Palin Quote of the Day

Is there a Palin-English dictionary anywhere that can translate what she said into something (hell, anything) that I can understand?
Is she saying that obtaining an elite Ivy school education and a fat resume is not indicative of hard work, but having common sense is?
Reading her is like being on a roller coaster blindfolded, you never know where her sentence will go next or when it will stop. I have to say, I find her incoherence possesses a kind of idiot-savant genius. If she were not real I can't imagine anyone but Shakespeare (or maybe Mark Twain) making her up.

Obama Quote of the Day: "The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system." --in remarks after a health care roundtable with physicians, nurses and health care providers, Washington, D.C., July 20, 2009. HaHaHaHaHa.

Look, we all know that Palin is (fill in your favorite word or phrase). But this game of picking out stupid quotes can be played with any politician. Give it a rest. Isn't there more important things for TNR to spend its time on other than seeking out idiotic Sarah Palin quotes? I always thought TNR was a cut above this sort of crap. Apparently not.

Palin's lack of education is the single biggest driving force in life. She seethes resentment about it and blames everyone else for her poor decision making earlier in her life.

Besides being hilariously lazy and in love with herself ("big fat resumes based on nothing"...etc), she's anti-knowledge and experience, anti-reality. Her delusional gibberish is a perfectly valid story.

I'm coming around to the idea that the press has an obligation to get this dullard's anti-American tripe out there as much as possible. She refuses to answer questions from anyone who wants any real information, let alone accountability from her. The FOX news maw allowes her to mold reality to her ego mania. To call her a liar is an insult to liars.

She's dangerous and there is excuse to pretend otherwise. She's batshit insane and the titular head of the Republican party. I say print every one of these gems.

BTW - what in God's name would anyone from Alaska, especially anyone who has been in state government (barely in her case) know about free enterprise? Alaska is a ward of the federal government. Hello? Delusion alert.

sorry for my typos.

Wandrey - all true, but my point is still that cherry picking quotes is a game that can be played with anyone in public life. You want some laughs, google stupid Biden quotes.

What Obama said was an error that anyone can make (nobody's a perfect speaker) and it's obvious to a ten-year-old that he meant "efficiencies." W's "misunderestimate," for example, was funny but also pretty clear as to meaning.

Palin is something else entirely. It's as if making coherent sense is itself something she wants to avoid, because that would provide a testable basis for inquiry or comparison. I remember translating in court for a witness once who just couldn't stop free-associating. He'd answer the attorney's question, but would then wander off with references and fragments of thought that had something to do with the topic but were more like random features of the landscape.

OK, I give up, you win. It is a beautiful afternoon here in California and I am going to go out and enjoy it and Sarah Palin will remain the last person on the planet that I care anything about. You all have fun with it.

Fine nac, I'm Californian too - do enjoy it. But comparing Biden and Palin is just dishonest.

The difference between Obama and Palin is you have to cherry pick through all of Obama's statements to find some mistake, but with Palin you have to cherry pick through all of her statements to find something correct. And, I am sorry, but what she wrote was also patently offensive, as though having an Ivy league education is equivalent to spinelessness. Both Bushs, Obama, Clinton, Kennedy, Roosevelt, Adams, etc. were all spineless? She is a nitwit, utterly unprepared for high office. Talk show host, fine, if she connects with all the other nitwits out there, more power to her, just keep her away from heavy machinery and off the furniture.

This is really it for me, I am out the door in a few minutes. Wandrey, I suspect from previous posts that you are in New York. So is my daughter. Not sure where you are from in California, but we are just about to get in the car and drive up to Napa, have a nice lunch and sip some good wine. There is more to life than Sarah Palin.

I didn't mean to compare Biden and Palin. My daughter and I laugh about Palin all the time. Perhaps my initial post was not clear, but it was really directed at TNR. I just don't see the point of a "serious" publication playing the stupid quote game. Again, it is a beautiful day and I should have just kept out of this.

I too miss California at times.

I'm from Long Beach nac and I have lots of family in Napa. I spend August in Long Beach. I go native.

I like your attitude, we New Yorkers (I think I qualify after 25 years) get myopic and fevered about things sometimes.

I'm absolutely an immigrant ;)

Irony, if you're still reading this: a shout out to a fellow Californian.

Nacnud. I think the quote has substance and is not mere ridicule. I want to know how a politician will approach our problems, as in, are they someone who says they can run government based uninformed instincts or that they can run foreign policy by looking into Putin's eyes and seeing his soul? Will they approach every problem as a nail because all they have is a hammer? To that end, the quote provides.

After a week of Palin book mania, I wonder if those of us who see Palin as a dolt and buffoon shouldn't start to take Palin's continuing popularity a bit more seriously. I am been very dismissive of her but as I have watched the rapturous reception given to Palin this week, I wonder if her presidential aspirations are all that crazy. Some pretty scary dives have been made off flimsier boards.

Dumping on Palin at this point is a clear case of killing the messenger.

The message is that America is stupid. There are multiple reasons for this, and plenty of blame to go around: mass media that, by its very design, cannot tolerate deep thought; a post-WWII economy that drove Americans to the materialistic addiction that pushed childraising (and hence home-based early child education) down the list of our priorities; the Cold War, which pundits claim we "won" but whose opportunity costs may render us the second of two losers; the unintended consequences of policies such as teacher tenure; globalization's parting of America between a handful of elites on one hand and a legion of burger-flippers on the other. So we have a nation whose devaluing of education over the last couple of generations has come home to roost.

Palin is not the cause of our stupidity. She is merely a symptom. Much of the cause lies in the mirror (as with most causes).

Wandrey, I also miss the Peruvian woodsmoke roast chicken from Pollo ala Brasa at 8th and Western in LA.

Btw do you know Miles of Books in Long Beach? A friend of mine used to work there, but that was around 15 years ago. I also used to look after a friends house in San Pedro now and again, with a stunning ocean view.

Hey Yard, so Sarah Palin's stupidity is the unintended consequence of teacher tenure? Nice try. Sarah Palin isn't a messenger. She's more like a canary in a coal mine, and the methane isn't our education system or even our lack of intellect or knowledge. The methane is our cultural anti-intellectualism, of which this quote is a perfect example. Ignorance is not a sin. Proud, aggressive ignorance is. The difference between Palin and that canary, though, is that instead of dying from the gas, Palin is made stronger by it and continues to tweet her little heart out all the louder.

I disagree with your implication that anything we're seeing here is new. America has a long tradition of anti-intellectualism. See Richard Hofstadter's classic "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," written in 1962.

I'm also skeptical of the contention that America is generally much stupider than it's ever been. We're probably significantly smarter. Consider that taking standardized intelligence and knowledge tests, and going to college, are today far more common than they used to be, and SAT scores over that long-haul, even with *a lot* more people taking them, haven't gone down that much.

One thing is relatively new, though: the now knee-jerk, persistent scapegoating of teachers for every educational woe, real and imagined, that plagues our society. Teachers have had the opportunity to earn tenure for more than a hundred years, and they somehow also managed to win the respect of their societies. Your suggestion that Palin is an indicator of the great evil of teachers' employment contracts is a pretty outrageous example of this trend.

Irony - you do know the area! I don't know your friend, but I know San Pedro very well. Best Mexican hole in the walls in the whole region, a well kept secret too.

Cookie and Yard are so right, Yard is especially Buddah-ish. I've come around completely to the idea that every utterance of this woman's is news. Maybe we'll see some real journalism soon, although I must say they were much better than they have been, especially compared to their pitiful nonsense they called journalism for Obama's trip east.

But it doesn't matter. Remember when Bush's guy said "but values trump data" when he was told that AIDS in young people will skyrocket when they cut funding for education? Its the same thing - what do you do when truth doesn't matter? We have to fight that!

I'm sounding an ugly yop admittedly, but I feel strongly that I have to fight for Enlightenment principles and I'm a powerless boob.

If we've ignored the consequences of income disparity and lazily raised two consecutive generations of dolts - well then what can be done? I've screamed myself horse for twenty years and gotten one President with integrity, decency for it (although I loved old Bill too but you know what I mean). Mr Level Headed Decency is being eaten alive for it of course. By a bunch of media-juiced resolutely chuckleheaded fanatics. And he's doing a terrific job.

YOU guys tell me what I should do.

PS make that funding for sexual health education.

Yard, one more point: I notice that in other fields, if a system is performing poorly, the top people, the ones responsible for the system as a whole, get the blame for bad outcomes. So, if a police department's strategy for reducing crime fails, the chief gets fired. If a sports team underperforms, the coach or manager takes the brunt, or at least a large share, of criticism. For that matter, in war, the commander-in-chief is the one on the hook, and, he looks to his generals to implement a successful strategy.

In debates about education, though, the reverse is true. The professionals on the front lines are always the ones at fault, seen as unreasonably resisting the invariably brilliant strategists, for whom the main strategy is always "fire teachers." School boards, administrators, parents, and society as a whole -- all of those things that contribute to the end product -- get a free pass, having won immunity by expressing their now politically correct disdain for the foot soldiers. Cops are unionized too -- it's hard to fire them -- but they don't take the brunt of criticism for crime stats. Debates about K-12 education won't go anywhere until we stop looking for scapegoats and decide instead to work together in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

jhildner,

You overstate my claim: I didn't state that Palin derives from teachers' contracts. I said that one (of many) causes for anti-intellectualism is an unintended consequence of the tenure system, which specifically is that teachers who shouldn't be teaching are. I've experienced a few of these teachers first-hand, which is one of the reasons I yanked my daughter out of public school and, hence, paid twice for her education: once through the taxes we all pay, and once through the private-school tuition I also paid.

If my magic wand weren't on the blink, I'd wave it and abolish tenure not just public (K-12) schools but also in colleges; its cost outweighs its value, IMO. At the same time, I'd make administrators directly beholden to the families they serve: a principal who fires or penalizes good teachers doesn't last long in my educational system. Which--correct me if I'm wrong--was the excess that teacher tenure was created to prevent.

Ultimately, a child's education is the responsibility of the child's parents. If they have the responsibility, they should also have the authority, not the school boards, administrators, or teachers' unions.

We wouldn't be having this discussion if parents acted responsibly, because a responsible parent will not tolerate a mediocre teacher.

In other words, I don't blame mediocre teachers. They are mere products of our greed and sloth, like the phenomenon of Sarah Palin.

jhildner, I agree with your second point totally. The heads of those at the top should roll. If they do, the question of teacher quality largely takes care of itself--and in fact the need for tenure evaporates.

I may be in a minority here, but I think that security of employment is a reasonable aim that generations of labor have fought for. It should not of course be a protection against incompetence or serious breaches of regulations, but most places in the public and private sector have ways of getting rid of people who can't or won't do the job.

The bigger question is why the tenure granted to teachers in other advanced countries doesn't seem to be the problem it is (ostensibly) here in the U.S.

In universities at least the role of tenure is to protect academic independence so that the state legislature or the new college president can't turn around one day and say, hey prof, don't write that book, write this book, or don't teach that material in class, teach this material. Tenure looks like privileged protection from the outside but with some exceptions it protects the role of third-level education for the public more than anything else.

Also (back to Palin's quote and to nacnud's comment), I agree with the consensus that she is not a good speaker. Yet as Cookie noted she's wildly popular--I think, for two reasons: because she purports to stick up for the those who, to a large extent, are being eaten alive in this economy, and because she does so in a way that they can understand, be it inelegant, inarticulate, or less than, um, rational.

If you're from National Review or the Hoover Institution or what not you can stick up for those same Real Amur'cans 'til the cows come home and yet they'll distrust you--and rightly so. They know you can turn on them any minute. They know they're unlikely to run into you in the unemployment line. They know you'll applaud their service in Afghanistan but somehow neglect to make the trip yourself.

Joe Biden has the same appeal to these folks, but from the left. His supporters may prefer that he be a bit more circumspect in his speech but, bottom line, they don't hold it against him any more than Palin's supporters hold it against her.

I regard many of Palin's supporters as, shall we say, intellectually challenged, but that doesn't mean I think of them in a negative light. I know many of them. They are my neighbors. They seem to be good parents, good honest, people. They would give me the shirt off their backs. When I'm away from home it's comforting to me that my wife, while home alone, can rely on them. Are you as comfortable about your loved ones' safety when you're away from home?

Democrats who continually dump on Sarah Palin may be seen as dumping on these of our fellow citizens by proxy. When these citizens are struggling to make ends meet, such perceived attacks will at the least unwelcome.

irony,

Part of the reason that tenure for teachers is a problem for some of us is that, to a large extent, only teachers have tenure.

In my case, the best-case scenario is for me to work until I die, then my insurance will take care of my wife (who is permanently disabled). Stopping working (e.g. being laid off, retiring) is not an option. I have no tenure--in fact, agism is rampant in my industry (as in most), so at 58 I'm hangin' by a thread. At my job I kiss every ass I can stand. Seeing as this is my 40th year working full-time, I'm starting to get good at it.

Give me and all the other folks in similar situations tenure (or a pension; remember them?), and then we'll talk about the people whose salaries I pay via my taxes getting tenure.

Yard, I have no doubt that there are bad teachers who should be fired. I object, though, to the single-minded focus on teachers and their job protections as the main piece of the puzzle. I skeptical that the extent of that problem justifies the emphasis it receives in modern debates about education, and that it is an example of singling out convenient scapegoats for blame.

I do not think that teachers' contracts, or bad teachers, are even a tiny factor when it comes to anti-intellectualism. Anti-intellectualism isn't the same as a lack of intellect. It is a resentment and fear of intellect. That is a cultural attitude for which it would be hard to hold teachers -- good or bad -- responsible.

I appreciate your eagerness to see *all* members of society who are responsible for our educational outcomes held responsible -- and that has got to include parents too! I don't see that balance reflected in our debate about education. That debate goes to -- and stays fixated on -- teachers, as exemplified by your mentioning of teacher tenure to the exclusion of any other factor in your initial post.

It is not true that only teachers have tenure. It's just that it's only called tenure for teachers. Cops, firefighters, whose salaries you also pay, and millions of other unionized employees enjoy similar job protections. People generally prefer a measure of job security and benefits to higher pay, and unionized employees, public or private, have the right to organize and seek to make that trade-off. This is understandable. People want security -- they are more satisfied and happier with it -- and not just so they can goof off on the job. It is not wrong for the labor movement to seek it, especially where the government doesn't provide it for everyone to the extent it does in most other modern nations.

Although I'm not sure that public school teachers require tenure to ensure "academic freedom" to the same extent as post-secondary educators, I do see the value of tenure for the kids, especially in today's environment where teachers are singled out for blame by parents and everyone else, for problems big and small, often unreasonably so. A teacher should not be afraid to flunk a student, a teacher should not be afraid to teach a controversial text or subject, and a teacher should not be afraid to exercise discipline. Although schools are not the same as colleges, students can benefit from an environment in which their teachers are free to exercise professional judgment without having to bow to the pressure of sometimes ignorant or unreasonable community members who resent having to pay their salaries.

As for Palin, I don't think that harshly criticizing her -- or any other political leader -- for legitimate reasons should be seen as generally dumping on your friends and neighbors who like her. I am not saying that your friends and neighbors are bad people -- obviously not. I do think, however, that Palin is rotten. Her death panel lies, her Obama=terrorism lies, her "real America" crap, her, as I said before, proud, aggressive ignorance, and all the rest -- those things aren't about her intelligence or lack of it. They're about her character, and I don't think anyone gets a free pass on those issues because they love their children or would help out a neighbor in need or would be a trustworthy friend. I also don't care for the whiff of Palinesque "real America" business contained in your question about whether I can trust my neighbors as well as you can trust yours. Yes, I can. Personal decency and political toxic waste are not a package deal!

Ok bill yard but what you're saying seems to me to sail a bit close to the following cliffs (taking the focus away from just teachers for a moment):

1. The decline in labor unions and the shedding of corporate responsibility over the last 40 years has led to security of employment in the private sector dwindling to the size of a pimple on a flea's butt.

2. In the public sector, traditional security of employment (since we ended the civil service spoils system in the 1880s) has been retained more substantially -- indeed the classic trade-off was always that industrial workers earned more while public sector jobs paid less but you didn't get fired; it's like the latter part has survived intact, except the first half of the equation has changed.

3. Therefore, now that a combination of forces -- including, presumably, what Americans themselves wanted and want -- has eroded security of employment for so many, it's totally ok to treat those with security of employment as if they were parasites or free riders.

It seems to me that some areas, the liberal professions, journalism and writing, creative art, etc have always been more uncertain and contingent but there have been ways of earning more and your work and work product has always been more your own than in a regular job.

So I don't believe you share the attitude in #3, that makes others' job security a kind of zero-sum loss for you. It seems that the better way to go is to fight for broader-based security of employment in such a way as to reflect the faster-moving economy and the fact that very few folks have jobs for life in the way that used to be. Indeed, my big disappointment with the new health care plans is that they stick with this outdated model with the employer at the center when what we need are portable benefits to make losing jobs less destructive.

Incidentally, I agree that liking Palin doesn't make people bad folks and it's a pretty dumb move to go down that road. But resentment isn't an attractive thing, and it can do damage.

Geez, I stay away for a couple months, and everybody grows fangs. Who am I, tep? :)

I certainly do not mean to pick on unionized folks in general or teachers in particular. What I guess I'm trying to say is that macroeconomics will find and exploit the weak points in an economy (That's what I did during my stint away from TNR: become an expert at macroeconomics! Yes!).

In other words, it's not a bad thing that Americans are unionized. It's a bad thing that Chinese and Indians aren't. Couple this with the fact that Chinese and Indians (and I'm using that phrase "Chinese and Indians" generically to indicate forces of globalization) are also hungrier, you get, to name one example, the announcement in a meeting at my work a couple months ago that a sizeable chunk of what I and many of my colleagues do is henceforth gonna be outsourced to a nice group of uber-competitive Indians, who do it a hell of a lot cheaper than I and my colleagues do (and with Ph.D.'s that I and most of my colleagues lack).

So, bottom line: while we are worried about protecting union benefits, the big guys are moving in and eating our lunch. So of course I want everyone to have job security, and I don't blame the victim, particularly when the victim works cheap. It's just that others work cheaper. And thus I'm less worried about protecting the job security of a segment of the workforce than I am in protecting the job security of the entire workforce. I mean, frankly, I think we (Americans) are fucked. I'll be dead before the most of the real shit hits the fan, but it's in mid-air as I write this. It's as sure a thing as the second law of thermodynamics. I don't see where there is this huge comparative advantage that's gonna save our sorry asses. Who's gonna do it? Steve Jobs? Hollywood? Detroit? Amusing.

I mentioned a few days ago on another TNR blog that I think TNR should devote a specific blog to education. I consider education a driver of the environment, the economy, and health care--all of which have their own blogs. Those who don't directly work in the field or who don't have children may not get too excited about it. No matter.

jhildner, I think you're only half-right about anti-intellectualism. Elites have no problem with anti-intellectualism as long as it's somebody else that's being anti-intellectual. On the local, personal level, this translates to: "Gee, it's too bad my local schools suck blah blah blah but hey, I gotta go pick up little Susie at her expensive private school so frankly my dear I don't give a damn." In other words, it's not just the anti-intellectuals who are anti-intellectual.

In my definition, a society that doesn't give a shit if a sizeable percentage of its children get a sucky education is an anti-intellectual society, including those members with Ph.D.s in neuroscience or rhetoric or what not. Forget whether a first-grade teacher is a tenured union member: what I want to know it, can the 6-year-old who shows up the first day of school comport himself with basic respect for his peers? Does he have the basic language skills to exploit the curriculum? Do his parents read to him before he goes to bed?

I mean, a society that cares more about teacher tenure than about what kind of parenting poor children get at home just doesn't take education seriously enough, IMO. And I don't say this as some kind of moralistic conservative or bleeding-heart child's advocate. I say this as a member of a society that's getting its ass kicked in the global economy.

Bill. I think you're right in so many ways but what I'm not getting is how we might recover from this downward spiral. Tom Friedman argues for us having the imaginative edge (see the NYT today) but being hobbled by a poisonously non-functional political system that continually produces sub-optimal solutions. But I'm a bit confused by your comments, here and there.

"Society" doesn't care about teacher tenure. If anything, mainstream opinion hates it. But it occurs to me that public education was not a target for hostility and abuse when labor unions were a fairly substantial force in this country. You're a nurse, she's a teacher, I'm a truck driver, and Joe owns a diner. Did the nurse and the restauranteur and truck driver turn around and accuse the teacher of being a scam artist? Also, it occurs to me that the middle class was a lot more secure and substantial here when the gap between earnings wasn't the cosmic practical joke it is now -- and the labor unions had a lot to do with that too.

There's something going on here I don't get. Or, at least, I feel I'm living in a country filled with people who are afraid to get it.

Btw I respect your honesty and clarity -- you're much more upfront in these discussions than I am. I like to dodge behind the fence a bit. Evasive, that's me. And you're funnier. I hit it now and then. Basically between you (the election as The Magnificent Seven) and Rhubarbs (the congratulatory telegram from Moscow) and me (the Wassiliad sketch) we gave the folks here more than they'd get anywhere comparable. And for free, almost.

So I read your piece.

And I thought.

And I thought,

Godammit, fangs just ain't what they used to be!

Stupid Bill Yard. I am, deep down, a complete pessimist and even a misanthrope. I look back on the progress of my nation since my childhood in the 1970s and I can't help but feeling I'm looking at the last third of one of those really unpleasant movies with Jennifer Connelly that you can't stop watching but that when it's over you're kind of relieved that there are no bridges to jump off of between the theater and your house. (Hint: Don't drive from Oakland to San Francisco to watch Requiem for a Dream; you will not survive the drive home.) But I'm able to medicate my everything's-going-to-hell-and-we-missed-the-party pessimism with mild doses of liberal Christianity, patriotic fervor, an undying fascination with the Whig Party, and bourbon whiskey.

Then along comes Bill Yard and in the middle of a pleasant little Palin mocking he cogently states in just a couple of paragraphs a thesis on American national decline that is about as complete a statement of the case as, say, Einstein's general theory of relativity. And, shit, man, this is the last week before Advent. It's going to take me weeks to drown Yard's truth-telling with my usual medicines. Even if tonight I start reading Foner's Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War, which has been on my to-read pile for months; and leave the flag up in front of the house instead of taking it down after the usual Veterans-to-Thanksgiving display; and tap the keg on that corn whiskey I'm barrel-aging at home, even if I do all that, Yard's statements in this thread will have ruined Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's for me. I'm gonna be in a funk for weeks over this.

Why, Bill, why? I feel like Russell Crowe in Proof, pleading with Hugo Weaving's blind photographer: "Your whole life's the truth. Have some pity on the rest of us."

Radical individualism has not turned out to be the best way to order a society. As Yard notes, what is missing is parents.

Very many children grow up with essentially one parent, in large part because we created a divorce culture that made it so easy to get rid of a partner who had faults, real or imagined. And none of the "staying together for the sake of the children" stuff, either. In radical individualism, your happiness is all that matters. The effects on your children are secondary.

Even when parents are there, they're not there. I give you video games, the great time-waster. Wonder why young men are doing so poorly these days, compared to young women? One reason is that they piss their youth away on video games, while girls are actually studying. Where's dad to kick son's butt when bad grades show up? Either he's gone, or he's worried about being "non-judgmental" or some such.

I know we can't recreate the period from 1945-65, and I don't want to. But it's true that families were more stable, children were more well behaved (anyone remember gangs then?), and schools could discipline children without fear of lawsuits in days gone by. Oh, we created a legal culture that supports radical individualism, too. Great.

The only bright spot I see is that soon the younger half of us will be employed providing long term care for the older half. I exaggerate, but not by much. Of course, we're recruiting Filipino nurses by the thousands because, in part, we can't find enoughAmericans who can qualify (yes, and lower wages, too).

Maybe I'm just getting old and curmudgeonly. Maybe every generation felt as I do. But I'm with yard. It ain't looking good, and short of a sea change in attitudes toward a whole host of topics, I don't see it getting better. Teacher tenure or no.

rhubarbs; "Yard's statements in this thread will have ruined Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's for me." Five years ago I could have plowed right through National Apricot Day (Jan. 9), too, and put a serious dent in Black History Month (February). Damn. I'm losing it.

butchie: Radical individualism has not turned out to be the best way to order a society." I'm a big believer in radical individualism as a source of creativity, happiness, and self-knowledge, but I think it needs to be presented in the context of a privilege, rather than an entitlement, that has to be earned. In other words, if I eat my brussel sprouts first I can have my choice of desserts later.

Then precious few brussels sprouts have been consumed in the last few decades, eh, william? Our collective sense of entitlement knows few bounds these days.

I don't say I had a hard life as a kid, but we didn't have all that much. Are there kids so poor today that they don't have a cellphone? Maybe, but damned few.

I tend to agree -- I'm always skeptical of the "you kids have no idea!" cycle where everyone imagines their upbringing to have been less privileged (and yet perhaps less constrained) than the current young generation, but I do think that while it's true that the 1940-1960 cohort had less material possessions and were in some ways tougher and had a much lower sense of entitlement, we were also the generation that invented the late 1960s and 1970s, that had radical thoughts of new politics, alternative living and sexual freedom, that consumed chemicals, and that created both some enduring popular music and the imaginative basis for the internet.

Maybe there's a connection?

And butchie, the thing about paying for the pleasure up front--e.g., the brussel sprouts--is that it makes what comes after not just deserved but, well, better.

I still recall the best water I've ever tasted. It came from a hose beside to the football field where I went to high school. I ran cross country, and we would not indulge in water until after our workouts. Particularly during pre-season drills, when we just busted our tails in 90-degree heat, we would all sneak glimpses over at that hose during the last 440 or 880.

And then, finally, practice was over and we limped/jogged/sprinted over to the spigot and waited until it was our turn to drink deeply from the sweetest, coldest, purest water on the face of the earth.

One time I came by the hose in early spring, when there was still a chill to the air. I was dressed for book-learning, not for running. I had no need for water, but I took a drink from the hose anyway. It was nothing special.

Yard, I too appreciate your points in your 7:15 post from yesterday, and I don't have any tidy answer for how to deal with the problem of outsourcing. I suspect that there is no tidy answer. Is the problem a relative lack of qualified individuals or is it more the fact that individuals in les advanced economies require much less pay to support their standard of living -- a problem that can't be solved unless we would like to see our own standard of living sink to a competitively low level, which is not an option. So, we have to seek other avenues to enhance U.S. global competitiveness.

Meanwhile, the question of benefits and security can be addressed intelligently, I hope, somewhat apart from the issue of global competitiveness, because benefits and security are just things that cost money and can be traded for pay. If given the opportunity, most individuals I think would take that trade, so long as the diminished pay is decent, because they place a premium on resolving their economic instability and uncertainty for the long term, just as firms place a premium on maximum flexibility and resist anything -- from government regulation to unions -- that could tie their hands and limit their options. Increasingly, the firms' preference for flexibility dominates the labor market, and individuals don't even have the chance to make a trade-off that wouldn't *necessarily* diminish a firm's global competitiveness.

If the problem were an education gap -- and maybe that is part of the problem -- then I'm all for addressing that comprehensively, but I view teacher tenure as a relatively minor aspect of that issue and certainly not the main one. Obviously, your initial post was shooting for a broader point, and I seized upon just a couple of aspects of it that, you know, rubbed me the wrong way. I agree that the main issue is home life and parenting, and I don't think a society should value teacher tenure more than those things -- but I don't see any trade-off there.

Anyway, no fangs intended! And I hope you don't leave us again!