe, it can be abruptly catastrophic for students and their families. And because of the way most charters are structured, there is little to no accountability when they fail.

I, for one, am tired of Bobby Jindal “experimenting” with Louisiana. Despite the fact that his diploma is from one of the finest public high schools in the country, Baton Rouge Magnet, I don’t believe he is an advocate for public education. For months, my buddy Zack Kopplin, a fellow graduate of Baton Rouge Magnet, pestered the public and the media about the Louisiana Science Education Act (the LSEA). If you need any evidence that Mr. Jindal doesn’t care about the quality of public education, then all you need to do is look at the LSEA, a pernicious and likely unconstitutional piece of legislation that allows public schools to substitute science with religion, a piece of legislation that was brought to you and funded through the generous contributions of the radical religious right– groups like the Discovery Institute and the (in my opinion, shady) Louisiana Family Forum. Mr. Jindal, a Biology major from Brown, likely knows better; he was even criticized by his own college biology professor. But while Mr. Jindal doubled-down on the radical right and signed a bill undermining the integrity of science education in our public schools, Zack did something else: He received endorsements from over 71 Noble Prize laureates calling for a repeal of the law. You know how many Nobel laureates have endorsed Governor Jindal? None. Zero.

When he signed the LSEA, Governor Jindal wasn’t guided by any metrics of academic performance; he wasn’t concerned with preserving the integrity of the institution of public education. Mr. Jindal was merely playing politics. And so it is with his proposed overhaul of education.

The inconvenient truth, ironically, is that public schools in Louisiana have improved during the last few years. Our graduation rates have increased by nearly 6% since 2001; we’re closing the so-called “achievement gap;” test scores are up. There’s no reason to suddenly panic, and certainly, there’s no basis for attempting to completely overhaul the entire education system.

Louisiana, we don’t need to be, once again, turned into Bobby Jindal’s experimental laboratory. We tried that once before, when he was Secretary of the DHH, and it didn’t work out well at all.

Mr. Jindal, despite his impressive academic pedigree, is and has always been manifestly and vehemently opposed to a robust and successful public education system. Our charter schools in New Orleans may be performing better than comparable schools were before the storm, but, really, so what? Who is to say that our public schools wouldn’t have rebounded just as well, had they only been given the same resources, priorities, and treatment as our charters? We strip money from public education, give it to private and quasi-private charters, and then, we wonder about why charters are out-performing public schools. We’re being dangerously naive.

Louisiana is still at the bottom of many public education rankings, and without any doubt, there is a lot of work to be done. But think about this: Every single state that is ranked higher than Louisiana is working with the same toolkit. They’re not giving millions and millions of taxpayer dollars to build a parallel system of education more adept at maximizing private-sector profits (no, this is definitely Bobby Jindal’s “moon shot”); they’re beating Louisiana because they’re investing in themselves. We, on the other hand, are being led by a man who seems all too eager and willing to privatize the most important public institution in the United States of America- the right to an education.

If Bobby Jindal wants to reform public education in Louisiana, then he needs to go back to the drawing board. If he is serious, then he needs to begin talking with educators instead of business lobbyists and radical fundamentalists. If anyone should profit from public education, it should be the people who actually invest their own money, not those who use public dollars for the expressed purpose of dismantling public education.

And if not, Jindal will continue to moon all of us, as he flies toward America’s newest extraterrestrial colony, a slab of rock hurling around the earth, a place that appears in phases and adheres to its own cycles, a land called Gingrich.

Eight Years After Being Shuttered, the Majestic and Historic Hotel Bentley Sold to New Owner, With Plans for Quick and Expansive Renovations 1

by • Downtown Alexandria, Local Political News, Media Studies

In December of 2004, in the aftermath of a major leak in its basement, the historic Hotel Bentley closed for business. For over a century, the Bentley represented the single most important historical and architectural landmark in Central Louisiana. During World War II, the Bentley served as the second home for General Dwight D. Eisenhower and General George Patton, among many others, as they planned the so-called “Louisiana maneuvers,” a series of trainings and strategy sessions that would prepare the more than 500,000 troops stationed in nearby military camps for an American-led invasion of Nazi-occupied France and Germany. Arguably, outside of Washington, D.C., the Hotel Bentley secretly hosted the most important military strategy sessions in American history.

And just as its historical significance cannot be overstated, neither can its architectural splendor: It was and continues to remain one of the most stunning and earliest examples of Beaux-Arts architecture in the country, a building that slowly but steadily attempted to redefine itself as Art Deco, and, in doing so, also became an example of a third-wave of mid-20th century architecture, postmodernism. The Bentley is a unique architectural jewel, an marriage between the classicism of the early 20th century and the modernity of the mid-century. That is precisely why, a few years after its closure, the Louisiana Trust for Historic Preservation placed the Bentley on its top-ten endangered list.

There is no need to re-litigate the Bentley’s recent past: The politics, the threats of demolition permits, and all of the other groups who had invested their precious time and energy hoping, also, to reignite the promise of the Bentley. What is important now is that the Hotel Bentley now belongs to Alexandria’s most sincere and most accomplished Downtown pioneer and champion, Mike Jenkins.

On a personal note, I want to salute and commend Mike Jenkins for his tenacious and unwavering dedication to the people of Alexandria. Earlier this week, Jenkins bought the Hotel Bentley for $3.4 million, a fair price and one that, I suspect (with all due respect to Mr. Jenkins), would have been immediately accepted by investors who had submitted previous offers. Again, I don’t want to re-litigate recent history, but suffice it to say, at $3.4 million, this deal would have been sealed three or four years ago, if the hotel’s owner, Bob Dean, hadn’t held the hotel hostage at an unreasonably high asking price of $6.5 million (which was, at one point, $12.2 million).

Mr. Jenkin’s persistence and his acumen paid off, and because of it, he received a great deal that will allow him to make the Bentley even greater.

In the next six months, Alexandrians will likely see construction crews at the Bentley, something we haven’t witnessed in decades. He plans on converting portions of the Bentley’s “new wing” into condominiums, the only condominium tower in all of Central Louisiana that will offer sweeping, beautiful views of the Red River, and he will ensure the remainder of the historic structure continues, again, to function as a high-end boutique hotel.

Finally, guys, we have to thank and acknowledge Mayor Jacques Roy. He was first elected six years ago, and despite this intransigence that he sometimes battled against, he remained steadfast: While some lobbied for the City to purchase the Bentley, Mayor Roy championed a private-sector solution. He believed the City must remove itself, as much as possible, from the hotel business. A few months ago, he signed a contingency  purchase agreement for the already-City-owned Alexander Fulton, and this week, he ensured that the Hotel Bentley will remain where it should be, in the private-sector. His work and the years-long efforts by his staff have paid off.

So, three cheers for Mike Jenkins, and three cheers for Jacques Roy. Long live the Hotel Bentley.

David Vitter Is Already Leading In 2015 Gubernatorial Election, According to Former Vitter Staffer Reply

by • Local Political News, Media Studies, National News

A couple of weeks ago, Lane Grigsby, one of the most prolific and influential Republican donors in modern Louisiana history, commissioned the conservative-leaning Bernie Pinsonat to conduct a comprehensive statewide poll that primarily focused on Governor Jindal’s agenda. Unsurprisingly, Pinsonat’s poll revealed that Jindal’s approval rating has dropped substantially; in the course of only a year, Jindal went from being one of the most popular governors in the country to one of the least popular and most controversial. Moreover, Pinsonat’s polling revealed that Jindal’s policies on taxes, the budget, health care, and education are opposed by a majority of Louisianans.

In response to Pinsonat’s poll, Bobby Jindal’s acolytes have been almost too predictable: The data was skewed, they’ve said. This is nothing more than a left-wing conspiracy built on flawed methodology and an oversampling of liberals. Quoting from The Advocate:

Timmy Teepell, Jindal’s chief political adviser, said, “Any poll that has Obama within 6 points of Romney in Louisiana, I’m not going to take seriously.”

Teepell continued, “That’s skewed pretty far to the left.”

It’s worth noting: Timmy Teepell, who is the home-schooled son of a wealthy and influential Baton Rouge family and who remains one of the most powerful figures in Louisiana, a man who currently calls himself Jindal’s Chief of Politics, never attended college. He earned his high school diploma behind his family’s kitchen table, and after bypassing college, he cleverly anointed himself a “Road Scholar.” Mr. Teepell’s “riches-to-riches” story obviously resonates with Governor Jindal. For years, Jindal has entrusted his political messaging to Teepell, and Teepell, to his credit, has been a loyal and well-compensated foot soldier.

Incidentally, Pinsonat’s poll may have placed Obama 6 points behind Romney in Louisiana, but it also revealed that 17% of voters were undecided. Teepell’s criticism is self-serving and without merit. According to Pinsonat’s poll, 39% of Louisianans support the re-election of President Obama. In 2008, 39.9% of Louisianans voted for President Obama; Pinsonat’s poll reveals only that Obama’s support in Louisiana remains solid, while Romney’s is still soft.

Considering that 31% of Louisianans are African-American and that 95+% of African-Americans support Obama, these results shouldn’t be too surprising. Remember also: Romney lost the Louisiana Republican Presidential primary to Rick Santorum. I’m not deluded. I recognize Obama will likely lose Louisiana by double-digits, but he will still garner a significant portion. Even in Louisiana, he’s still the incumbent President.

Either way, though, the point is: Jindal and his allies seek to discredit the conservative-leaning and conservative-sponsored Pinsonat polling because it’s severely embarrassing for them.

Timmy Teepell probably should have just waited a couple of days before insulting Pinsonat and Grigsby’s poll, a poll that actually showed Obama’s support in Louisiana decreasing since 2008.

He should have known that David Vitter was lurking.

Yesterday, Magellan released a poll conducted by a former Vitter staff member. I realize I am burying the real story here, but if you’ve read this far, you should know: David Vitter is most definitely planning to run for Governor of Louisiana, and he rightfully thinks that his strongest opponent is New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

Magellan’s poll is fraught with disastrous flaws: It severely oversamples white Republicans, by at least 15 points; it’s not proportionate among Congressional districts; its methodology and questioning are leading and disingenuous. It’s heavily skewed toward conservatives, which is not surprising; after all, it was led by a Vitter-man. And there’s hardly any mention of Bobby Jindal or his policies; Vitter isn’t even slightly interested in how Jindal is polling.

According to David Vitter’s pollster, Junior United States Senator David Vitter is the most popular elected official in the State of Louisiana. Before even announcing, David Vitter is already a 5-point favorite in a heads-up race for Governor against Mitch Landrieu. According to his poll, the majority of Louisianans care more about taxes than social issues (like cavorting with prostitutes, I imagine); considering that Vitter was initially elected on a platform of social issues– only to be subsequently ensnared in the most notorious prostitution scandal in American history– he must be relieved to know that he can continue ignoring his complicity in alleged federal crimes and focus instead on starving and depriving Louisiana from federal funding.

Oh, and despite what Pinsonat’s poll suggested, Mary Landrieu is rejected by the overwhelming majority of voters. (Sort of. Actually, the questions about Vitter and Mary were completely different. While Magellan asked if people “approved” of Vitter, they then followed up by asking if people agreed that someone should run against Mary).

The take-away is this: While Governor Jindal argues that the polls are all wrong about him, David Vitter is buying his own polls and making himself appear to be our beloved and popular frontrunner.

David Vitter wants to run for Governor, and the Landrieu family still scares the ever-loving hell out of him. As they should: Despite what Vitter’s obviously biased polling suggests, if the election were held tomorrow, Mitch would beat Vitter by double digits. Vitter’s antipathy toward “Democrats” can only go so far in a state in which registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by nearly two-to-one. To outside prognosticators, this may seem baffling, but here’s the thing: Unlike Vitter, Mitch has an actual record to run on, and Louisianans don’t care nearly as much about the United States Senate as they do about the Governor’s Mansion.

Cashing Out: Jindal’s Agenda Opposed by the Majority of Louisianans; Personal Favorability at All-Time Low 1

by • Education, Health Care, Local Political News, Media Studies • Tags: , , , , ,

On Tuesday, October 2, 2012, pollster Bernie Pinsonat of the group Southern Media and Opinions announced the results of the scientific poll he and his organization had conduced in Louisiana. As Clancy DuBos of The Gambit points out, the poll, somewhat ironically, was commissioned and paid for by Baton Rouge conservative Lane Grigsby, a man who has, throughout the years, invested thousands of dollars to support a variety of “down-ticket” candidates, most notably a roster of candidates that Governor Jindal had endorsed for the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Ordinarily, fairly or not, critics would have been prepared to downplay the poll’s results as client-driven and biased, but this time, Pinsonat’s poll revealed something extraordinary, perhaps even embarrassing for the conservatives that have bankrolled and supported Mr. Pinsonat’s operation.

First and most importantly, Governor Jindal’s most recent approval rating is now only 51%, a slight majority (though within the margin of error), representing one of the largest and most significant plummets in Louisiana history. In less than a year, Jindal’s popularity dropped by a staggering 13 points, and before that, his approval had been even higher, hovering around the low-70s.

I called this post “Cashing Out,” because I believe Jindal’s meteorically-sinking polling numbers are the direct result of his decision to spend the bulk of the political capital he had accumulated on poorly-managed, poorly-executed, widely unpopular, and ideologically-driven policies– not because he believed these policies would substantively address any problems in Louisiana, but, instead, because he had hoped that by championing the provocative and expansive national model legislation crafted by conservative think tanks on education, health care, and taxes, he could better brandish his own Republican bonafides and more convincingly make his own case for a vice presidential nomination.

Louisiana wised up. Louisiana caught on. Some of us may remember that when Jindal ran for Governor in 2007, he repeatedly argued that Louisiana was a rich state,  even though we’re one of the poorest in the country. After five years, it should be abundantly clear: Bobby Jindal has never understood Louisiana. He’s lived in the rarefied air of the wealthy and landed elite since he was a teenager, a parallel universe, one where it’s possible to suggest that Louisiana is “rich” merely because all of your friends from Louisiana are rich.

While Governor Jindal travels across the country touting his non-existent record on education reform and his daring plans for school vouchers, the polling indicates that only 26% of Louisianans actually support his education agenda, and most tellingly, 54% of Louisianans (the majority and outside of the margin of error) are opposed to his controversial school voucher program, the centerpiece of his second-term as Governor and, arguably, the most important legislation of his career.

Again, Jindal may still be approved by the narrowest of margins, but if you dig a little deeper, you find that his actual plans are overwhelmingly opposed: A stunning 68% of Louisianans oppose additional cuts to the state’s operating budget. 79% of Louisianans believe that additional cuts to the charity hospital system will severely hurt quality of care.  And, in perhaps the most damning indictment against Jindal’s record, 69% of Louisianas believe the State Legislature should be more independent from the Governor.

Today, the most popular statewide elected official in Louisiana is United States Senator Mary Landrieu, the only Democrat in Louisiana who currently holds statewide office; Landrieu is approved by 62% of voters, 11% more than support Governor Jindal.

But that’s an entirely different story.

Fox News’s Self-Imploding Bombshell Reply

by • Local Political News, Media Studies, National News

Seven months ago, shortly after the death of conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart, the brain trust that inherited his “media empire” announced they had “bombshell” footage of a young Barack Obama, footage they claimed would prove, once and for all, that President Obama was a radical racist. Sean Hannity and Fox News salivated, teasing the story for hours, promising an “exclusive” that would forever change the way Americans thought of the President.

And as it turned out, the story was nothing more than a recycled video that had aired on PBS in 2008 of Barack Obama, as a law school student, introducing one of his college professors at a rally protesting the lack of diversity among Harvard’s tenured law professors. It wasn’t a bombshell; it was a dud. Because the actual “bombshell” was not about what Obama said but about the nationally-renowned law professor he had introduced, the conservative activists and Breitbart heirs who had hailed the video as a damning indictment of Obama were suddenly forced to explain the nuances and the contours of critical race theory; almost immediately, they demonstrated their complete ignorance, reminiscent of when conservative pundits suddenly all became experts in liberation theology after Jeremiah Wright became a household name.

Yesterday, though, Sean Hannity and Fox News outdid themselves. During the mid-afternoon, Matt Drudge, with sirens blazing, announced Tucker Carlson and The Daily Caller were set to release another bombshell video of President Obama that would prove, once and for all, he was a radical racist. But if you wanted to see the video, you’d have to wait to watch Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News. It was, to quote Yogi Berra, “deja vu all over again.”

Once again, as it turned out, the video was recycled; the story was stale; this wasn’t news, and it most certainly wasn’t a bombshell. It was simply footage of a 2007 speech that then-Senator Obama delivered in front of a majority African-American audience at Hampton University in Virginia, a speech that had been covered and reported by numerous news outlets.

Three weeks ago, I heard former Education Secretary Bill Bennett tell an overwhelmingly white conservative audience at SMU that America was no longer a “racist country,” a statement that earned him a round of sustained applause. The most powerful example of this, he claimed, was the election of President Obama. Bennett, who spent the bulk of his remarks outlining his opposition to the President, gave lie to an insidious argument: That America has somehow entered a post-racial era because a man that he voted against and continues to vociferously and publicly oppose was elected to the highest office in the land. “I’m not racist. Some of my best friends are black” has become “We’re not racist. Our President is black.”

I am not, by any means, suggesting that I believe Bill Bennett is racist; I just think he’s fundamentally wrong: Racism is still alive and well in these United States, and it’s intellectually lazy and dishonest to suggest that President Obama’s election ushered in a post-racial era.

I watched Sean Hannity’s “bombshell” report yesterday on Fox News, and as a white guy who was born and raised in a majority African-American city and who attended and graduated from a majority African-American public high school, I’ve gotta say: As demonstrated by  their “exclusive” report on the five-year-old recording of President Obama at Hampton University, I don’t think there’s any question that Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson are both racists, in the strictest sense of the term. And I grew up around white people who spat out the n-word in casual conversation; I know people who treat the Confederate flag with more reverence than the American flag, and I’ve even encountered a few people who were members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Let me explain: There is a difference between the backwoods, overt racism of the ignorant and uneducated and the insidious and subtle racism of the wealthy and educated elite. I’m not trying to excuse or diminish the festering hatred espoused by overt racists, but I strongly believe that subtle racism can actually be much more insidious and corrosive. Largely, this is because overt racism is so easily identifiable and recognizable, and although we are not yet a post-racial society, overt racists are, fortunately, more readily marginalized; they’re not mainstream.

Admittedly, I don’t watch much of Sean Hannity’s program; I understand that he talks for a living, and I’m sure that one could easily find examples of him talking highly and respectfully of African-Americans. Those examples wouldn’t change my mind, however. Yesterday, he and Tucker Carlson spent thirty minutes on primetime television arguing that Barack Obama was a racist, because in a five-year-old video, the President sounded more “black” than he usually does. This is what subtle racism looks like: It’s two wealthy, conservative white men warning America that the nation’s first African-American President once addressed a majority African-American audience in a “phony” “black” voice. They’re not really worried about Obama’s “affectation.” The story wasn’t about ensuring that people knew Obama “faked” sounding “black;” it was about reminding a white conservative audience of Obama’s blackness, his “Otherness.”

For twenty years, whenever Bill Clinton spoke in front of a majority African-American congregation, his oratorical skills were lauded, even by conservatives who resented his politics. He was praised for his ability to channel the cadence of a folksy, charismatic Southern preacher. Indeed, shortly after the Democratic National Convention, Chuck Schumer compared Clinton’s speech to a sermon in an African-American church.

From 2000-2008, the President of the United States was a man who was born in Connecticut, the son and grandson of one of the country’s most powerful and established families, a man who spent most of his childhood at elite New England boarding schools before graduating from Yale and then Harvard. Yet, somehow, George W. Bush always sounded like an east Texan wildcatter.

On a personal note, whenever I spend two or more hours around my hometown friends, I inevitably, almost instinctually, revert to a pronounced Louisiana drawl.

Fox News is now attempting to frame its “bombshell” exclusive video of Obama as a story about what he said; the story was actually about how he said it: He sounded like a black minister speaking in front of a gathering of black ministers. That was Fox’s story; that was what Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and others debated for over a half an hour. It wasn’t about what Obama had said but how he said it.

This is most amusing to me. Here’s the headline Fox News is currently running:

As the actual video proves, that’s not at all what Obama was suggesting. Quoting (bold mine):

“When 9/11 happened in New York City, they waived the Stafford Act. … And that was the right thing to do,” he tells the crowd at Hampton University in Virginia. “When Hurricane Andrew struck in Florida, people said, ‘Look at this devastation. We don’t expect you to come up with your own money. Here, here’s the money to rebuild. We’re not going wait for you to scratch it together, because you’re part of the American family.’ “

Obama, echoing rapper Kanye West’s infamous anti-Bush remarks a couple years earlier, then argues that New Orleans was treated differently, suggesting the reason was that the city is mostly black.

“What’s happening down in New Orleans? Where’s your dollar? Where’s your Stafford Act money?” Obama says. “Makes no sense. … Tells me that somehow the people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much.”

Amen.

He wasn’t channeling Kanye West; Obama didn’t say that New Orleans was being treated differently because “the city is mostly black.” Fox just made that up. (Just as they also made up the notion that Obama was “dog whistling” to black racists by suggesting that we should reinvest in urban infrastructure instead of building more highways to the suburbs; it’s called “smart growth,” and it’s not a racist conspiracy).

Frankly, as a Louisianan, I wish Obama had said what he said more forcefully and more frequently.

He was expressing what every single rationally-minded person in Louisiana already knew to be true: That the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina was an abysmal failure, that nearly two years after the storm, Louisiana’s recovery was plagued by bureaucratic red tape, that we should have immediately suspended certain provisions of the Stafford Act in order to provide relief to Louisiana in the same way we did for Florida after Hurricane Andrew and New York after September 11th, that Louisiana was not treated equitably. This is all irrefutably true, and I don’t have any patience for the cadre of Republican pundits and news outlets who seek to revise Louisiana history to tailor some sort of fantasy narrative about how an African-American politician criticizing the federal response to Katrina in front of a majority African-American response is somehow racist.

Again, this is the headline story on FoxNews.com, and it’s cringe-worthy.

At least one Louisiana-based blogger agrees with Fox’s angle. In a post titled “The 2007 ‘Ghetto Obama’ Speech,” Scott McKay (who completely misses the legitimate criticisms of Stafford Act exemptions) of The Hayride writes:

Furthermore, what’s with this assumption that everybody in New Orleans who was affected by Katrina was black? Lakeview, which was mostly white, was essentially cleared when the 17th Street Canal levee failed. And Metairie Club Gardens, perhaps the richest and whitest area in the whole city, took six feet of water. Those were million-dollar houses and they were ruined. Even today, not all of them have been rebuilt.

One can only hope that Fox News will take notice and immediately book Scott McKay for a series of national interviews. He can talk about how racist it is that “ghetto Obama” neglected to mention the plight of millionaires who haven’t yet rebuilt their million-dollar homes.