US Secretary of Education: Total devastation good for education

Poor Arne.  His fortunes were riding high.  It looked like in the aftermath of Obama's State of the Union speech, education was the one policy arena where is might not be too difficult to get bi-partisan agreement.   (Not exactly a heavy lift.  Teachers' unions are traditionally strong Democratic supporters, so a Democratic president willing to undermine them must have seemed a little bit too good to be true to the just-say-no Republicans.  Of course, there was the usual posturing.    Can't appear too gleeful, you know. ) 

Along with the opportunity to impose policy, it looked like Arne was going to get another big pot of play money to toss around.  And the New Yorker had the courtesy to profile him with a nice little puff piece.

Yep, things were going along swimmingly for ole Arne.  He had managed to escape any questions about the emerging news of his seven-year failure as Chicago Public Schools CEO, and the pummelling of his chief flack Peter Cunningham by the evil Richard Rothstein in a radio interview had escaped widespread media scrutiny.

But then a mutant virus tunneled into Duncan's mindware, causing him to say this:  "Let me be really honest. I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster..."

The red alert immediately sounded in mission control room as programmers scrambled to fix the rogue program and get Duncan back on script -- but it was too late.  The US Secretary of Education had pronounced that total destruction of their schools and communities was the best thing that could have happened for thousands of poor, black children.

I think you should have kept doing what you're best at -- being considerably less honest -- Arne, chum.