Just So We’re Clear On This

I do believe Mark Dayton taught high school.

I believe it because it’d be grindingly stupid for a public figure to lie about something that is as relatively easy to run down (even given New York City’s sclerotic bureaucracy) as whether he actually taught.

And even if Mark Dayton were unaware of how nothing remotely public is secret from The Cloud – and it’s possible, since the last time he ran for office there were no blogs, and The Cloud and crowdsourcing were the stuff of futurists’ jabberings – he’s got people on his staff who, by all accounts, should.

So yeah, I suspect Dayton probably taught for a couple of years.  Because he put his teaching experience in his bio for a reason – to burnish his “I understand the plight of the commoners” cred, which might be suspect, given his plutocratic pedigree.

So yes; I’ll accept Dayton worked as a teacher.  But I’d be interested in knowing where.  And with whom.

Charlie Quimby has a quote from the director of the “Peace Corps”-like program for whom Dayton worked, right out of Yale in the late sixties.

Mark taught on the Lower East Side where my headquarters were located. He was one of the first to come into the program, along with a number of recent Yale graduates, and I knew him quite well. He did a very good job and the conditions were in some ways more demanding than the Peace Corps.

It is indeed contemptible that anyone would attempt to claim that Mark did not teach in the New York City public schools or deny his youthful idealism.

In other words, “shut up, madding peasants!”.

Still, we’re getting closer.  Dayton taught on “the Lower East Side”.  Quimby even intimates that he taught at a “PS65”, on the Lower East Side.

Well bully!  Now we’re getting closer!

But so far what we have is the word of a training program director, and a copy of his license that was apparently delivered to…the address of the training program.

Look – as I’ve said, I believe that Dayton taught.  And as the grandson, son and brother of teachers, I do truly want to “deny his youthful idealism”, heaven forfend.  Teaching is an important job; if he actually was a teacher, it improves my opinion of him ever so slightly (and, commensurately, if he is, heaven forfend, lying about it, it’ll certainly tank whatever respect I may have had for him, little as that may be).

So would it kill Dayton to simply say “I taught for two years at PS65; my principal was Lev Abramowiec”, or wherever?

Because what we have so far are…:

  • Dismissive huffing from an educational “community organizer” who assures us that Dayton taught for his program, but doesn’t apparently go into details.  In the spirit of inquiry, I’ll ask anyone to stop me if I’m wrong.
  • A copy of a teachers license delivered, apparently, to the address of the program above.  A teachers license proves that someone was deemed qualified to teach, and that they passed their student teaching evaluations, and a bunch of classes in pedagogy and psychology (“Theory of the Eraser 351”, my dad – who only taught for forty years so, plus a couple stints teaching teachers – called ’em).

Well, it proves that Mark Dayton could have been a teacher, all right.  It doesn’t actually put him in a classroom, but I’m sure that’s just a formality.

So would it kill the campaign to give us a school name?  A principal?

Quimby signs off by saying he really, really doesn’t like uppity peasants asking questions of their betters:

If you find something factual that refutes me [which would be difficult, since the only facts in the linked piece are the one-time existence of a lower-east-side school], please do get back to my readers in the comments. I’ll be in Turkey, where that nation has an election that may move it every closer to democratic rule.

Otherwise, it would be a good idea not to raise questions when you really don’t know the answers.

It makes you look like an ass.

Sometimes it surely does.

And sometimes it leads to other questions, which lead to bigger answers than you’d ever dreamed.

By the way – I’d love to have seen this same level of scrutiny of the scrutinizers when the Strib omitted great reams of exculpatory context in “reporting” on Tom Emmer’s civil court records.

Or when “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” was lying about Tom Emmer’s criminal record and DUI legislation.

Or when the Strib and the PiPress parrotted  Human Rights Coalition press releases to make it appear that the “boycott” was having an effect on Target’s bottom line.

Or, really, the left’s entire bought-and-paid-for smear campaign.

Amazing what a few “questions” can lead you to, even when you don’t know the answers.

14 thoughts on “Just So We’re Clear On This

  1. Charlie ends by telling us to refute his assertion that Mark Dayton taught high school. In other words, Charlie is asking us to prove that Mark Dayton did NOT teach high school.

    In still other words, Charlie wants us to prove a negative.

    This is not the argument of a serious thinker, which raises interesting possibilities: Charlie is not a serious thinker; Charlie knows he’s demanding an impossibility but believes his readers are too stupid to realize it; Charlie wants to quash further investigation because he fears we’ll discover something he doesn’t want us to discover; and more.

    As I’m feeling charitable today, I’ll give Charlie the benefit of the doubt and go with Option C. But I’m willing to be persuaded otherwise.
    .

  2. Yea, that Target boycott just crippled them – August earnings are up 18%!
    Bwaahahahahahaha! Go Target!

    Oh, and, uh, pound sand Fred (In)Sainz, Randy Reitan and Moveon.org!

  3. That’s the part of Quimby’s tack that puzzles me.

    If someone says “I think you’re a liar! Prove you worked at KEYJ in Jamestown, ND in 1979 through 1980!”, what would I do?

    – show them a copy of my FCC Radiotelephone license, and say
    “you’re an idiot for asking?”

    – show them blog posts describing that time of my life, and say
    “you’re a lazy-ass pseudo activist for asking?”

    – Give them the contact info for the GM and owner who hired me, and
    the sales director who was the sports director at the time, and
    leave the conclusion about the questioner’s intelligence and
    laziness to the intelligent consumer?

    Guesses, anyone?

  4. Quimby: If you find something factual that refutes me…

    How much more factual does it get than NYC Schools saying he didn’t work there? I admit that school bureaucracies are terrible, but when Dayton’s purported EMPLOYER said he wasn’t employed by them it seems to me that the burden of proof that Dayton actually worked there should be on Dayton.

  5. Mr. Berg. I think you’re out of your league here. After all, Quimby is obviously a Citizen of the World–he’s off to Turkey to build democracy (strange as that seems as that would make him one of the few Citizens of the World who prefer democracy to dictatorship).

    I found this fascinating: “Otherwise, it would be a good idea not to raise questions when you really don’t know the answers.”

    Isn’t that a good motto for Yale: We never ask questions unless we know the answers to them.

    In defense of Mr. Dayton: His reluctance may be of the category of the former landlord, now candidate, who doesn’t want the inevitable “he refused to fix my toilet” stories that will be dredged up. “He taught us there were 57 states.” That sort of thing.

  6. The Dayton camp obviously has data to rebut these claims. In less than 24 hours they produce a copy of his teaching certificate and a copy of the 1970 commencement program.

    Team Dayton ain’t exactly hitting the snooze button on the rapid response.

  7. wtfci;

    Neither of which proves that he worked at a NY school!

    Hell, I have copies of the commencement programs for two of my siblings, too, but I wasn’t in attendance for either of them!

    Dayton’s sleaze ball handlers had to come up with something to make him appeal to the working man. Sadly, too many Minnesotans are stupid enough to believe in a deranged empty suit like him.

  8. This sounds like a Par For The Course Quimby-ism… the whole, “How dare you ask such a question,” is classic from this guy.

  9. I have no doubt he was a teacher. He probably saw kids going to school one day, put his hands on his hips, and boldly stated “Now I know what I am going to be: a teacher! Daddy, can you make me a teacher?”.

  10. I would love it ever so much if you could knock Dayton out of the race by pursuing this line of questioning.

  11. PeterH,

    I doubt that’ll happen – as I said, I think he probably taught. But it’s not the only outstanding question about Dayton. One of many, in fact.

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