Spreadin' Love

DC's School Chancellor, Michelle Rhee, attempts to abolish of teacher tenure and raise teacher pay. [New York Times]

Turns out the whole kerfuffle over Palin and Africa was just a blogger joke. [New York Times]

Brooks quotes Megan McArdle again. [New York Times]

Despite achieving near parity in education and health, women are still far behind men in gaining elite positions worldwide. [Reuters]

Expect a ton of great and not-so-great articles on why Obama won this election. Among the great is Ryan Lizza's article in the New Yorker. Also on deck, but not yet read, is David Remnick. Check out Charli Carpenter's post on the role of celebrities. Check out an old post of mine on the role of state political culture. [New Yorker and blogs]

Palin disses bloggers, but bloggers helped make her. [Dan Drezner]

Comments

[Amy P]

I was looking at a comment thread on the NYT Palin/Africa article at Althouse's blog, and based on the analysis there, I think I misread the NYT piece the first time I looked at it. The hoax was getting major media to accept that a non-existent Martin Eisenstadt was the source for the Palin/Africa story, rather than the Palin/Africa story itself. That's still up in the air. On the other hand, "Martin Eisenstadt's" brief but very successful career suggests that it is pretty easy to fool reporters. Martin Eisenstadt is sort of a homegrown American Borat, with major media as his prey of choice.

[bj]

but if the "non-existent Martin Eisenstadt" is not the source, then who is? I thought it was reported in the MSM sourced to Eisenstadt, who is made up. Is there some other source?

I also thought the whole thing was a hoax when I read the NYT column (i.e that someone made up the statement that Palin didn't know that Africa wasn't a country).

[Amy P]

"but if the "non-existent Martin Eisenstadt" is not the source, then who is?"

That is the $64,000 question. I also think the story very unlikely--it sounds too much like an urban legend.

[Wendy]

Ugh. Believe it or not, I spent all day working on this post and it's not even that good. The full-time blogging life could never be for me. Anyway, the post is about the Rhee and tenure and all that stuff, much of which I've been thinking about anyway since I attended an assessment conference last week.