<HTML><HEAD>
<META content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv=content-type></HEAD>
<BODY dir=ltr>
<DIV dir=ltr>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">
<DIV>And so it is. Thanks so very much for the post. I did rent
“Waiting for Superman,” so I think I’ll withhold my money and add it to my union
dues as a gift to the NEA. Don’t have to see this one and watch a
replay of Anschutz’ union bashing, teacher as victim theme. Of course,
just like Vandersloot, he loves teachers, it’s the UNION he hates. Know
what really pisses me off...it’s the message that teachers are naive & maybe
a bit stupid..bright enough to teach children I guess, but too dumb to think for
themselves. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Sue H </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt tahoma">
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #f5f5f5">
<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=thansen@moscow.com
href="mailto:thansen@moscow.com">Tom Hansen</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, September 26, 2012 7:38 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">Moscow Vision 2020</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> [Vision2020] “Won’t Back Down”: Why do teachers’ unions
hate America?</DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">
<DIV style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto">Courtesy of <A
href="http://Salon.com">Salon.com</A> at:</DIV>
<DIV style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto"> </DIV>
<DIV style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto"><SPAN
style="LINE-HEIGHT: 19px; WHITE-SPACE: nowrap; FONT-SIZE: 15px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469)"><A
href="http://www.salon.com/2012/09/26/wont_back_down_why_do_teachers_unions_hate_america/?source=newsletter">http://www.salon.com/2012/09/26/wont_back_down_why_do_teachers_unions_hate_america/?source=newsletter</A></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto"> </DIV>
<DIV
style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto">------------------------------------</DIV>
<DIV>
<P
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 15px 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px">
<H1
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; BACKGROUND-POSITION: 0px 50%; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; FONT-WEIGHT: normal !important; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px"><A
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; FONT-SIZE: medium; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; TEXT-DECORATION: none; PADDING-TOP: 0px"
href="http://www.salon.com/2012/09/26/wont_back_down_why_do_teachers_unions_hate_america/">“Won’t
Back Down”: Why do teachers’ unions hate America?</A></H1>
<P
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 15px 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px">
<H2
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 0px 0px 5px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; FONT-WEIGHT: normal !important; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px"><FONT
size=3><SPAN>"Won't Back Down" is an offensive, lame union-bashing drama, which
somehow stars Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal</SPAN></FONT></H2>
<P
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 15px 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px"><SPAN
style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto">By Andrew O'Hehir</SPAN></P>
<P
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 15px 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px"><SPAN
style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto">So teachers’ unions don’t care about
kids. Oh, and luck is a foxy lady. This is what I took away from the inept and
bizarre "Won't Back Down,"</SPAN><SPAN style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto"> a
</SPAN><SPAN style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto">set of right-wing anti-union
talking points disguised (with very limited success) as a mainstream
motion-picture-type product. Someone needs to launch an investigation into what
combination of crimes, dares, alcoholic binges and lapses in judgment got Viola
Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal into this movie. Neither of them seems likely to
sympathize with its thinly veiled labor-bashing agenda and, way more to the
point, I thought they had better taste. Maybe it was that actor-y thing where
they saw potential in their characters – a feisty, working-class single mom for
Gyllenhaal, a sober middle-class schoolteacher for Davis – liked the idea of
working together and didn’t think too much about the big picture.</SPAN></P>
<P
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 15px 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px"><SPAN
style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto">Perhaps that was a mistake, because the
big picture is that the movie is unbelievable crap and the whole project was
financed by conservative Christian billionaire Phil Anschutz<A
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; TEXT-DECORATION: none; PADDING-TOP: 0px"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Anschutz">,</A> also the moneybags
behind the documentary "Waiting for Superman," which handled a similar agenda in
subtler fashion. Even though I personally find the politics of “Won’t Back Down”
noxious — and the film seems half-seriously meant to launch some sort of
activism, on behalf of whom or what I don’t know — that’s only a small part of
the problem. (The politics of "The Dark Knight Rises," however you want to
describe or define them, are probably noxious too.) There’s so much human drama
in and around the charter-school movement that it should be easy to tell a
powerful story, from almost any perspective you like. Nothing’s off limits in a
dramatic context, of course, and given the enormous crap-storm that is American
public education, there’s more than enough blame to go around. Let me add that
as a known New York City home-schooling weirdo, I hold ambivalent views about
the oversize role played in the city’s education battles by its teachers’ union
and its longtime head, the fearsome Randi Weingarten. (There’s a Weingarten-like
union head played by Holly Hunter in this movie, with Appalachian hard-ass
attitude substituting for New York Jewish hard-ass attitude.)</SPAN></P>
<P
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 15px 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px">
<P
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 15px 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px"><SPAN>So
if you want to make a potent, mean-spirited drama about the failures of
unionized schoolteachers and inept education bureaucrats, I say bring the noise.
But what director and co-writer Daniel Barnz (whose previous film was the
equally stupid “Beastly”) rustles up here is more like simpering,
pseudo-inspirational pap, constructed with painful awkwardness and disconnected
from any narrative plausibility or social reality. Our two appealing leads beam
and glow at each other with an almost hostile brilliance, while supporting
stereotypes stand around them delivering on-the-nose platitudes. Even
Gyllenhaal’s 500-watt smile and Davis’ permanent air of wounded propriety can’t
redeem a script that has that disconnected, amateurish quality distinctive to
conservative-oriented entertainment and plays written by fourth-graders. It’s as
if the right-wing disapproval of pop culture extends to rejecting the
Aristotelian conventions of plot and character. Possibly this film is so
avant-garde that I’m not getting it!</SPAN></P>
<P
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 15px 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px"><SPAN>Here’s
the principal narrative accomplishment of “Won’t Back Down”: It reverses the
usual racial polarity in this kind of story, in that it’s Gyllenhaal’s
character, Jamie, an endlessly earthy and upbeat bartender-receptionist who
favors skin-tight jeans and midriff-baring tops (when she’s not wearing her
combat-fatigue “Parentrooper” T-shirt), who brings some joie de freakin’ vivre
back to Nona, Davis’ burned-out, beige-clad teacher, who describes herself as
“the first black Stepford wife.” Jamie convinces Nona to put those middle-class
problems up on the shelf and kick back with a virgin mojito, a Pittsburgh
Penguins game and a little impromptu Texas line dancing. Because that’s the
thing about white folks: We’re all about spontaneous fun, keeping it real, and
convincing black people with decent middle-class incomes to give up 150 years
worth of hard-fought progress and work harder for less money. She’s the magic
redneck!</SPAN></P>
<P
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 15px 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px"><SPAN>Oh,
yeah – along the way Jamie the M.R. also convinces Nona to sign up a bunch of
her fellow teachers at decrepit and desultory John Adams Elementary (where
Jamie’s dyslexic daughter is a student) to help stage a coup that will involve
giving up their own union contracts and tenure rights and handing over the
school’s leadership to … well, to unknown persons with an unknown agenda. I
guess after the revolution Nona and Jamie will be in charge – we’ve seen them
wearing glasses and writing some kind of plan on a Dell computer – but we never
learn any details except that it includes Shakespeare and a scary amount of
ukulele (not at the same time, one hopes).</SPAN></P>
<P
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 15px 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px"><SPAN>Hunky
Oscar Isaac supplies the ukulele strumming, playing an idealistic and supposedly
fun teacher who feels some vague liberal guilt about the whole union-busting
thing, but is eventually overcome by healthy doses of Iron City beer and Jamie’s
feminine charms. Although, in fact, the movie’s too PG-coy to make clear whether
or not they’re lovers, and too dumb to acknowledge that it might be kind of
inappropriate for the union-busting rebel leader to get it on with a supposedly
loyal union member. Isaac’s character is supposed to be preferable to Jamie’s
daughter’s deadbeat teacher, who sits at her desk sending texts all day, but the
whole time my inner third-grader was protesting:<EM
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px">Criminy,
just don’t put me in that douchey ukulele guy’s class!</EM></SPAN></P>
<P
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 15px 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px"><SPAN>“Won’t
Back Down” was reportedly inspired by a California law that allows
parent-teacher takeovers of failing schools under certain circumstances. Again,
that sounds like a fascinating premise, albeit one that’s highly likely to go in
unforeseen “Animal Farm” directions. But all we get here is the most blithe and
moronic kind of “let’s put on a show” magical thinking, in which ripping up the
union contract and wresting control of the school from the bureaucrats becomes
an end in itself, and what happens later is shrouded in the mists of an
imaginary libertarian paradise. There are attempts at Fox News-style balance
here and there, as when someone observes that most charter schools fail to
improve outcomes and when a bombastic union exec played by Ned Eisenberg
delivers a monologue about the current assault on labor (right before announcing
that he couldn’t care less about children).</SPAN></P>
<P
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 15px 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px"><SPAN>As
presented in this script (written by Barnz and Brin Hill), the Pittsburgh
teachers’ union has no goal beyond protecting the status quo at all costs, and
no interest whatever – no altruistic interest, no self-interest and no
public-relations interest — in improving the quality of public education. Most
people still understand, I believe, that teachers work extremely hard for little
pay and low social status in a thankless, no-win situation. But this is one of
those areas where conservatives have been extremely successful in dividing the
working class, which is precisely the agenda in “Won’t Back Down.” Breeding
hostility to unions in themselves, and occasionally insinuating that unionized
teachers are a protected caste of incompetents <EM
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px">who
get three damn months off every single year,</EM> has been an effective tactic
in what we might call postmodern Republican populism, especially in recent
battles over public employee contracts in Wisconsin and elsewhere. It works
something like this: 1) Turn the resentment and frustration of people like Jamie
– people with crappy service-sector jobs and few benefits, whose kids are stuck
in failing schools – against the declining group of public employees who still
have a decent deal. 2) Strip away job security and collective bargaining; hand
out beer and ukuleles instead. 3) La la la la, tax cuts, tax cuts, I can’t hear
you!</SPAN></P>
<P
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 15px 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px"><SPAN>---------------</SPAN></P>
<P
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 15px 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px"><SPAN>"Won't
Back Down" website</SPAN></P>
<P
style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; MARGIN: 15px 0px; OUTLINE-STYLE: none; OUTLINE-COLOR: invert; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; OUTLINE-WIDTH: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px"><SPAN
style="LINE-HEIGHT: 19px; WHITE-SPACE: nowrap; FONT-SIZE: 15px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469)"><A
href="http://www.wbdtoolkit.com/">http://www.wbdtoolkit.com/</A></SPAN></P></DIV>
<DIV
style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto">------------------------------------<BR><BR>Seeya
at the polls, Moscow, because . . .
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>"Moscow Cares"</DIV>
<DIV><A href="http://www.MoscowCares.com">http://www.MoscowCares.com</A></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>Tom Hansen</DIV>
<DIV>Moscow, Idaho</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>"We're a town of about 23,000 with 10,000 college students. The
college students are not very active in local elections (thank
goodness!)."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>- Dale Courtney (March 28, 2007)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV></DIV>
<P>
<HR>
=======================================================<BR>List services made
available by First Step Internet,<BR>serving the communities of the Palouse
since
1994.<BR>
http://www.fsr.net<BR>
mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com<BR>=======================================================</DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>