Kurt Nicklas
2007-08-02 11:30:34 UTC
Did I Miss the "Hip" Part?
By Ann Coulter
FrontPageMagazine.com | 8/2/2007
CNN commentators keep telling us how young and hip the audience was
for last week's YouTube Democratic debate, apparently unaware that the
camera occasionally panned across the audience, which was the same
oddball collection of teachers' union shills and welfare recipients
you see at all Democratic gatherings.
Noticeably, Gov. Bill Richardson got the first "woo" of the debate -
the mating call of rotund liberal women - for demanding a federal
mandate that would guarantee public schoolteachers a minimum salary of
$40,000.
So much for the "younger, hipper" audience. Maybe CNN meant "hippier,"
as in, "My, she's looking a bit hippy these days."
Not counting talking snowmen, the main difference in the YouTube
debate audience and the audience for the earlier CNN Democratic debate
is that the YouTube debate had 173,000 fewer viewers in the 18-49
demographic. So it was provably not young and, on the basis of casual
observation, definitely not hip.
As usual, the audience consisted mostly of public schoolteachers.
According to CNN, the highest reading achieved on the CNN feelings-
knob was for Richardson talking about public schoolteachers. (Some in
the audience said they hadn't been that excited since the last time
they had sex with an underage student.)
B. Hussein Obama said he was for slavery reparations in many forms,
but the only one that got applause was for more "investment" in
schools. In Obama's defense, the precise question was: "But is African-
Americans ever going to get reparations for slavery?" So a switch to
the subject of education was only natural.
Moreover, a question on reparations has got to be confusing when
you're half white and half black. What do you do? Demand an apology
for slavery and money from yourself? I guess biracial reparations
would involve sending yourself money, then sending back a portion of
that money to yourself, minus 50 percent in processing fees - which is
the same way federal aid works.
It was fun to hear the Democratic candidates give heart-rending
reasons for not sending their own kids to public schools. Except John
Edwards. He got a "woo" for sending his kids to public schools from
all those "young, hip" Democrats whose greatest concern is how to
transfer more money to public schoolteachers while reducing their
workload.
The candidates all managed to come up with good reasons for sending
their kids to private schools - with extra points for reasons that
involved a family tragedy or emergency - but it didn't seem to occur
to any of them that ordinary families might have good reasons, too.
In her first risible lie of the debate, Hillary said Chelsea went to
public schools in Arkansas. But when they moved to Washington, they
were advised that "if she were to go to a public school, the press
would never leave her alone, because it's a public school. So I had to
make a very difficult decision."
"Unfortunately," she said, it was "good advice."
Was it really that difficult a decision not to send Chelsea to public
schools in Washington, D.C.?
This is how the New York Times recently described the schools in
Washington, which it called "arguably the nation's most dysfunctional
school system."
"Though it is one of the country's highest-spending districts, most of
the money goes to central administration, not to classrooms, according
to a recent series of articles in the Washington Post. Its 55,000
mostly poor students score far worse than comparable children anywhere
else in reading and math, with nearly 74 percent of the district's low-
income eighth-graders lacking basic math skills, compared with the
national average of 49 percent."
So Hillary was dying to send Chelsea to the D.C. public schools, but
"unfortunately" did not do so only because of the press? Did she also
agonize over whether to allow Chelsea to play in traffic?
She was not dying to send Chelsea to D.C. public schools. And no
Democrat cares about "education" or "the poor."
Democrats care about social service bureaucrats who make their living
allegedly working on behalf of the poor - the famed "public service"
the Democrats always drone on about - jobs that would disappear if we
ever eliminated poverty. That's why Democrats keep coming up with
policies designed to create millions and millions more poor people.
Democrats fight tooth and nail against any measures that would
actually help the poor, such as allowing schools to fire bad teachers.
They refuse to allow parents with children in the rotten D.C. public
schools to take money out of the public school system so their kids
could go to Sidwell Friends like Chelsea.
Most important, Democrats resolutely refuse to tell the poor the
secret to not being poor: Keep your knees together until marriage.
That's it. Not class size, not preschool, not even vouchers, though
vouchers would obviously improve the education of all students. You
could have lunatics running the schools - and often do - and if the
kids live with married parents, they will end up at good colleges and
will lead happy, productive lives 99 percent of the time.
But Democrats don't care about the poor. They don't care about the
children. They care about government teachers and other government
bureaucrats - grimy, dowdy women who "woo" at political debates. Or as
CNN calls them, the "young," "hip" crowd.
By Ann Coulter
FrontPageMagazine.com | 8/2/2007
CNN commentators keep telling us how young and hip the audience was
for last week's YouTube Democratic debate, apparently unaware that the
camera occasionally panned across the audience, which was the same
oddball collection of teachers' union shills and welfare recipients
you see at all Democratic gatherings.
Noticeably, Gov. Bill Richardson got the first "woo" of the debate -
the mating call of rotund liberal women - for demanding a federal
mandate that would guarantee public schoolteachers a minimum salary of
$40,000.
So much for the "younger, hipper" audience. Maybe CNN meant "hippier,"
as in, "My, she's looking a bit hippy these days."
Not counting talking snowmen, the main difference in the YouTube
debate audience and the audience for the earlier CNN Democratic debate
is that the YouTube debate had 173,000 fewer viewers in the 18-49
demographic. So it was provably not young and, on the basis of casual
observation, definitely not hip.
As usual, the audience consisted mostly of public schoolteachers.
According to CNN, the highest reading achieved on the CNN feelings-
knob was for Richardson talking about public schoolteachers. (Some in
the audience said they hadn't been that excited since the last time
they had sex with an underage student.)
B. Hussein Obama said he was for slavery reparations in many forms,
but the only one that got applause was for more "investment" in
schools. In Obama's defense, the precise question was: "But is African-
Americans ever going to get reparations for slavery?" So a switch to
the subject of education was only natural.
Moreover, a question on reparations has got to be confusing when
you're half white and half black. What do you do? Demand an apology
for slavery and money from yourself? I guess biracial reparations
would involve sending yourself money, then sending back a portion of
that money to yourself, minus 50 percent in processing fees - which is
the same way federal aid works.
It was fun to hear the Democratic candidates give heart-rending
reasons for not sending their own kids to public schools. Except John
Edwards. He got a "woo" for sending his kids to public schools from
all those "young, hip" Democrats whose greatest concern is how to
transfer more money to public schoolteachers while reducing their
workload.
The candidates all managed to come up with good reasons for sending
their kids to private schools - with extra points for reasons that
involved a family tragedy or emergency - but it didn't seem to occur
to any of them that ordinary families might have good reasons, too.
In her first risible lie of the debate, Hillary said Chelsea went to
public schools in Arkansas. But when they moved to Washington, they
were advised that "if she were to go to a public school, the press
would never leave her alone, because it's a public school. So I had to
make a very difficult decision."
"Unfortunately," she said, it was "good advice."
Was it really that difficult a decision not to send Chelsea to public
schools in Washington, D.C.?
This is how the New York Times recently described the schools in
Washington, which it called "arguably the nation's most dysfunctional
school system."
"Though it is one of the country's highest-spending districts, most of
the money goes to central administration, not to classrooms, according
to a recent series of articles in the Washington Post. Its 55,000
mostly poor students score far worse than comparable children anywhere
else in reading and math, with nearly 74 percent of the district's low-
income eighth-graders lacking basic math skills, compared with the
national average of 49 percent."
So Hillary was dying to send Chelsea to the D.C. public schools, but
"unfortunately" did not do so only because of the press? Did she also
agonize over whether to allow Chelsea to play in traffic?
She was not dying to send Chelsea to D.C. public schools. And no
Democrat cares about "education" or "the poor."
Democrats care about social service bureaucrats who make their living
allegedly working on behalf of the poor - the famed "public service"
the Democrats always drone on about - jobs that would disappear if we
ever eliminated poverty. That's why Democrats keep coming up with
policies designed to create millions and millions more poor people.
Democrats fight tooth and nail against any measures that would
actually help the poor, such as allowing schools to fire bad teachers.
They refuse to allow parents with children in the rotten D.C. public
schools to take money out of the public school system so their kids
could go to Sidwell Friends like Chelsea.
Most important, Democrats resolutely refuse to tell the poor the
secret to not being poor: Keep your knees together until marriage.
That's it. Not class size, not preschool, not even vouchers, though
vouchers would obviously improve the education of all students. You
could have lunatics running the schools - and often do - and if the
kids live with married parents, they will end up at good colleges and
will lead happy, productive lives 99 percent of the time.
But Democrats don't care about the poor. They don't care about the
children. They care about government teachers and other government
bureaucrats - grimy, dowdy women who "woo" at political debates. Or as
CNN calls them, the "young," "hip" crowd.