Tag: DFH

This morning after my workout I passed a newstand and noted this headline in the Sun-Times:



RAHM WARNS UNIONS (Teachers to work longer Hours)

Day Laborers to show up in greater numbers

Surprised boobala!  Really.  He was a DLCer when he was an alderman in Chicago and Washington DC only strengthened that line of thought.  Note also that the stats show more working class, AAs, Latinos are moving out to suburbs and the wealthier are moving into the City of Chicago.  I was chased out of my little bungalow in Chicago, so that a $2 million house could be built.  I can attest to how the working class, lower middle and now middle were chased out of the City.  Rahm was alderman of one of the north side areas during this time period.

Rahm Emanuel warns teaching, labor unions about changes

Mayor-elect RE is layin down the law to two unions whose cooperation he needs to turn Chicago around:  teachers he wants to work a longer school day and laborers he wants to simply show up at work in greater numbers.  During the campaign, he declared his support for curtailing teachers’ right to strike.  He also made it clear that, if teachers won’t agree to work longer hours for extra pay, he’ll ask the Illinois General Assembly to mandate it.

My guess is (and I was a long time resident of Chicago) the “extra pay” will fall by the wayside and charter schools will benefit from this someway.  

Also, the use of the word “laborers” troubles me.  Nothing wrong with laborer – we’re all laborers in a sense but it cuts down to size certain unions – say carpenters, plumbers – who are rightly proud of what it is they do.  It lumps all into the Laborer camp.  And we all know how laborers are respected in 2011 USA.  Implicit in the wording is that the laborers are getting paid even though they don’t show up for work.

It’s unlikely Chicago’s elites will send their children to public school in any event.  They’ll go to private schools where kindergarten for instance costs something like $14,000 a year.  Class War, anyone!    

LET THE PRIVATIZATION BEGIN.  Because of course it will save the taxpayers lots of money! N.O.T.

Hat tip to Blue Girl at They Gave Us A Republic

We were right then, and we’re right now.

All right, I don’t fully grok what a DFH is in political terms.  I only learned what those letters actually meant around 5 months ago.

But still.

No offense to anyone, but all the “do _____ to make Teddy proud!” touched something off in me.

I have to laugh (in sort of a double-entendre-like fashion) to think of what folks would tell others to do in my memory if I kicked the bucket.  All this talk about Ted put me in a Tom Sawyer’s funeral kind of mood, you see.

Ok, want to read something insufferably pompous to a DFH like me?

Ted Kennedy was a flawed human being.

Well, who gets to judge that?  The human being who has no flaws?  And who might that be?

Sure wouldn’t be me.  Can’t touch that, as MC Hammer once said.

Really.  Fuck that shit.  Seriously.

Me, I’d be happy for someone like … oh, Peter Guralnick, who wrote a two-volume biography of Elvis Presley — to write about Ted Kennedy’s life without that shit about being a flawed human being and moralizing.

His bio of Elvis was the kind of bio where you don’t judge at all because you’re so amazed by the story itself, and Guralnick doesn’t get in the way of that.

Anyway, barring some really talented biographer who actually knows the craft of biography, I’m not going to judge Ted Kennedy’s morality or personal life.

Not that I’m not curious … I’m as susceptible to gossip as anyone.  Heh.

What a brilliant screen he was, though, for a certain generation of us to project our highest aspirations and watch them turn into mandalas of golden light.

(“Did you get a hit?”)

Maybe this isn’t a DFH eulogy, maybe it’s my attempt as a female to do a gonzo eulogy.  Now that would be a laugh.