The Obituary of Record

bin Laden is dead. Reports are saying that Navy SEALs found him in a vacation manse in Pakistan, and instead of coming along peacefully, he decided to resist capture with the typical results.

The New York Times goes for seven pages of obituary, tying him to every recent terrorist attack we know by name, over the administrations of five United States Presidents.

Was he really that important to worldwide terrorism? Did his family really refer to him as the "slave child?" There is so much in that story that I want to believe, so much of it that seems plausible. Doing so might mean a real blow has been struck against worldwide terrorism, just by eliminating one man on a personal mission.

I pondered over how much damage one man can do, and how much damage that one man actually did. We heard his name before the day "September 11th" was seared into our collective consciousness. Just look at the irreparable damage he has left in his wake. That would be true, regardless of the words in the New York Times.

So, I'll also ponder the power of words, written on the page, to write history as it happens.

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No Excuses

"This is why you don't put your face on the cover of Time magazine with a broom." - A former New Orleans teacher, upon being shown these links.

Y'all remember the test score investigation in Atlanta? The one where they're planning on hanging Beverly Hall out to dry? The one where the state investigators and the APS are fighting over which teachers they get to intimidate into testifying or staying silent?

Kinda makes you wonder what they're going to do with Michelle Rhee.

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The World's Longest Press Release

Or maybe the world's longest op-ed. Perhaps the world's longest navel-gaze. Any way you cut it, all Newsweek did with this spread was give Michelle Rhee four pages of advertising, and exactly zero journalistic verification of her claims. There are so many flaws and contradictions in what she wrote that I can barely begin to discuss them.

I'll just let you read the article yourselves. Don't worry if you feel sorry for her, or excited about educational reform when you're done reading. Through all my pop-culture conditioning, even I was relating to her at some points. Some. Before I got too far into that, I realized I have a well-developed suspension of disbelief that comes from a life of reading science fiction and horror novels. That was the part of me that was relating to Rhee - the part of my brain that can sketch dragons and unicorns and read zombie fiction all night.

Meanwhile, the reality-recognizing parts of my brain, the part that went through a year of "education reform" in the Recovery School District in New Orleans and the accreditation fight back in Glynn County, Georgia, that part of my brain saw thiw for what it was.

Four pages of fluffy, self-aggrandizing nonsense.

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