Limousine Liberal David Boies Wants to Fix Our Schools | John Thompson

Limousine Liberal David Boies Wants to Fix Our Schools | John Thompson:

Limousine Liberal David Boies Wants to Fix Our Schools

They used to be called "Limousine Liberals." Now, dilettantes like David Boies are known as corporate reformers.

Boies has become the kinder, gentler face of the blood-in-their-eye teacher-bashing of Michelle Rhee and Campbell Brown. A board member of Rhee's "astroturf" anti-union StudentsFirstNY, Boies will co-host the Campbell - "I'm blaming the teachers unions" - Brown dog and pony show, the Partnership for Educational Justice.Presumably, the liberal Boies will be more credible in spinning their incredible soundbite - the striking down our fundamental rights is "pro teacher."

Boies is shilling for the decade-long, test-driven, scorched earth campaign that demonstrates its pro-student commitment by imposing nonstop test prep on kids, and crippling teachers' power to resist mandates for soul-killing, bubble-in accountability.

There once was a time when Democrats were the party of the people. Rich and poor persons from all backgrounds formed "big tent" coalitions for equity and justice. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, the Kennedys, and many others rubbed elbows with working people in struggles for civil rights and economic justice. With deindustrialization and the decline of labor unions, fewer and fewer progressive leaders have any experience in the working worlds where most people live.

Boies joins an unfortunate tradition of some elites posing as working class heroes/civil rights advocates; when Leonard Bernstein and Marlon Brando went slumming and hosted revolutionaries, however, that was merely an embarrassment. Bernstein and Brando, like Bois, were sincere and superbly talented in their own fields. But, they leaped to weird conclusions without looking at realities that they didn't understand.

Boies claims no experience with public school teaching. I don't imagine he actually knows and loves any individual poor students of color. I wonder how many he takes out sailing on his yacht, for instance. But he loves them in the abstract. Not realizing how much harm his agenda would do to actual students, Boies would help drive Limousine Liberal David Boies Wants to Fix Our Schools | John Thompson: