Those of us who live in the phony-baloney, ocean-adjacent America know little of John Boehner. Of course, we’ve heard the tales of his 27-hour workdays whittling American Jobs out of plain fir wood in his Ohio-based Opportunity Laboratory. We’ve heard of his quest to bio-engineer a giant human ear that is to be staked to his chest cavity so he may finally Listen to America in the way that we never could. And perhaps, it is because of our inferior listening skills that we’ve never before heard his suffering.
As I’ve said before, the Tea Party is largely a Corporatist attempt to harness and steer the sort of populist rage movements that crop up during times of severe recession. It is being steered away from blaming banking cartels and Wall Street for its woes (primarily by Fox News and friends) and steered towards protesting government regulation. As such it is nothing more than a pitchfork-wielding arm of the Corporate Lobbyists..
And frankly, the Dems and more traditional Republicans are both solidly on that team as well, if in a less screamy fashion.
The following video by YouTube user, FallingWhistles, is exemplary. It is informative, viscerally affects the viewer, and carries a message unheralded by the mainstream media.
Teachers are used to working with less. Primary school teachers are used to buying basic classroom supplies out of their own salaries; secondary school teachers are used to teaching with classrooms at double or more capacity; post secondary teachers at all levels are used to ever increasing demands from multiple masters (publish now, do committee work now, teach now, advise now…everything now, or preferably yesterday). I’ve taught at all these levels, and most of the teachers I know accept their respective situations with a shrug and a sense of humor (there’s a reason the teachers’ lounge is the most important room in any school building for the people to whom it caters).
This is mindblowingly brilliant…and perhaps the best use of a Congressional hearing in decades. Proof that this hits home: the face of bigoted jackass Rep. Steve King, who understands the target of the joke. I’d ask the Republicans who don’t understand to read up on Voltaire, but I doubt they’d get the reference.
