With the Democratic governor of Illinois' pick for the U.S. Senate getting much publicity, the Democratic governor of Colorado has made sure to appoint the most exquisitely genteel individual imaginable to the U.S. Senate: Denver school chief Michael Bennet, age 44, the former editor of the Yale Law Review. His brother Jim is the editor of the Atlantic Monthly and his father was head of National Public Radio and president of Wesleyan U.
After Michael Bennet got rich, he then decided, in the mode of the time (e.g., Bill Gates), to fix the public schools. After all, how hard could it be?
A couple of years ago, in an article Across Difficult Country summarizes here, The New Yorker profiled Bennet's travails in trying to close a gang-infested Denver high school with terrible test scores, Manual. It turned out that the all-Mexican student body and their families kind of liked their terrible school, didn't appreciate poor Bennet's meddling, and, not being indoctrinated in the theology of the overclass, didn't expect to do much better at a different school just because it had enjoyed higher test scores before they arrived.
Yet, much in the manner of Barack Obama's unsuccessful chairmanship of the lavishly-funded Annenberg Chicago Challenge, Bennet has managed to fail upward.
Evidently, the point of being a public school reformer these days is to become known as a public school reformer, not to actually reform the public school. What matters is that you publicly proclaim that you believe the public schools can be fixed. Nobody actually expects you to be able to do anything with public school students, at least not enough to hold it against you when you fail, as the skyrocketing careers of Obama and Bennet demonstrate.
Connoisseurs of overclass social markers will enjoy his New York Times' 1997 wedding announcement:
Susan Diane Daggett, a daughter of Patricia B. Palmer of Little Rock, Ark., and Jesse B. Daggett of Marianna, Ark., was married yesterday to Michael Farrand Bennet, a son of Douglas J. Bennet Jr. of Middletown, Conn., and Susanne K. Bennet of Washington. The Rev. Arnold W. Hearn, an Episcopal priest, performed the ceremony at Crystal Lake in Marianna.
The bride, 33, a lawyer, is to join the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, formerly the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, in Denver next month. Ms. Daggett, who is keeping her name, graduated magna cum laude from Mount Holyoke College, and she and the bridegroom received law degrees from Yale University.
Her mother is a painter and an instructor at the Arkansas Art Center's Museum School in Little Rock. Her father is a partner in Daggett, VanDover, Donovan & Perry, a Little Rock law firm.
Mr. Bennet, 32, was until recently a counsel to the Deputy Attorney General of the United States. He graduated with honors from Wesleyan University.
His father is the president of Wesleyan; he was the Assistant Secretary of State for international organizations in 1993 and 1994 and the president of National Public Radio from 1983 until 1992. The bridegroom's mother is an art historian specializing in Roman antiquities.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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45 comments:
Great, Generation X is in charge of the Education and HUD departments.
I mean, they flocked to see Dangerous Minds when it came out -- how tough could it be to fix "underperforming" schools?
Simply divert most of the stimulus package to Teach for America, and let a thousand Michelle Pfeiffers bloom in the ghettos.
Steve, "Agnostic" -
You wonder whether effete White European Males (WEM) like Bennet really believe the P.C. B.S. about such things as "fixing underperforming schools."
Can people like Bennet actually be THAT stupid? After all, Bennet was smart enough for Yale Law. Maybe it's merely a career move for these guys..
Either way, Bennet's own ethnic kin are the midst of being being ECLIPSED and REPLACED.
As Obama takes office, David Frum is set to launch a new website in two weeks - focusing on a "New Majority" in American politics.
New Majority?
The White European Male was needed to elect Presidents for much of America's history. "You can't elect a Presidnet without the White Male." This is why Irving Kristol and the Neocon disciples needed the White Male vote and adopted the strategy of pandering to Christian red state Evangelicals for so long.
But those days are disappearing.
The Immigration Act of 1965 + Mexican amnesty starting in the 1980's brought down America's White European majority.
Today, White Europeans are only 65% of American society (from 90% circa the year 1950), a new "Multicultural" majority is forming.
And Frum and the Neocons are here to cultivate it.
You could sense them chomping at the bit during the Palin fiasco. Frum and others were almost palpably repulsed by having to defend such an uncouth Red Stater. We can only imagine the secret, inner torment for so many years..
Those days are coming to an end.
Frum recently stated he believes that "political voting majorities change with the times," and strategists must adapt.
In other words, red Staters had to be pandered to for many years for the Necons and Zionists to keep power --- but not forever.
Will a multicultural Hispanic demographic will be much more "docile" towards "control."?
We know it will be 15 points lower in IQ....
http://www.newmajority.com/index.php
New York seems likely to get Caroline Kennedy, with her expertise in public school reform. It must be fashionable to "fall upwards" into the Senate these days ...
"Failing upwards" is a pretty good line. But maybe he didn't fail. Maybe he is in on a cynical plan to maintain the status quo.
Isn't it logical to put retired army drill seargents in charge of discipline at schools like that ?
They understand how to make the most of the material that they have
The Wikipedia says that Mr. Bennett has 3 daughters. I didn't think that kind of people bred much. Isn't that supposed to be bad for the environment or something? Perhaps the kids were actually adopted from fourth-world countries.
It also says that in childhood "he was enrolled at St. Albans School, a prominent all-boys preparatory school..." Awww, the PC school reformer's NPR-running parents actually understood what makes a good school good. Well, at least subconsciously they did. Otherwise, why pay all that money?
Here in the UK we don't believe in public education but we do believe in public health services.
The UK equivalent is for politicians to loudly proclaim that they 'believe in' the National Health Service; rather like the audience at Peter Pan shouts out that they 'believe in' fairies.
The similarity is that a strident assertion of belief will bring Tinkerbell/ the NHS back to life.
Just as the US belief in public school education is compatible/ synonymous with indifference to the quality of schooling, so a belief in the UK NHS is compatible/ synonymous with indifference to the quality of health services.
Clearly, believing-in something has subtle semantic attributes.
My brother-in-law, a staunch liberal, just countered with the comment that Bennet doesn't stand a chance of re-election.
I pointed out that he likely isn't looking to get re-elected. He and his wife are looking for a good face-saving way to get out of DEnver and get back East where they can get on the Obama foundation/NGO gravy train.
It is unlikely that Bennet can make more money as a financial industry scam artist -- lots of unemployed bankers these days -- but they can at least get set up in DC for the DC party circuit for a couple years as a respectable "Mr. Senator" and not "Mr. Failed School Reformer".
I think of these guys as the liberal equivalents of Chainsaw Al Dunlap. He did fine as long as he could dump the companies he screwed up and get out of Dodge. Mike Bennet faces the same issue: how to get out soon enough that he can blmes his screwups on the guy that comes after him.
NEw Yorker profile of the wunderknabe here.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/01/15/070115fa_fact_boo
Like you sed, people like Bennet meddle around in underclass systems in order to prove their social credentials. In olden times this was done through a missionary stint or by putting in extra work at the church. In modern post-Christian West, you do this my pandering to the cultural invaders.
In reality people like Bennet, Gates or even Obama don't give a f for the underclass.
hollywood taught me that the reason students don't perform well in school is unattractive teachers.
great article steve.
Maybe this “fix the urban schools” rite of passage is just a modern version of medieval self-flagellation. If I recall right, the and gentry whipped themselves bloody once or twice a year before going back to exploiting the productive peasantry.
'This is exactly the kind of background that lets you understand the minds of Manual High School students.'
Too funny.
There has to be some error in the wedding announcement. Bennett was 32 in 1997, but the NY Slimes has him heading up NPR from 1983 to 1992, or from ages 18 to 27, when he would have to have been at Wesleyan and Yale Law...
Evidently, the point of being a public school reformer these days is to become known as a public school reformer, not to actually reform the public school.
Don't forget that one can get credit for being a public school reformer while sending one's own children to private schools. E.g. Caroline Kennedy.
I am Lugash.
The financial and education crises are very similar. In both cases you have inept leadership that sells a bad product to a significant minority of its customers.
When it fails horribly management is treated with kid gloves. More money goes into rewarding the failure. And most importantly, the way the customers act is tossed down the memory whole.
I am Lugash.
I read the 12-page New Yorker article by Katherine Boo, it was well-written and detailed. it is at
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/01/15/070115fa_fact_boo?currentPage=all
as it turns out, it was Bennett's father who was head of NPR in the 80s
America has been chugging along for 200+ years DESPITE the actions of its sick control freak overclass whether gentile or Jew. This is the creepy gentile strain. Education apparachiks, NPR, eco-hysteria. Ugh.
"Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund?"
F*** YOU. That is straight out of Tom Wolfe.
I bet half the family is on medication due to stress and worry induced by "global warming". They're probably regular dinner partners with Albert Icecap Gore. They sit around dreaming up the infinitely huge bureacracy that will be necessary to collect global carbon taxes.
The trail of radical Yankee do-gooder destruction goes back hundreds of years. Gore lost his home state because Tennesseans correctly recognized him as a Harvard Yankee.
They. Must. Bring. The. Planet. Under. Control.
The only good news is these people usually have two career households; get married at 30+; only have one or even zero children; in other words they are dying out. But even dying out is a status game for them. They're saving the planet by reducing their phony carbon footprint to zero. Surprise: it's a death cult (like all liberal ideologies).
All you need is "ganas'!
"You could sense them chomping at the bit during the Palin fiasco. Frum and others were almost palpably repulsed by having to defend such an uncouth Red Stater."
You could sense that only because you were imagining it. Bill Kristol had his nose right up Palin's ass. And Frum, AFAIK, is married to a WASP. So much for antipathy toward the white majority.
"I think of these guys as the liberal equivalents of Chainsaw Al Dunlap. He did fine as long as he could dump the companies he screwed up and get out of Dodge. Mike Bennet faces the same issue: how to get out soon enough that he can blmes his screwups on the guy that comes after him."
I've thought the same thing about Newark mayor Cory Booker. If he were a calculating pol, he'd already set his sights on a House or Senate seat, before people realize that Newark is still a (less corrupt at least) shit hole. But I get the sense that he actually gives a shit about Newark. He's probably smarter than Obama, but apparently not as ambitious or opportunistic.
- Fred
Bennet is probably showing that he has learned the lesson of Kurt Schmoke of Baltimore. If you stay around too long trying to fix the problems of a minority dominated urban area, you will be viewed with failure.
What is odd about Bennet is he made his money consolidating bankrupt movie theaters. It looked like he tried the same strategy to fix schools and it did not work.
And the first question that any Congressmen should ask him is where does his children go to school. If he says private school, the next question should be what policies will the Obama Administration do to make public schools more like the schools that Bennet's children attend.
"You wonder whether effete White European Males (WEM) like Bennet really believe the P.C. B.S. about such things as "fixing underperforming schools."
Can people like Bennet actually be THAT stupid? After all, Bennet was smart enough for Yale Law. Maybe it's merely a career move for these guys.."
You obviously have no experience living with among the whitest of Whiter People.
I can assure you that the SWPL crew of dogooders, social engineers, and bureaucratic meddlers really do believe their own propaganda.
You'd hope that these people were just Machiavellian hypocrites who didn't really believe what they were saying, but in the education industry -- not at all.
Spend some time tutoring or teaching, and you soon discover that they really have drunk the kool-aid.
Part of the problem is that bureaucrats don't really want the systems they control to change. If they change for the better, then they have been shown to have been incompetent before.
Fred -
You claim Bill Kristol and David Frum don't have antipathy toward America's White majority.
If Kristol genuinely had the interests of White European America at heart - how do you explain his consistent support for Mexican amnesty?
Clearly, Kristol and the Neocons publicly advocate for White Males because they need their vote. Meanwhile, the Neocons have never really come through for ANYTHING for White Males. Except fight Israel's wars..
Kristol may appear to advocate for White Europeans. But he is a political strategist and a "master rhetorician," if you will -- very skillful at glibly taking any abstract position and arguing for it in print or on TV.
Kristol is the guy that Harvey Mansfield called "the best student I ever had." And who is Harvey Mansfield? The Straussian authority on Machiavelli, who taught the world double-talk, "ends justify the means."
My explanation for Kristol's support for Mexican amnesty is that he is well aware of the coming demographic eclipse of White Europeans. And we have to conclude, Bill Kristol supports it. How can we not?
You also claim David Frum has no antipathy for White Europeans simply because he married a WASP.
Frum's wife, the writer Danielle Crittenden is from a rich, prominent Canadian family - hardly a prole Red Stater.
Further, if the Frum children are being raised as Jews - well, this hardly constitutes a "merger" with a WASP. More like an acquisition of one genome by another.
I hate to be crude, and I don't like when the children of public figures are discussed. But you brought it up.
He's probably smarter than Obama, but apparently not as ambitious or opportunistic.
I always found Cory Booker to be personally far more impressive than Obama, but as you say that is a barrier to advancement. He's also an actual black American, in the descendent-of-slaves sense.
"You wonder whether effete White European Males (WEM) like Bennet really believe the P.C. B.S. about such things as "fixing underperforming schools.""
I can almost guarantee that they don't actually believe in fixing inner-city schools.
I recently saw the Old Spice "LL Cool J" Swagger commercial on network television.
Swagger encapsulates that soon-to-arrive American Idiocracy where 'Haulin'Ass and Gettin'Paid' is the raison d'être of a society resulting from the misguided policies of our worlds Bill Gates and Michael Bennets.
Isn't it logical to put retired army drill seargents in charge of discipline at schools like that ?
They understand how to make the most of the material that they have
If you want to see what the Army can do with that material, the Vietnam era is a better guide I'd guess.
"Isn't it logical to put retired army drill seargents in charge of discipline at schools like that ?"
There is one school that does!
I'm surprised Steve has never brought up the Oakland Military Institute. Years ago Brown actually pushed for this charter school. Every classroom has a drill sergeant. Discipline is harsh. The school draws from a pool a pool of generally poorly performing students. About 25% are tossed out for discipline problems. The graduating class doesn't do any better on state exams but college matriculation rates are much higher, showing that the method is good for instilling good habits at least.
http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/june/omi/
"If Kristol genuinely had the interests of White European America at heart - how do you explain his consistent support for Mexican amnesty?
Clearly, Kristol and the Neocons publicly advocate for White Males because they need their vote. Meanwhile, the Neocons have never really come through for ANYTHING for White Males. Except fight Israel's wars.."
Hardly any elite white gentiles have done anything for white males either since the 1960's. The blaming Jews for everything is getting really old because elite leftist Jews would not get anywhere without the help of the larger population of elite white liberals.
In regards to amnesty, I recall during the 2006 and 2007 amnesty battles that Kristol and Fred Barnes were in favor of amnesty but most other neocon outfits like NRO, Human Events, and the American Spectator were opposed and mostly argued against amnesty, albeit tepidly.
The main drivers of the two major amnesty drives were the Rove/Bush master plan of Invade, Invite, In Hoc, big Agriculture, the Chamber of Commerce, the Roman Catholic Church, and big Service Unions.
The Jewish neocons were generally opposed to amnesty. Though there were some splits in their ranks at the time, the neocon outfits like NRO probably were most likely a net-net positive in killing amnesty because they helped get out information to talk radio hosts about behind the scenes congressional maneuvering.
Overall, they were certainly not the major drivers behind amnesty.
I'm shocked that the child of the President of a Methodist college was married by an Episcopal priest.
Hmm... suspicious.
Both the Clintons and the Bushes are Methodists. Hmmm...
And the President-elect went to a United Church of Christ (formerly Congregationalists-who changed their name) for decades.
Both the Methodists and the Congregationalists (who changed their names) were known as ... Dissenters! (Can't get more seditious than that).
Hmmm...
Hardly any elite white gentiles have done anything for white males either since the 1960's. The blaming Jews for everything is getting really old because elite leftist Jews would not get anywhere without the help of the larger population of elite white liberals.
This reveals, retrospectively, what a truly great figure Joe McCarthy was. His main battle was with the left-wing of the WASP establishment. Was he truly aware of how accurate he was in his choice of targets? If he was (despite his tactical errors) he was the real-deal Man of the Century.
Anony-Mouse,
I don't think the Methodists are dissenters. The cam a little late to the party and they are not really calvinists.
Public education is a racket. What do American elites do when the people discover that they are being ripped off by the public education racket? The elites start another racket: public education reform.
Now the taxpayers and foundations have two rackets to pay for instead of just one.
Rather than calling Bennet a failure, I would call him a pioneer of the public education reform racket. He is opening doors of opportunity to people with postgraduate degrees who would like to pursue cynical and dishonest careers in education-related racketeering.
Agnostic: Obama and his ilk are going to "fix" the public schools by redlining them.
Why do you think he and his wife - a dimwitted AA beneficiary - chose Sidwell Friends for their children?
Self-righteous clowns like Jimmy Carter chose "safe" D.C. public schools for their children. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Carter
There's no need for political cover when you're the Magic Negro.
Shalom to Anony-mouse and Fred:
There is plenty of evidence to link the Neocons to amnesty. First, this goes way back to the early 1990s when NR adopted the Paleocon position of reducing both legal and illegal immigration. In response to that, the Neocons at the Weekly Standard and Commentary got Bill Buckley to fire the then editor of NR and to purge all the immigration control advocates from NR, including Steve. The Neocons also sought the de-funding of all immigration control onservatives.
On Fox News, Bill Kristol stated that he was and I quote a “liberal on illegal immigration.” The whole idea of amnesty began with the Neocons and was adopted by Rove and Bush. Way back in 1994, Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett went out to California to campaign against Proposition 187, which was intended to restrict government benefits for illegals. That proposition was a centerpiece of Republican Pete Wilson’s re-election bid. It was Neocon mafia Godfather Irving Kristol who gave the order for Kemp and Bennett to publicly campaign against prop 187.
The Neocon finger prints are all over the anti-control immigration fight on the Right for over the last 25 years.
After setting you guys straight I want to belatedly wish you a Happy Hanukah. Right now I have to go walk my d_g.
Steve's post was really funny. I nominate him for Bill Kristol's space in the NY Times.
Oh, never mind.
Goyish Atheist,
I didn't say that Kristol wasn't pro-amnesty (so were plenty of non-Jewish Republicans, from Reagan to McCain, and of course Kristol's partner Fred Barnes). I did say that Kristol was pro-Palin (which is true) and that he and Frum aren't anti-white gentile Americans, which is also true. Frum likes them so much, in fact, that he married one.
Thanks for the holiday wishes. A belated Merry Christmas to you (assuming you aren't Orthodox, in which case it's not belated).
- Fred
To save the public school system, you have to destroy it, or at least, re-define it.
The trail of radical Yankee do-gooder destruction goes back hundreds of years.
In case you didn't notice, Bennet's wife -- the one who went to work for the parodically-named legal defense fund -- is from Arkansas (and looks it).
Gore lost his home state because Tennesseans correctly recognized him as a Harvard Yankee.
Yes, that explains perfectly why they voted for Bush.
Dear sirs,
If you want to scapegoat someone for the US educational disaster, I'd suggest to choose a completely blamess "goat". That's what scapegoating is all about, innit?
My "goat" of choice:
Spaniards and their Backward Culture !
Thomas Jefferson to Monsieur Dupont de Nemours.
Poplar Forest, April 24, 1816
"In the Constitution of Spain, as proposed by the late Cortes, there was a principle entirely new to me, and not noticed in yours, that no person, born after that day, should ever acquire the rights of citizenship until he could read and write. It is impossible sufficiently to estimate the wisdom of this provision"
Nobody Expects the Illiterate Inquisition !
(but there it is)
I mean...
it's unbelievable what those Popists and Jesuits are doing to us !
I didn't say that Kristol wasn't pro-amnesty (so were plenty of non-Jewish Republicans, from Reagan to McCain,...-fred
Pretty low going all the way back to the original 1986 amnesty to slime Ronnie. Everyone promised
(even the apparently non-sleazy co-sponsor Sen. Simpson) that it would the first and last such amnesty and the enforcement provisions would actually be taken seriously.
Oh yeah, and illegal immigration was considered such a minor problem back then that even Patrick J Buchanan had yet to express concern over it. The issue was the province of environmentalist Population Bomb nuts.
Yes, that explains perfectly why they voted for Bush.
Bush put on a much better act than Gore. The ne'er-do-wellness and drinking helped.
It's hard to be thought of as a good old boy when your "S"s are sibilant.
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