We interrupt your regularly scheduled light-hearted fare for something slightly heavier…
One of the more enraging and flat-out disgusting political narratives developing in this country at present is the one that public school teachers are lazy, incompetent wards of the state who essentially amount to little more than glorified welfare queens (Conservative noise-maker/prick Rush Limbaugh has repeatedly asserted that teachers are “freeloaders” who are running an “easy money scam” on all of us). Personally, every teacher I’ve ever known has been the antithesis of that — typically among the more selfless members of our society — and to trash them repeatedly for political gain damn near incites me to commit acts of violence.
So of course this past weekend when Matt Damon — whose mother is a teacher — gave a speech at the Save Our Schools march in Washington, DC, an attractive, programmed-to-recite-talking-points airhead working for a conservative web media outlet approached him afterwards and, in a roundabout way, questioned whether teachers work as hard as they should because they don’t fear being fired, due to tenure and protection from their union and whatnot. Needless to say, Damon, with his mother the educator by his side, didn’t take too kindly to the questions that came from the ReasonTV airhead and her camera man — who felt inclined to jump in and make an ass of himself as well — and proceeded to dress them down. The only way this clip could be any better is if Damon punctuated the whole thing with a Good Will Hunting style, “How you like them apples?”