Anti-Common Core Movement : Strange Bedfellows and Fleas

I don't like the guy either but really folks ? 

Far be it from me to find fault with the current backlash movement that has Arne Duncan looking for a big table to hide under, President Obama playing wack a mole between his disastrous Health care rollout and his equally toxic education privatization attempts and Sheriff Andy closer to home trying to put the ten foot pole to Dowager Empress Tish and her rickshaw driver Lil John King. This is all great stuff folks. I watched King and his slimy sidekick Lentz eviscerated in state hearings by Tom Abinanti who didn't even bother to conceal his contempt and his fury for either of them or the stupid games they are playing. It was like watching a pissed off parent doing an intervention on a teen ager who's wrecked the family car, drained the bank account and inked a Mike Tyson tribal on his face. In a word it was gratifying. So with all of this going our way I am going to be your prototypical teacher and find something to gripe about. Well, maybe not gripe exactly, let's say I am feeling a need to make an observation. 

An interesting mix of disparate souls are coming together under the banner STOP COMMON CORE.  Putatively this would appear to be a good thing. Scratch a little beneath the surface though and you'll find some free agents whose actual intentions aren't clear, their interest in education and/or the good of American kids is not even on the radar and the only apparent motivation they have is a Tucker Carlsonesque hatred for the POTUS. In Bowtie fortunate son Carlon's memes Bill Clinton was first cousin to Beelzebub. In the current climate they've simply slapped Obama's face over all the old wanted posters. If you've read anything I have to say about the corporate sell out, backstabbing guy in the White House I am pretty safely on the side on Not a fan. I do however require some factual basis for my odium and I prefer to be able to source any remarks I make to his detriment. The experience I've been having of late is mainly confined to the social media milieu but I don't want to say it doesn't matter because much of what gets said in this country and the world gets said on social media. 

A group I'd joined on FB in the wake of Arne Duncan putting his size 14 wingtip squarely in his mouth seemed to be committed to the simple tenets of kicking Arne's ass and stopping Common Core. It also had the just folks appeal of using the word "Moms" in its name. So how could a bunch of Town n Country van driving, crockpot meal making, coupon clipping, kid loving folk like "MOMS" be a bad thing? Well for starters I am beginning to see the advantages of screening your population. (charter schools)The group in question bears the status of "open group" which means you are not vetted or questioned on any of your intentions or background, you are simply welcomed. Kind of the way we do in public schools. And in a similar fashion as we experience in public schools it doesn't take long before some of the less than stable souls begin bubbling to the surface with their varied and bizarre agenda. One night I logged on to find a post from one deranged party who went caps button for emphasis to announce : I HATE LIBERALS. There came a flurry of remarks including one that said "if this person is still a member I am leaving." Wow. How does this stop Common Core again? Another member posted some pretty nasty Obama smear material then bragged that he'd also posted it at Infowars.com. If I have to explain Infowars.com to you I would rather let you go see for yourself. This is the guy the crazies roll their eyes at cause he's even too crazy for them.  Hint : he currently has a portrait of Obama wearing a Soviet style military jacket holding a blonde baby with a red obama logo flag on his homepage. (I caved and posted it above...) 

The coup de grace to me and the anti Duncan moms came last night when one of them posted a huge rambling manifesto dredging up Bill Ayers the former Weatherman Underground member and trying to tie him around Obama's neck by claiming a) that Ayers wrote one of Obama's books for him and b) Ayers essentially wrote the Common Core Standards. She then advised comments to avoid being political!!!  Oh here's an easy fix says I and I google up the letter Ayers wrote to Obama crucifying him for his education policies and essentially calling him a sell out and a bitch and about everything I have ever called him. A disinterested party given this open letter would have no choice to conclude that Mr. Ayers regardless of his past associations with shadowy groups has no respect and even less love for the current Socialist, Communist, Fascist Kenyan Al Qaeda operative residing prominently on Pennsylvania Ave. Ahhh but here's where I overestimated this bunch. Instead of reading the thing they came at me telling me I think I am so smart... They said things like He wrote Obama's book for him, he'd never criticize him. O.k. then don't read the link just argue with me because I posted it. When I told them Ayers didn't write any of the standards a guy named David Coleman wrote most of them one lady said Oh he's in there I researched it. I asked her to provide me links to her "research" and she told me I was blocked. O.K. I might have called her a fucking moron too...

In closing I did what any self respecting Irish American would do I unloaded a stream of invective and insult on the lot of them and promised them they were too stupid to sustain a group with this many morons in it. One of the last things I read was Anthony Cody, one of the most intelligent writers and Common Core critics alive  on planet earth trying to explain that Ayers name is on none of the documents and a guy named David Coleman was primarily responsible for the mess and loves to brag about it. The phrase 'ridiculous to the sublime" came to mind and I felt sorry for he of the sublime insights on Common Core as he labored in an Herculean fashion to explain reality to the ridiculous. I chose to fight another day and be a little more judicious about whose Anti- groups I join. Bless Anthony Cody for fighting the good fight. I simply couldn't do it.