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CAT Tracks for January 20, 2011
LAUGHTER IS THE BEST DEFENSE |
No...not of labor unions this time.
The column below by Valerie Strauss features a video by comedian Stephen Colbert in which he takes on what he calls "disintegration"...the recent decision by the Wake County (Raleigh, N.C.) Board of Education to end a decades-long program of integration to achieve first racial, then economic diversity.
From the Washington Post...
The Answer Sheet
How Colbert brilliantly skewered Wake County (N.C.) school officials
Stephen Colbert used a Washington Post story on the Wake County (Raleigh, N.C.) Board of Education to do a hysterical piece on "The Colbert Report" about the panel's decision to scrap a school diversity plan that has long been considered successful.
The story, by my colleague Stephanie McCrummen, explains that the policy in Wake County has led to a situation in which, as she wrote "Some of its best, most diverse schools are in the poorest sections of this capital city. And its suburban schools, rather than being exclusive enclaves, include children whose parents cannot afford a house in the neighborhood."
But a new majority-Republican school board backed by national tea party conservatives wants to get rid of the policy in a move that some say will lead to resegregation of the county's public schools.
Colbert picked up on this and did the following video, which is hysterically funny but also terribly sad, simply because it is so accurate.
This is how the piece is promoted on the Web site of the Colbert Report:
"The Word - Disintegration
"North Carolina Tea Partiers want to reverse socially engineered progress until things get so bad for the poor that they can't be ignored."
The link to the video:
(BROADBAND ALERT! In fact, the link above didn't play well on my broadband...some jerkiness. For whatever reason (ask a computer guru), the video on Valerie's Website
actually played better.)
By Valerie Strauss
