Subscripts:
Oprah's duped (again)…
”Another Oprah Winfrey Con” should have been the headline when sex abuse scandals at Oprah Winfrey’s South African charter school surfaced last month, but instead we just got another Oprah con job, tears and all. Does anyone else in the world agree with some of us at Substance that Oprah Winfrey is — IS — to blame for the recent scandal at her school in South Africa? One of the reasons for Oprah’s mindless popularity has been Oprah’s mindless promotion of certain mindless (and often hoaxacious) narratives, story lines, hustlers, and hustles — and get well (or rich) quick schemes.
At other times and places, Winfrey’s antecedents were selling snake oil out of the backs of wagons or passing around snakes at religious tent shows. Now, thanks to TV and the Internet, Winfrey can peddle a new brand of snake oil internationally every morning. The Oprah Winfrey hustles almost all have the same story: believing equals doing. Instead of looking at the grim realities of race, class, exploitation and oppression, Winfrey preaches that if you are poor you should be blaming yourself (and, from time to time, buying the tapes and books she sells and touts). Ignore harsh facts and downplay cruel reality. In the case of schools, listen to the chatter of a person, but don’t do background checks, require credentials, or ask for work histories and references.
In the case of “The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls” (outside Johannesburg in South Africa), the story has come out that Winfrey’s school hired a dormitory monitor who was apparently a serial sex abuser. By the time the former employee was exposed in early November, she had allegedly abused 15 girls. She’s now been fired (along with the principal who hired her). The one place Winfrey won’t look, though, is in the mirror. She seems to be a serial dupe when it comes to cheap con men and women with a “good story”.
A week after the November 2007 scandal about her school came out, Winfrey had to remove “The Education of Little Tree” from her list of recommended books. The “Little Tree” book had been identified as a hoax more than a decade ago. It is written by a man using the name “Forrest Carter” ostensibly about a young Native American. But “Forrest Carter” has long been known to be an infamous white supremacist (his first name was given to him by his parents after the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest).
Winfrey has also been very supportive of the charter school hoax that’s sweeping the USA.
Before Little Tree came back out of the woods, Oprah in 2006 and early 2007 had been touting Rhonda Byrne’s book “The Secret”, a book that was charged with being dangerous by health professionals because it claimed that you were sick because you had thoughts that attracted germs.
A year before Byrne’s book, in 2005 and 2006, Winfrey was gushing about the now infamous memoir “A Million Little Pieces” by James Frey. Before she got Frey to admit he’d made up a lot of the “memoir”, Winfrey had helped Frey sell nearly two million copies of the book. No.
The question isn’t why Winfrey got conned again — this time allowing students in a charter school named after her to be sexually and physically abused by someone she had hired. The question is how many other cheap cons are out there with the Oprah trademark, and how many other people are being hurt by those cons.
On her January 27, 2006, show, Oprah finally challenged James Frey, after she had given him an audience of millions. “I feel duped,” Oprah said to Frey in that now-famous moment on her couch. “But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers…”
We’ve been thinking lately that Oprah has been doing the duping. It was one thing when she was just telling her adoring fans to spend twenty or thirty dollars on a junk book. But now that she’s gone into the charter school con and started hiring staff who just “love” children, perhaps someone should take a long, hard and comprehensive look at the Oprah con itself…
…Speaking of Oprah’s cons, Rufus Williams, the Chicago Board of Education President who claims to have worked for Oprah, spent a few minutes at the beginning of the September 26 Board of Education meeting referring to the IMPACT (students records and grades) and People Soft (payroll systems) messes as “glitches.” If those were glitches, they are the Godzilla of glitches, and we’d hate to see what a real problem was like. If IMPACT is a mere “glitch”, then Godzilla is a Gerbil. But by downplaying the mess his administration has made of both privatized computer programs, Rufus Williams — rhetorically at least — absolves his Board from having to deal with the two executives who were most responsible for the twin peaks of data base failure — IMPACT and People Soft. If what we’re facing is “glitches”, then it’s not the fault of Arne Duncan or Robert Runcie after all. Just “Glitches’. The miracle managers are still making miracles. Nothing really big to worry about…
…One of the strangest things about the public meetings of the Chicago Board of Education is how the Board’s choreographers arrange where people sit so that mere members of the public are not in public (i.e., TV) view during the public meetings of that public body. As regulars know, the Chicago Board of Education meeting “chambers” (unlike, say, those of the Chicago City Council) has very few seats for the “public.” There are three sections of seats in the meeting room, sort of Stage Left, Stage Center, and Stage Right.
The choreographers make sure that all of the seats Stage Center (where the TV cameras are pointed) are always reserved for an filled with middle level bureaucrats. The trick is to have a diverse group on camera at all times, well dressed and smiling, no matter what the issue is. Hence, the still photogenic and professional Jill Wine-Banks (head of ICE, although her background is in Washington D.C. and Democratic Party politics, especially the Clintonian variety) is always up front and on camera. Behind Wine-Banks (second row, Stage Center) are Carole Wood, Angelo Sanchez, Bebe Novich, Allan Allson, and Gerod Sherley. All of those seats are reserved, although the only common qualification we can find for the reservations is that each of these people is (a) a political appointee, (b) with some serious clout, who (c) dresses fairly well and won’t be picking his or her nose on camera. Where possible, the choreographers fill all of the seats completely in Stage Center, so that there is never danger that any of the angry parents and others who attend the Board’s public meetings can be seen on camera during the meetings. The trick is to convey a kind of diverse, multicultural placidity — the trains are running on time and all that.
At the September 2007 Board meeting, for example, CPS security filled two whole rows in Stage Center with young Squash players (and their adult coaches and mentors). Now we have nothing against youthful squash activities, but it would have been just as easy for the squash kids to have been in a side room (or upstairs on the 19th Floor, where the peasants get parked) and the “Reserved” Squash seats filled with actual citizens there for the public meeting. Rufus Williams and Arne Duncan (and their boss, Mayor Daley) are never likely to leave that to chance, however. So at the public meetings of public bodies Daley’s minions, like those who organized George W. Bush’s “spontaneous” community meetings last election, make sure the “public” has been pre-selected and tamed…
…The Chicago Teachers Union sent an emissary (Sandy Schultz) to the October 10 CPS media event for “new schools” at Morse Elementary School (now converted into the “Polaris” charter school), but apparently the union had writers’ cramp. The only mention of the event (or the mass privatization orgy) that was announced at the 
event, by CTU was a reprint of the six-paragraph article that appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times. The article was written by Sun-Times scribe Kate Grossman, long a cheerleader for Chicago’s charter schools and Renaissance 2010 predations. During the weeks that followed the twin privatization events sponsored by CPS (and the “business community”), CTU was silent (as usual). So, just to prove they were really there, we’re offering our readers the photograph accompanying this Subscript. On the right is the Chicago Teachers Union’s Sandy Schultz, who is supposed to be the “point person” dealing with Renaissance 2010 and the charter schools. On the left is a guy named Josh Edelman, who is now the chieftain of the CPS “New Schools” office. Edelman has no Chicago experience. He would be arrested if he tried to substitute teach in any Illinois school district (he’s not certified to teach or administer in Illinois). But Chicago’s unique mayoral control system allows him to eliminate public education in the third largest school district in the USA, he’s now head of privatizing Chicago’s public schools as quickly as possible. Since we occasionally receive phone calls and e-mails from our readers asking what CTU is doing about school closings, charters, privatization, and the “Renaissance 2010” attack on public education in Chicago, we’re offering this photograph for clarity. CTU is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Under Marilyn Stewart, the union is now a cheerleader for privatization and the creation of another 2,000 “at will” teaching jobs between now and 2010 at Chicago’s ever expanding network of charter schools…
…Some things about Halloween were less pleasant than others, and some were downright nasty. The “accidental” murder of one mother by a southwest side gang banger was one example. Another place where the tricks outnumber the treats is a prominent north side high school which has just invited every gang banger and thug in the city to enroll in order to maintain “numbers.” We won’t name the school yet, but we have a hunch that the followers of Chief Maalik and Gino Colon already know its has — for about the 35th year in a row — an open door policy for the “People.”…
…Since it’s Halloween season, here is a little Trick or Treat (or for that matter, Hide and Seek). Where is the CPS FOIA office and why has Arne Duncan been hiding it from the public? Duncan never has fewer than a dozen people working on public relations and (one of our favorites) “marketing” (er, “The Office of Communications”). So why can’t a member of the public find the Public Records (Freedom of Information; whatever you want to call it) office at 125 S. Clark St. It’s not even true that every cave in the Daley labyrinth is as obscure and well-guarded. Go to Chicago Police headquarters at 35th and Michigan and there is the Public Records section at the entrance when you walk in. Go to most suburbs and you find they are more concerned about the public’s right to know. What’s Daley (er, Duncan) hiding? The FOIA office at CPS is one-tenth the size of the FOIA office at CPD. Chicago schools’ FOIA commitment is less than that of Maywood or Cicero. Nice touch for a city with pretenses to host the Olympics and proclaim itself “world class.” Whoops. You’re right. The next Olympics are in Beijing. In China. Land of free information. Arne Duncan and Richard M. Daley are right at home in the years of George W. Bush. But people in Chicago should get to walk in and find a well-staffed FOIA office to serve them, not a bunch of paranoid princelings and their centurions (Fifth Floor; Seventh Floor) or their smarmy spin machine (Sixth Floor)…
…Back in the bad old days before charter schools, Mayor Daley, and Arne Duncan saved Chicago’s public schools, the newspapers would run stories on the front page about politically connected bureaucrats who had gotten expensive jobs (say, pay around $100,000 per year) in administration without any qualifications. Now that we have miracles of management all over CPS, that no longer is news. Take the case of Carole Wood. Wood is working this school year (at a salary in excess of $91,000, far above the highest paid teacher) as what CPS calls a “Senior Manager” in the Office of the Board of Education. Wood was hired by the Board on Arne Duncan’s recommendation in November 2004. CPS refuses to provide the public with the actual qualifications of its top dogs, so we can’t report how she got the job based on skills, training, college study, or proven abilities. However, anyone but the most naïve knows what’s been going on. Ms Wood’s parents include top officials in the Daley administration up the street at City Hall, so we guessed it was clout, not qualifications, that brought her into public service at the upper levels. Not since the 1930s has Chicago’s Board of Education filled its ranks with so many underqualified overpaid patronage workers as it has in the ranks nowadays. But in those days, Chicago called it “corruption.” Today, it’s school reform…
…We hear that Arne Duncan’s super sensitive about his reputation for integrity. He hates being told he’s a liar and claims he “doesn’t lie.” Maybe we missed something, but the oath says “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth...” Duncan’s entire career as top dog at CPS has been lie upon lie — unless in this postmodern era, people will say that Duncan has “mendacity issues.” In that case, he really needs sensitivity and perhaps a 12-Step program. “Hi. My name is Arne — that’s spelled A R N E — and I don’t lie...”
