{"id":13081,"date":"2010-09-02T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2010-09-02T17:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=13081"},"modified":"2014-10-05T14:38:04","modified_gmt":"2014-10-05T19:38:04","slug":"just-so-were-clear-on-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=13081","title":{"rendered":"Just So We’re Clear On This"},"content":{"rendered":"

I do <\/em>believe Mark Dayton taught high school.<\/p>\n

I believe it because it’d be grindingly stupid <\/em>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<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And even if Mark Dayton were <\/em>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.<\/p>\n

So yeah, I suspect Dayton probably taught for a couple of years. \u00a0Because 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.<\/p>\n

So yes; I’ll accept Dayton worked as a teacher. \u00a0But I’d be interested in knowing where. \u00a0And with whom.<\/p>\n

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

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, “shut up, madding peasants!”.<\/p>\n

Still, we’re getting closer. \u00a0Dayton taught on “the Lower East Side”. \u00a0Quimby even intimates that he taught<\/a> at a “PS65”, on the Lower East Side.<\/p>\n

Well bully! \u00a0Now we’re getting closer!<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Look – as I’ve said, I believe that Dayton taught. \u00a0And as the grandson, son and brother of teachers, I do truly want to “deny his youthful idealism”, heaven forfend. \u00a0Teaching is an important job; if he actually was a teacher, it improves my opinion of him ever so slightly (and, commensurately, if he is<\/em>, heaven forfend, lying about it, it’ll certainly tank whatever respect I may have had for him, little as that may be).<\/p>\n

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

Because what we have so far are…:<\/p>\n