I had to read this story twice to be sure it wasn’t a joke.
\nYesterday, at a private meeting with U.S. governors in the White House, George Bush’s Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, called the National Education Association — one of America’s two national teachers’ unions, with 2.7 million members — a “terrorist organization”.<\/p>\n
\nThe union has responded by saying that “it is morally repugnant to equate those who teach America’s children with terrorists”. Obviously. But the really frightening part of the NEA response reads:
\n“This is the kind of rhetoric we have come to expect from this Administration whenever one challenges its worldview.”
\nRemember that in the USA of 2004, when a cabinet member calls a group a “terrorist organization,” that’s a highly explosive term. As they used to say in the Wild West, “them’s fightin’ words”.
\nMeanwhile, the spokesman for John Kerry, who recently won the unanimous support of the AFL-CIO in his bid for the presidency, said:
\n“Secretary Paige should apologize for his remarks calling the National Education Association a terrorist organization. These remarks are inappropriate, particularly at a time when our nation has experienced the devastation caused by terrorism.”
\nInappropriate? Is that the strongest word one can think of?
\nThe American Federation of Teachers emphasized — as Kerry’s spokesman did not — that “Paige’s remarks are more than an ‘inappropriate choice of words’.”
\nToday, Paige issued a brief apology, which began:
\n“It was an inappropriate choice of words to describe the obstructionist scare tactics the NEA’s Washington lobbyists have employed against No Child Left Behind’s historic education reforms . . .”
\nMaybe it’s just me, but I think we cannot accept that a cabinet member in the U.S. government can call a trade union a “terrorist organization”. And a simple apology is hardly the appropriate response. The apology should come from President Bush, following an announcement that he has fired his Education Secretary.
\nNot likely, right? Well, I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to write to Rod Paige myself, telling him that an apology is not enough and that he should resign. His email address is Rod.Paige@ed.gov<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had to read this story twice to be sure it wasn’t a joke. Yesterday, at a private meeting with U.S. governors in the White House, George Bush’s Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, called the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-web-exclusive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}