Must Reads: What’s Wrong with the Heritage Foundation, and Why Jason Collins Matters
Every a.m., Mediaite publishes a primer of what the interweb machine is writing, talking, tweeting, and blogging about, so that you may fool friends and family into thinking you are a trove of information and insight. Today: how the Heritage Foundation is rapidly dismantling itself; why Jason Collins is a big deal; why you should be far more worried about rabbits than you are; and more.
“In the DeMint Era at Heritage, a Shift From Policy to Politics” (Jennifer Steinhaeur and Jonathan Weisman)
The Times catalogues the damage former Senator Jim DeMint has wreaked on the Heritage Foundation, which has seen its top scholars depart and legislative influence wane as it has transitioned under his leadership into a political advocacy group — a group whose advocacy is even occasionally in opposition to the think tank’s research. Get a load of this quote: “’Conservative ideas are invigorating,’ [DeMint] said. ‘We had allowed them to become too serious.’”
RELATED: From a few months back: “A 31-Year-Old Is Tearing Apart the Heritage Foundation” (Julia Ioffe, New Republic)
“Jim DeMint Hasn’t Destroyed Heritage’s Intellectual Integrity” (Paul Krugman, New York Times)
Krugman LULZes at the idea that DeMint started Heritage’s decline: “Heritage never was a ‘think tank’ in the sense that actual thought or research took place there. It just played one on TV.”
“Jason Gay: Jason Collins, the Nets and the ‘Who Cares’ Crowd” (Jason Gay, Wall Street Journal)
Fantastic piece on multiple levels about Jason Collins and why his playing last night matters—to him, the sport, the LGBT community, and everybody else. Les excerpts:
I know the people who chirp Who Cares like to position this Who Cares as evidence of some sort of ultra-detached free thinking, but saying Who Cares about something like Jason Collins signing with an NBA team sounds a lot more like a socially acceptable way of diminishing the news, stripping Collins of his due and a genuine moment of its joy. Who Cares doesn’t sound like an honest rendering of this event or its impact. It sounds like being a crank.
[snip] After the Lakers, the Nets move on with Portland, Denver and Milwaukee. Collins will get a handful of minutes, collide in the paint, grab some rebounds, feel the adrenaline and the noise and the unmistakable rush of playing the game he loves. Jason Collins is not a superstar. He’s a basketball player, now playing for the Brooklyn Nets. And he is himself, which is all that anyone could ever hope to be.
“You Think You Know What Teachers Do. Right? Wrong” (Sarah Blaine, Washington Post)
A great reminder — and one that should be stapled to the foreheads of anyone who professionally discusses education reform — that simply because you observed teachers for many years of your life doesn’t mean you understand teaching.
“Common Knowledge” (Gin and Tacos)
G&T backs Blaine up as only he can:
Yes, I understand that most of the increasingly shrill rhetoric over the past decade has nothing to do with teachers or teaching and everything to do with a coordinated assault on public employees by wealthy sociopaths. They’re acting on self-interest and I get it. The collateral damage, though, is the millions of reactionaries being spoon-fed angry rhetoric about what Those Union Thugs are doing and how Real Americans know better. I’d love nothing more than to invite the average comment troll into my classroom and tell him, “All yours. 75 minutes. I’ll be over there laughing.”
“How Do You Weaponize a Rabbit?” (Jason Bittel, The Week)
You laugh—laugh!—in your complacency. But a rabbit once almost took down a sitting president. It could happen again.
[Image via Evan Vucci/Associated Press / Kwaku Alston/SI]
