Paul Horton: The Chicago Tribune's School Voucher Campaign: The Road to Gatopia III"
Guest post by Paul Horton.
Most hog farmers in the Midwest say that when you go "whole hog" on something there is no turning back. People who live down wind of hog farms pray for the wind to shift.
Many Midwestern farmers also have a historic hatred of the Chicago Tribune because it has been closely aligned with the interests of that infamous breeding ground of Midwestern plutocrats: Chicago Board of Trade, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century equivalent of Wall Street in the Midwest.
In the last week, the Tribune, not to be satisfied with "yellow caking" support for the Chicago school shutdowns by rolling out an Augean stable's worth of misinformation from the Joyce Foundation, is returning to its former unabashed support of speculative free enterprise when it comes to schools.
In the last week, the Tribune has rolled out three pieces on its editorial pages in support of Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and vouchers.
On September 8, the Tribune reprinted an op-ed originally published in the Washington Postthat called the Obama Department of Justice and the Obama administration out on prosecuting the disparate racial impact of Louisiana's voucher laws. This piece is hilarious reading that describes the defense of vouchers as the Civil Rights issue of our time that Martin Luther King would have clearly supported. It is almost as though Jindal was channeling King through Michelle Rhee who has recently given such speeches in Birmingham, among other places.
Yesterday (Friday 13th), again on the editorial page, a very long human-interest piece ("In Search of an Education") about a young student looking for a decent education was