SCRIPTED, ARROGANT, DUMB AND TOWN: Who failed Ma'Khia Bryant?

FRIDAY, MAY 14, 2021

Who killed Davey Moore? It's routinely amazing to see the things which appear in the New York Times.

We're struck today by the cosmic indifference reflected in one line of Sarah Vowell's opinion column—the line in which Vowell blithely declares that Bozeman, Montana is blessed with "good schools."

We'll discuss that blithe claim below. We were also struck by this passage from a letter on today's letters page:

LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (5/14/21):With respect to my own decision not to get the vaccine, I had Covid in February, and therefore almost certainly am immune to infection.

According to the letter writer, she had Covid in February. For that reason, she doesn't need to get vaccinated.

Blithely, the New York Times put that assessment in print, furthering that understanding. But is that understanding well founded?

We can't necessarily answer that question. Luckily, one major newspaper already has.

That newspaper is the New York Times. In February, the Times devoted an analysis piece to that very question. The Times report started like this:

MANDAVILLI (2/20/21): Nearly 30 million people in the United States—and probably many others whose illnesses were never diagnosed—have been infected with the coronavirus so far. Should these people still be vaccinated?

Two new studies answer that question with an emphatic yes.

Who knows? Maybe the science has changed since that time. That said, the Times report was "updated [on] April 22" and that emphatic judgment remained.

Maybe that letter is expressing sound science. But does anyone actually think that the editor who put that letter in print gave as much as a second of thought to that obvious question? Also this:

Vowell says that Bozeman boasts "good schools." That certainly could be true.

That said, what she actually means—most likely, all she actually knows—is most likely something like this: 

Bozeman's student population is almost entirely white and Asian-American. Presumably, a healthy dose of that student population is connected to highly educated parents who work at Montana State University in the small city Vowell describes as "my beloved college town."

Almost surely in part for those reasons, Bozeman's test scores exceed average scores across the state of Montana. To the dilettantes who control Our Town, this sort of thing has always been taken as a marker of "good schools." 

Full and complete total stop. In fact, these people don't care.

Such judgments betray a gruesome indifference to the question of where test scores come from. This gruesome indifference has always been screamingly evident in the way the Hamptons-based New York Times reports on the public schools. 

The truth is, the Times doesn't care about the kids who attend our public schools; almost surely, the Times never will. 

Above-average test scores = "good schools" has long been the watchword of those people in Our Town who simply don't care to give such matters a single thought. Such people dominate the major news orgs which drive the prevailing dumbness here in Our Town.

The Times is routinely uncaring about such matters as this. This observation brings us to a related question—a question concerning the late Ma'Khia Bryant, age 16 at the time ofher death, and the upbringing and the fate of her three younger siblings.

On Sunday morning. above the fold, the Times turned one of its kid reporters loose to address that important question. He opened with a passage right out of Storyline.

"Who killed Davey Moore?" the observer known as Bob Dylan once asked. In this case, the Times' "diaper dandy" pointed his finger at the state of Ohio's foster care system. His analysis went like this:

BOGEL-BURROUGHS ET AL (5/9/21): Ms. Bryant’s tragic death was also preceded by a turbulent journey through the foster care system, which had cycled Ma’Khia through at least five placements in two years—after her own mother was found to be negligent—despite efforts by their grandmother to reunite the family.

Ohio places children in foster care at a rate 10 percent higher than the national average, and child welfare officials here are considerably less likely than in the country as a whole to place children with their relatives. Black children, like Ma’Khia and her sister, account for nearly a third of children removed from homes—nearly twice their proportion in the population.

A review of Ma’Khia’s pathway through foster care shows that it failed her in critical ways.

Research has demonstrated that children fare far better when they remain with family members, a practice known as kinship care. It also shows that each successive placement causes additional trauma, further setting back a child in crisis.

“Everybody knows and the research has proven over and over and over again that the best placement for children is with their kin,” said Ronald R. Browder, the president and chief executive of the Ohio Federation for Health Equity and Social Justice. “But the focus has always been on foster care.”

Those were paragraphs 7-12 of the Times' 81-paragraph front-page report. Right off the bat, Times readers were told this:

Her grandmother had tried to reunite the family. But the Ohio foster care system failed the late Ma'Khia Bryant in various ways.

That indictment could be true, of course. Unfortunately, because we read this lengthy report in the New York Times, we have no real way of knowing.

Is there really something wrong with the rate at which Ohio banishes kids to foster care? As we noted yesterday, nothing in this young fellow's report gives a reader any way of making such an assessment.

Does Ohio consign too many kids to the Hell of foster care? We don't know how to answer that question. As we noted yesterday, judging from appearances, neither does Bogel-Burroughs.

That said, the claim that Bryant was failed by Ohio's foster care system suits modern Storyline. Rather, it allowed the Times to slide away from a more obvious source of the inadequate care which led to this young person's death.

Was Ma'Khia Bryant, age 16, failed by the gummint bureaucrats of the state of Ohio? Everything is possible! But to identify someone who plainly failed this teenaged girl, let's consider something we're finally told very late in the dandy's report.

While we're at it, let's consider an obvious question—a question which went unasked and unanswered in the diaper dandy's report.

The question which went unasked

A violent fight was underway when Ma'Khia Bryant was shot and killed in Columbus, Ohio. Her younger sister, Ja'Niah Bryant, was present at the scene, in front of the house where the two had been living in foster care.

A violent fight was underway. Early in Sunday's report, Bogel-Burroughs briefly describes it:

BOGEL-BURROUGHS ET AL: [On April 20], Ja’Niah called 911 again, telling the police that she and her older sister were being threatened by two young women who used to live at the house. Officers arrived in the middle of a melee outside the house, and one of them fatally shot Ja’Niah’s 16-year-old sister, Ma’Khia Bryant, who was lunging at one of the women, brandishing a steak knife.

Judging from the bodycam tape, the fatal shooting of Ma'Khia Bryant may have saved the life of the young woman at whom she was lunging with that knife. 

For that reason, it's been hard to blame the police officer in the case of this fatal shooting. The Ohio foster care system was quickly subbed in by the Times.

Much, much later in his report, Bogel-Burroughs adds a bit of detail to his account of that deeply unfortunate fight. Included are the names of the two young women with whom Bryant was involved in the fight.

As best we can tell, Ma'Khia Bryant never received sufficient help in the course of her young life. In the highlighted sentence, we finally get the answer to one question about that fight—the answer to a question which has largely been avoided:

BOGEL-BURROUGHS ET AL: A police officer stepped out of his car and walked toward the driveway just as Ma’Khia turned her attention to Ms. Craig-Watkins and could be heard on a video from a neighbor’s surveillance camera threatening to stab her. 
As Ma’Khia charged, Ms. Craig-Watkins tumbled to the ground, and Ma’Khia’s father tried to kick her. Ma’Khia turned to Ms. Bonner and backed her up against a car. 
Ma’Khia raised a knife, and Officer Nicholas Reardon, a white 23-year-old who was the first officer to approach the scene, shot four times at Ma’Khia, who slumped down. 
As Ma’Khia’s body lay on the ground, police officers led Ja’Niah inside Ms. Moore’s house, along with her father’s young son.

Ja’Niah turned on the television to find some cartoons for her younger [half-]brother to watch...

That passage describes the death of a teenage girl who had perhaps been failed by the people around her. In the highlighted sentence, we learn that the man who is seen kicking, or attempting to kick, that one young woman in the head was, in fact, Ma'Khia's father, Myron Hammonds, who had been called to the scene of the dispute.

Who killed Davey Moore? Let's restate the question like this:

Was Myron Hammonds, Ma'Khia's father, the family member to whom the foster care system should have assigned the Bryant sisters and their two younger siblings? 

In fact, he was the father of the four Bryant kids. But as Bogel-Burroughs had mentioned in passing, "Mr. Hammonds, Ma’Khia’s father, did not live with the family and [the children's mother] described herself as raising the children largely on her own."

Was the foster care system supposed to assign the four Bryant kids to their father? When he was called for help that day (apparently by the children's grandmother), he came to the house with a younger son and proceeded to help matters out by kicking a young woman in the head as she lay on the ground.

Was the Ohio foster care system supposed to assign the four Bryant children to him? Were they supposed to continue to assign them to the paternal grandmother, to whom they'd initially been assigned? 

Repeat! Initially, protective services had assigned the children to their grandmother. Later, as Bogel-Burroughs reports, she had become homeless, living at times in her car. At that point, the Bryant children went into foster care.

Was the foster care system supposed to tell the four Bryant kids to report to their grandmother's car? Was that the assignment which would have let the siblings "fare far better?"

These children were in the child protective system in the first place because their mother had placed them there. When the mother appeared on CNN's disgraceful Chris Cuomo show, it seemed fairly clear to us that she was intellectually or emotionally challenged in some way. 

That doesn't mean that she's a bad person. But was the Ohio system supposed to send the kids back to her?

How about the showboating cousin—the city council member in Mansfield, Ohio who kept telling the world what a fabulous kid Ma'Khia had been? 

At that time, we asked why Ma'Khia Bryant hadn't been living with him. Should Ohio's foster care system have called on this high-achieving, showboating cousin?

The Times report doesn't mention this guy. Did reporters bother to ask whether he had been willing to help?

"Who killed Davey Moore?" Bob Dylan once asked. In his song, he offered a list of people, all of whom said, "Not I."

Today, we ask a similar question:

Who failed to help Ma'Khia Bryant in the course of her sixteen years?

There seems to be a fairly obvious initial answer to that question, if the Times feels it has to be asked. It looks like the four Bryant kids didn't get the kind of help all children deserve to get, where possible, from their immediate family.

This may not have been anyone's "fault." The mother and the paternal grandmother may have done the best they could—and the problems with which they may have been struggling may reach all the way back into our nation's brutal history.

Ma'Khia's mother and her paternal grandmother may have done the best they could. But how about the New York Times? Did they do the best they could?

At the Times, they quickly fingered the foster cares system, suggesting that the Bryant kids would have "fared far better"  had they remained in the care of family members. In fact, the protective system had placed them in their grandmother's care, until the grandmother turned ended up homeless.

At that point, they went into foster care. But also, imagine this:

At no point did the Times' diaper dandy ask, or answer, an obvious question! That question would be this:

When the four children's grandmother no longer could provide care, why didn't their father step in? Why didn't the Bryant kids' father take in one or all of his kids?

As the New York Times flayed the foster care system, that question went unasked. The Times aggressively implied that the kids should have stayed in family care. But the New York Times' diaper dandy never pointed a finger at him.

It may well be that Ma'Khia's father was doing the best he could. Based on what he did on the day she died, his best doesn't look especially good. Should Ohio's foster care system should tried to rely on him?

In fact, the cub reporters at the Times were working from preferred Storyline. In the current environment, we don't discuss the shortcomings and the misbehaviors of black decedents in cases like this. We don't even discuss the shortcomings of their families.

Instead, Our Town's favorite stars go on TV and misstate basic facts about these fatal incidents. And a bright young kid one year out of college puffs himself  up and blames the Ohio foster care system, based on the flimsiest possible type of analysis.

The children would have fared far better had they been assigned to family members! That's what this vastly inexperienced kid said as the start of his piece, with the permission of his slumbering editors.

Bogel-Burroughs didn't assign himself the task of composing this unintelligent takedown. If there were such a thing as very bad people—we don't think that's a helpful way to view the world—we would say that this high-achieving diaper dandy was badly failed by his elders, a bit like Ma'Khia before him.

Who killed Davey Moore? At the routinely gruesome Times, arrows of blame had to be aimed at public servants first. The people who struggle with family situations like this don't live in the Hamptons, after all—nor are they the wretched of the earth, about whom the New York Times is now pretending to care.

Ma'Khia Bryant is dead and gone. The dysfunction into which she was born certainly wasn't her fault or her doing. In a somewhat better world, all American  kids would be born in the Hamptons, with major Timespersons for their parents. Or possibly out in Bozeman!

Meanwhile, can Our Town expect to survive this arrogant, dumb journalistic regime? Leading experts across the globe despondently say that we can't.

Who killed Davey Moore?: To hear Bob Dylan sing the song, you can just click here.

31 comments:

  1. "Who killed Davey Moore?"

    Of course everyone and everything contributes to the outcomes in a person's life, but that doesn't excuse the cops killing a 16 year old girl.

    According to Wikipedia:

    "Davey Moore was an American boxer whose career spanned 1953 to 1963. Known as "The Little Giant", Moore stood at only 5 feet 2 inches (157 cm). On March 18, 1959, Moore won the World Featherweight Title from Hogan Bassey. Moore held the title for four years and three days, defending it five times before losing it to Cuban Sugar Ramos on March 21, 1963. During the fight with Ramos in Dodgers Stadium, Moore was knocked down into the ropes during the 10th round. Moore lost by technical knockout at the end of the 10th round and Ramos took the title. Moore walked back to his dressing room and conducted post-fight interviews, stating his desire to fight Ramos again and regain the title. After reporters left he complained of headaches and fell unconscious. He was taken to White Memorial Hospital where he was diagnosed with inoperable brain damage. Moore never regained consciousness and died as a result of the affliction on March 25, 1963.[2]"

    Tell me how this has anything whatsoever to do with the situation of Ma'Khia Bryant!

    Somerby just grabbed this Dylan lyric because it has the words "who killed" in it, and "not I". Beyond that, Dylan was not talking about foster care or the cops or even girls. Somerby gets no liberal cred points for knowing about this Dylan song, since Dylan was famous to anyone in our age group. Somerby loses points for ignoring the content of Dylan's song in order to distort it in service of his own agenda. I wish Somerby would stop doing this kind of thing. These songs have meaning for the rest of us and Somerby regularly tramples on that, as well as the understandings that come with normal reading comprehension.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Isiyku Abdulahi
      My ex-boyfriend dumped me one week ago after I accused him of seeing someone else and insulting him. I want him back in my life but he refuse to have any contact with me. I was so confuse and don’t know what to do, so I reach to the Internet for help and I saw a testimony of how a spell caster help them to get their ex back so I contact the spell caster and explain my problem to him and he cast a spell for me and assure me of 2 days that my ex will return to me and to my greatest surprise the third day my ex came knocking on my door and beg for forgiveness. I am so happy that my love is back again and not only that, we are about to get married. Once again thank you Dr Believe. You are truly talented and gifted.He is the only answer. He can be of great help and I will not stop talking about him because he is a wonderful man. Contact this great love spell caster for your relationship or marriage problem to be solved today via email: believelovespelltemple@gmail.com or WhatsApp: +19713839183


      Delete
    2. LOTTO, lottery,jackpot.
      Hello all my viewers, I am very happy for sharing this great testimonies,The best thing that has ever happened in my life is how I win the lottery euro million mega jackpot. I am a Woman who believe that one day I will win the lottery. finally my dreams came through when I email believelovespelltemple@gmail.com and tell him I need the lottery numbers. I have spend so much money on ticket just to make sure I win. But I never know that winning was so easy until the day I meant the spell caster online which so many people has talked about that he is very great in casting lottery spell, . so I decide to give it a try.I contacted this great Dr Believe and he did a spell and he gave me the winning lottery numbers. But believe me when the draws were out I was among winners. I win 30,000 million Dollar. Dr Believe truly you are the best, all thanks to you forever









      LOTTO, lottery,jackpot.
      Hello all my viewers, I am very happy for sharing this great testimonies,The best thing that has ever happened in my life is how I win the lottery euro million mega jackpot. I am a Woman who believe that one day I will win the lottery. finally my dreams came through when I email believelovespelltemple@gmail.com and tell him I need the lottery numbers. I have spend so much money on ticket just to make sure I win. But I never know that winning was so easy until the day I meant the spell caster online which so many people has talked about that he is very great in casting lottery spell, . so I decide to give it a try.I contacted this great Dr Believe and he did a spell and he gave me the winning lottery numbers. But believe me when the draws were out I was among winners. I win 30,000 million Dollar. Dr Believe truly you are the best, all thanks to you forever

      Delete
  2. Here is an interesting article about why standardized tests tend to underestimate the ability of minority students to do college work:

    https://red.msudenver.edu/2021/passing-on-standardized-tests.html

    "Miguel Angel Escobar Garza excelled at Denver’s Abraham Lincoln High School, graduating in 2015 with a GPA north of 3.0. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at his standardized-test scores.

    English is Garza’s second language, and the barrier was pronounced on the English portion of the ACT; his math score was nearly twice as high.

    Those scores were one reason he didn’t plan on going to college. Then, a mentor who saw his potential connected him to the Center for Urban Education at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Today, Garza is a first-generation college student majoring in electrical engineering technology. He also works as a peer mentor for other men of color enrolled at the University."

    This article mentions a Hispanic student but black students have similar difficulties on standardized tests to the extent that they have literacy-related deficits. As the article states:

    "Standardized tests are polarizing in the education world. Critics have long argued that they aren’t an objective measure of students’ academic ability, and research shows that average SAT scores line up linearly with family income and parental education level."

    ReplyDelete
  3. "According to the letter writer, she had Covid in February. For that reason, she doesn't need to get vaccinated.

    Blithely, the New York Times put that assessment in print, furthering that understanding. But is that understanding well founded?"

    Somerby routinely conflates opinion pieces and editorials, letters to the editor, and reported news articles. He ignores the different purposes of these three types of pieces and today seems to expect that editors of the Times will check all three for accuracy of content. But only one of these three types of articles is a news report for which the NY Times is responsible for the content and must vet accuracy. The other two reflect the knowledge and opinion of identified individuals commenting on the world or previous NY Times published work.

    If the NY Times were to start reviewing, editing and censoring the opinion pieces and letters, they would be depriving the public and the community from participating in a dialog around current events and news. Those pieces are a forum for the public to speak back to each other and the editors of the newspaper. Somerby treats these opinion pieces as if they are part of the news content, and thus should never contain anything controversial, conflicting with reported news, or even misguided and incorrect. It is as if Somerby himself cannot distinguish between the kinds of items he reads, expecting them to conform to a uniform standard (of his own contrivance).

    When someone states something egregiously wrong in a letter, the editor may occasionally ad an Editor's Note beneath the letter itself. We don't know whether that happened for this particular letter (because Somerby wouldn't tell us if it did), and I am not going to waste time checking, but that is the correct way to warn readers about incorrect information. Tampering with other people's submissions is not, and suppressing those submissions defeats the purpose of both editorials and opinion pieces and letters to the editor.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "Vowell says that Bozeman boasts "good schools." That certainly could be true.

    That said, what she actually means—most likely, all she actually knows—is most likely something like this:

    Bozeman's student population is almost entirely white and Asian-American. Presumably, a healthy dose of that student population is connected to highly educated parents who work at Montana State University in the small city Vowell describes as "my beloved college town."

    Almost surely in part for those reasons, Bozeman's test scores exceed average scores across the state of Montana. To the dilettantes who control Our Town, this sort of thing has always been taken as a marker of "good schools."

    Full and complete total stop. In fact, these people don't care."

    Without knowing anything much about Vowell, Somerby assumes that she doesn't know anything more about the Bozeman schools than their test scores. Vowell did attend college in that small college town. It is possible and perhaps even likely that she encountered people whose children attended those schools. She may have heard first-hand reports from parents about school quality. She may have participated, as a college student, in volunteer activities to benefit local schools, gone to a school carnival or drama production, lived next door to a child attending the schools. She may, as a student, have done an internship or worked as a teacher's aide in a Bozeman school. She may have planned to become a teacher before her writing career -- many young people do that. She may have read local newspapers and seen editorials, articles and letters, notices of sporting events and school activities, that supported her ideas about the schools.

    In other words, Vowell could have a great deal more of a basis for her statement about the quality of Bozeman schools than Somerby gives her credit for. And Somerby's conclusion, that "these people don't care" is surely wrong because people everywhere do tend to care about the schools. Somerby has no evidence that Vowell or anyone else doesn't care. Other than his own ignorance of their knowledge and attitude toward the schools.

    I'd say that Somerby doesn't care...about who he maligns with his ugly accusations against bystanders in his own personal culture war, including Sarah Vowell.

    ReplyDelete
  5. "Judging from the bodycam tape, the fatal shooting of Ma'Khia Bryant may have saved the life of the young woman at whom she was lunging with that knife. "

    So, now Somerby is a self-styled expert on knife fighting? It seems unlikely that a 16-year old girl is going to kill anyone with a steak knife, except accidentally. She might have cut the other girl, even seriously, but unless she knew what she was doing with that knife (or the other girl were unlucky), the extent of injury was unlikely to be fatal. Somerby makes himself sound ridiculous when he asserts otherwise. This is like saying that every bar fight leads to death because you never know when someone will hit his head in the wrong way. In fact, every steak is dangerous if you don't chew and swallow exactly right.

    Somerby whizzes right on by the two 911 calls in which Bryant's sister describes themselves as being under attack by the other girls. Why is this not being described as self-defense? Only because Somerby wishes to exonerate the cop and blame the Times for examining (Somerby says pinning the blame) the role of the foster care system in creating the situation that precipitated this fight.

    Somerby ignores that Ma'Khia Bryant had a side too, one she is unable to express because she is dead. In that, Somerby shows huge bias, but what else is new?

    ReplyDelete
  6. "The children would have fared far better had they been assigned to family members! That's what this vastly inexperienced kid said as the start of his piece, with the permission of his slumbering editors."

    That inexperienced kid attributed this opinion to experts. It wasn't his own judgment of the foster care system. Were those experts also inexperienced kids?

    ReplyDelete
  7. "Two new studies answer that question with an emphatic yes."

    ...two studies paid for by Pfizer, they forgot to add...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Who else would do the studies? This is all part of developing the vaccine.

      Delete
    2. Right. Any study produces the result requested by the one who's paying for it. A vaccine company wants to sell more doses.

      Hopefully, even a dembot can add two and two together.

      Delete
    3. It would be foolish for a vaccine company to fake results in a study when public health statistics are being kept and can refute a false study's results.

      Delete
  8. "Was the foster care system supposed to assign the four Bryant kids to their father? When he was called for help that day (apparently by the children's grandmother), he came to the house with a younger son and proceeded to help matters out by kicking a young woman in the head as she lay on the ground."

    He was already caring for the two younger children. They weren't the ones having problems.

    Whose word is it that says Hammond was trying to kick the person on the ground? The cops? How hard is it for a man to kick a woman lying on the ground -- not hard at all, so why did he "attempt" to kick her and not actually kick her?

    What were the Bryant girls defending themselves against? Why did they feel the need and why was Hammond called? Somerby doesn't seem to care about that, but the threat seems relevant to the defensive actions Ma'Kiah was taking. Before Hammond arrived, it was 2-girls against 1 (Ma'kiah). Consider the improvised nature of a steak knife as a weapon.

    Somerby asks why the father didn't step in when the grandmother had difficulties. First, he did take the two younger kids. Second, men don't assume child care duties when they are working at a job (or trying to find one, not sure what was true for Hammond). Third, it generally makes more sense for young children and girls to be living with a woman.

    Somerby is only thinking about what will exonerate the police and blame that press article, critical of foster care. His speculation is biased by that motive.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Somerby, who is unmarried and has no kids, asks why this father of four didn't take in all of the kids when the grandmother lost her apartment. Only a single man would ask such a thing. Can he imagine himself taking in four children, two of them young, at short notice? He apparently cannot even imagine himself creating any kind of family.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good comment. It's easy to say, just leave the kids with a relative, but often this isn't feasible.

      A good friend is the grandmother of three kids in foster care in another state. Her son died in an accident and her daughter-in-law became a drug addict and is an unfit mother. There was an effort for some family member to adopt the three children. My friend and her husband are too old. Other relatives have burdens that prevent this from working.

      Delete
    2. Anonymouse 3:11pm, Einstein, Somerby’s point is that the NYT piece yabbered on about Ohio being loath to place kids with relatives rather than with strangers, and in this case the girls’ family couldn’t take them in for various and legitimate reasons.

      Delete
    3. It isn't me, it is Somerby who is insisting that the father should have taken them in.

      Delete
    4. No, he argued that the father obviously had problems by the fact that he was trying to kick a woman in the head.

      Delete
  10. “Later, as Bogel-Burroughs reports, she had become homeless, living at times in her car. At that point, the Bryant children went into foster care.
    Was the foster care system supposed to tell the four Bryant kids to report to their grandmother's car? “

    This is what the article actually reports:

    “Ms. Hammonds slept wherever she could for several months — sometimes in hotel rooms, sometimes with friends, and many nights in her car — until she secured a home that could accommodate the children. In December 2019, Ms. Hammonds submitted a petition to the court for their return, but it was rejected.”

    I’d hate to think Somerby is using the Times paywall to bury and hide parts of the report from his readers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, you’d hate to think that Somerby would try to put one over on us.

      I’d hate to think that you can’t ascertain the meaning of this statement.

      “Her grandmother had tried to reunite the family. But the Ohio foster care system failed the late Ma'Khia Bryant in various ways.

      That indictment could be true, of course. Unfortunately, because we read this lengthy report in the New York Times, we have no real way of knowing.”

      Delete
    2. Your reply is irrelevant to mh's comment.

      Delete
    3. No, it is not. The implication that Somerby misrepresented what happened with the family does not hold up to what he specifically argued about the NYT lack of clarification of its claims.

      Delete
  11. “To the dilettantes who control Our Town, this sort of thing has always been taken as a marker of "good schools."’

    (Note the weaselly substitution of Somerby’s own assumption for Vowell’s: “Almost surely in part for those reasons”. Vowell doesn’t tell us why she thinks the schools are good. Although, perhaps it’s from first hand knowledge.

    In fact, far from being a dilettante about Bozeman schools, Vowell actually went there:

    “Sarah Vowell was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma. She moved to Bozeman, Montana when she was eleven.”
    (From Wikipedia)

    She attended school as a youngster there. Prior to that, she went to school in Muskogee.

    “In fact, these people don't care.”

    More Wikipedia:
    “Vowell is on the advisory board of 826NYC, a nonprofit tutoring and writing center for students aged 6–18 in Brooklyn.”

    About 826NYC:

    “826NYC is a nonprofit organization located in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It provides free after-school tutoring, workshops, in-schools tutoring, help for English language learners, and assistance with student publications. Drawing from a volunteer base of over 2,000, which includes many teachers, writers and journalism professionals, 826NYC unites students with tutors. It is a chapter of 826 National.”

    Does Somerby do anything like this? I don’t think he cares one bit about schools, personally. He is a prime example of a dilettante, if there ever was one.

    ReplyDelete
  12. “Bozeman's student population is almost entirely white and Asian-American.”

    The sheer stupidity of this statement, not to mention the racism of it, is mind-boggling.

    In fact, Bozeman is 90% white, only slightly higher than Montana as a whole, which is about 88.5% white. Asians are only about 2% of Bozeman’s population.

    Also, can Somerby conceive of reasons a school might be “good” without relating it to test scores, and why a school being good doesn’t imply another school is necessarily “bad?”

    A school can be good by virtue of having better trained teachers, better supplies and equipment, better course offerings, etc.

    It would be nice if all students had access to good schools.

    And Somerby is the one who is fond of defending parents who want to take their kids out of crappy schools and enroll them in good ones, so what is his beef here?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He wants to attack Vowell, who is female, youngish, and a better writer than he is.

      Delete
    2. A school can be good because it’s student population is largely composed of middle and upper class white kids who don’t face the sort of challenges in the numbers that other demographics face.

      Its like a comparison of Brooklyn public schools with Stuyvesant High School. It’s not a formulation that should be used by a knowledgeable person.

      Does Bozeman “boast good a “good schools” in the sense that it has achieved something that Brooklyn, NY public school system hasn’t been able to pull off?

      Are there some factors that should make any knowledgeable journalist more cautious when describing certain schools as being “good” because their tests scores are higher?

      I’d say that there is and I acknowledge how not keeping that consideration on the forefront could chaff anyone who really is serious about the problem.

      Delete
    3. A school can be good because it’s student population is largely composed of middle and upper class white kids who don’t face the sort of challenges in the numbers that other demographics face.

      Its like a comparison of Brooklyn public schools with Stuyvesant High School. It’s not a formulation that should be used by a knowledgeable person.

      Does Bozeman “boast good a “good schools” in the sense that it has achieved something that Brooklyn, NY public school system hasn’t been able to pull off?

      Are there some factors that should make any knowledgeable journalist more cautious when describing certain schools as being “good” because their tests scores are higher?

      I’d say that there is and I acknowledge how not keeping that consideration on the forefront could chaff anyone who really is serious about the problem.

      Delete
    4. If you are too stupid to prevent duplicate comments like this, you are too stupid to post any comments.

      Delete
  13. The goal of the mass media billionaire owners is to distract you from the important and the essential. All their scripts and storylines serve that purpose. That these greedy fucks should have the power to dominate the public discourse and set the agenda for whole nations and even for the world is insane. People must awaken to the idea that it need not be this way.

    ReplyDelete
  14. "In a somewhat better world, all American kids would be born in the Hamptons, with major Timespersons for their parents."

    Of course! That's why we follow their scripts and storylines with such religious devotion. The rich know best! Whether it's Rupert Murdoc or a Timesperson, the minions can't think for themselves, they must not deviate from billionaire scripture.

    ReplyDelete
  15. DR EMU WHO HELP PEOPLE IN ANY TYPE OF LOTTERY NUMBERS
    It is a very hard situation when playing the lottery and never won, or keep winning low fund not up to 100 bucks, i have been a victim of such a tough life, the biggest fund i have ever won was 100 bucks, and i have been playing lottery for almost 12 years now, things suddenly change the moment i came across a secret online, a testimony of a spell caster called dr emu, who help people in any type of lottery numbers, i was not easily convinced, but i decided to give try, now i am a proud lottery winner with the help of dr emu, i won $1,000.0000.00 and i am making this known to every one out there who have been trying all day to win the lottery, believe me this is the only way to win the lottery.

    Dr Emu can also help you fix this issues

    (1)Ex back.
    (2)Herbal cure & Spiritual healing.
    (3)You want to be promoted in your office.
    (4)Pregnancy spell.
    (5)Win a court case.

    Contact him on email Emutemple@gmail.com
    What's app +2347012841542
    Website Https://emutemple.wordpress.com/
    Https://web.facebook.com/Emu-Temple-104891335203341

    ReplyDelete