In Which Ironicus Is Conflicted

You know, we have to admit to mixed feelings about this blog from time to time. One the one hand you have your Todd Akins, your Richard Mourdocks, your Tennessee state legislature.

And don't even get us started on Louie Gohmert.

Using this little corner of the inter toobz to point and laugh at the weapons grade craziness that falls out of their mouths, that is when you can understand them at all (we're looking at you Sarah Palin) is our way of coping with the fact that for some reason, positions of authority that used to be occupied by responsible, intelligent, articulate adults have been turned over to unmedicated wackaloons with more voices in their heads than you'll hear at Lambeau field on a Sunday afternoon just after the Packers score the go ahead touchdown, and whose greatest claim to fame is their ability to go about in public championing the intellectual equivalent of having their fingers in their ears and singing LALALALALA I CAN"T HEAR YOU!!

But as professional educational technicians we are often troubled by this sudden flood of incompetency that breaks upon the shore of this once great democracy like a tsunami after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. Surely some of these people must have had occasion to be in the vicinity of some sort of certified educational establishment as children thinks us. They couldn't have all been home schooled by wolves, could they? Take this lady for instance:

“When a physician removes a child from a woman, that is the largest organ in a body,” Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin, R-Pelham said in an interview Thursday. “That’s a big thing. That’s a big surgery. You don’t have any other organs in your body that are bigger than that.”

Now, right up front if you ever wondered what kind of woman would associate herself with the republican party after all the misogynistic, sexist, paternalistic, discriminatory bile that flows from the members of the party carrying the Y chromosome, you now have your answer--a dim one. And by dim we mean intellectual capacity so faint it probably couldn't be spotted by the Hubble Telescope even if the device landed on her front porch and she was in the kitchen apparently having a spasm because the bottle of mustard she had just picked up said "shake before opening."

Admittedly, Americans aren't the most scientifically literate people in the world, but come on, an organ? What does this lady do when she has a cold, rub the bark of the Hawthorn tree on her feet because she has offended the wood sprites?

So the people who sell tests tell us schools are failing because we don't buy enough tests; the people who sell programs tell us the schools are failing because we don't buy enough programs; and the people who manage charter schools tell us the schools are failing because we don't have enough charter schools, but the real reason schools are failing is because somehow or another some people are able to get through the system with their ignorance intact. Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin, R-Pelham comes to mind.

We recall those halcyon days when we were professional educational technician trainees and our Sensei, Professor Parnassus said, "Teachers can teach their heads off, but only students can learn." Back in the day we did not ascribe much importance to Professor P's aphorism, but time and harsh experience have brought its fundamental truth home to us more times than we care to report. Some people just prefer to be stupid.

To borrow from the current linguistic milieu, it gives us a sad, but sadder still is the fact that a majority of voters in this lady's district cast their ballots for her.  Now, it is probably safe to assume that on election day those constituents favoring her were not aware that she could not tell a fetus from her liver, still this intensity of rational vacuity is not easily compartmentalized. There must have been signs, clues, indications, portents that Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin, R-Pelham and lucidity did not share a common ancestor.

While part of us simply wants to shake our heads in wonder at how something as large as the human neo-cortex could be so  empty in certain of our species, another part of us, that part that enlisted in the battle against ignorance lo these many years ago, laments that while the occasional campaign my prove fruitful, ultimately the castle of reason will be overrun by the hordes of pandemonium.