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Posted on 03/07/2006 5:09:43 AM PST by governsleastgovernsbest
by Mark Finkelstein
March 7, 2006
Turns out the real culprit in the Colorado kerfluffle over the teacher who compared Pres. Bush to Hitler is . . . the student who complained about it. Just ask Matt Lauer.
Interviewing teacher Jay Bennish this morning, Lauer laid out this sympathetic scenario:
Lauer: "The family here, the student's family, didn't go to the school board with this tape."
Bennish: "They never contacted me."
Lauer: "They shopped it around to conservative media outlets and finally released it to one and created an uproar. On the tape you can hear Sean Allen [the student in question] asking you questions that seem to be egging you on a little bit. Do you feel you were set up?"
Wait a second, Matt. Isn't the essence of the teacher's defense that he was trying to provoke discussion of these issues? Didn't you just hear him say that "my job as a teacher is to challenge students to think critically," that he was trying to "encourage critical thought" and that students would "get extra credit regardless of their viewpoints"?
But when a student does just that, he is "setting the teacher up"?
Think Lauer would have floated the same theory if, for example, a Muslim student had recorded a teacher propagating the notion that Islam is an inherently violent religion?
Today Show guaranteed engine-starter ping.
Ah yes, another last gasp by the dinosaur media. Who watches this stuff anyway?
Millions of sheeple.
Yes..........
I think the wacko teacher set himself up quite well. Watch what happens next: Students will be searched upon entry to classrooms for recording devices, including phones and MP3 players.
Antique collectors?
I missed this segment, but what I did hear Lauer say, ticked me off.
Lauer and Curok pitched a segment on the worldwide problem of fat children. It's "a worse threat than terrorism", don't you know.
After this obesity bit, former baseball player Puckett's death gets a mention, only to have Lauer finish it off, with a gratuitous, totally unnecessary comment about the man struggling with his weight for the last few years.
Shame on Matt for using one man's death as a clever link to the next segment.
Hey Matt, that doesn't say much about the intelligence of the supposedly older and wiser teacher, unfreakinbelievable, the pretzel twist logic lauer will use.
Lauer and Kouric are the two most depicable air breathing specimens of horse dung, I have ever seen, next to Dan Rather.
CEO's should realize that when ratings are low, look at why they are that way, and remove, repair or adjust the problem. I wonder what Katie Kouric would have said to the teacher, possibly offering her condolences for his pain and suffering.
This teacher looks to be but a young donkey, so where did he get his education?
Point is he is NOT alone in spewing this drivel, in my daughter's high school teachers parking lot, a truck is parked daily with the back glass painted with the same kind of mindless accusations.
COLORADO TEACHER SET UP BY 12 YEAR OLD!
He is demanding due process after he refused to observe the same constitutional logic by indoctinating students in liberal socialist thought rather than teaching indepoendent analysis based on fact.
Not to be fooled.
We know Bennish wanted to convert his school into his version of a Left wing socialist liberal Madrassa, and he was stopped in his tracks by someone who values democracy and true independent analysis based on fact. And that person was 12 years old.
Get thee to a liberal-socialist wing-nut nunnery, you demagogue!
UR Fired!!!
Thanks for the ping. You get an
As a teacher, I know that there are students that will bait teachers they don't like to get them to say something and then record their responses. That said, that obviously didn't happen in this case.
I can't believe the way this NBC leftist program hates America......why are they still on the air.
Jay Bennish no longer had the hippie long hair but has shaved his head and has a mustache....a cleaned up professorial look and rationalizing his teaching methods.
The Today Show is simply the MSM's video early-am version of MoveOn or the ultraleft Daily Kos.
The antics of Matt and CutieKatie are just as outrageously over-the-cliff and far left as Kos himself and their arguments seem to come directly from the Tinfoil Hatters of the Soros cult.
If you watch that program it is likely your brain will just explode.
You meant to put your /sarcasm tag, didn't you?
The teacher is sporting a new skinhead "hair"-do.
Have you seen Katie Kouric lately. she needs to spend some of her millions on a facelift. She has the crow feet around her eyes and mouth, starting to sag around the chin area. Yipes!
But those conservatives are crafty and conniving...why, they could trick ANYONE!
/sarcasm
Yes...........
This ludicrous excuse for a teacher is also a liar. I listened to both the boy who recorded him and his father yesterday on Hannity, and they said that they did go to the school administration first. Not only that, but this is not the first student to bring complaints to the school admin about this leftist propagandist.
WUSS!
It's too late for me - as my tagline suggests, my only hope now is to try to save others ;-)
If the teacher was teaching NON political issues that were not so strange, maybe the student would not have thought to record, display and confront.
the teacher found his way to a barber shop.
I saw previous pics that had him with thinning, long stringy hair.
I would like to hear his answers.
I didn't see the interview this AM, so I can't know the context in which these softball questions were tossed. Was he trying to make Bennish look weak or was he trying to help him out?
As for those students who walked out of the school in support for the teacher, I saw them on TV...they looked rather passive to me, and I know from my teaching days that any excuse to get out of class is appealing.
Shame on Matt for using one man's death as a clever link to the next segment."
Well, Kirby's increased weight certainly was a factor in his blood pressure and subsequent stroke. So, where's the shame here?
Lauer & friends are jerks, but blaming him for lack of taste in pointing out Puckett's health (weight) is piling on.
and here's the 'after':
Conservative eye for the liberal guy?
I had wondered whether the dinos would pick this up...I slapped my forehead when I saw the segment; I should have anticipated the way it would be portrayed. Today would never have reported the story unless they had a way to make the audience sympathetic to the teacher.
First, they have only the teacher on to tell his side, then they cherry-pick the quotes and have Laurer read the most damaging one (about the US being the most vicious country). Hearing a teacher bash Bush in his own words is fine for even moderates. Bashing the US is not as favorable to the oldsters watching, so Laurer quotes it himself with a chuckle.
Finally, mentioning the word "conservative" as many times as possible makes creates the impression that the student is the right-wing wacko. The teacher is just trying to do his job.
Bennish was set up alright. We has set up by the socialist/lefty education that he apparently received in his miserable America-hating life. He needs slapped around each day for quite a while.
teaching days that any excuse to get out of class is appealing......
Oh yeah. I would have loved class walk outs!!! I would join just about any cause just to get to walk out on a boring class. Unfortunately, we had a principal everyone was scared of. :) He would walk into the lunchroom and there would be total silence. At the time I didn't like it, however when he retired the school went downhill fast. A lax coach took his place.
exactly. He went through a MAJOR clean up.
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
All your bush hate are belong to teachers!
Typicla of the educational-media complex. They never miss an opportunity to harm America.
Bennish: "They never contacted me."
The parents contacted the principal and she blew them off. Then they went to the superintendent of the Cherry Creek School District. Other parents and students have publicly stated that they have complained to Bennish and about him to school administration in the past.
Right now Bennish is being interviewed by Peter Boyles on KHOW in Denver. Boyles, no rocket scientist himself and someone who doesn't believe that there is a liberal media bias, is tearing the Rasta man a new bung hole. Bennish has no recollection of comparing Bush to anyone other than Hitler in any of his classes.
Lauer: "They shopped it around to conservative media outlets and finally released it to one and created an uproar. On the tape you can hear Sean Allen [the student in question] asking you questions that seem to be egging you on a little bit. Do you feel you were set up?"
"They"{{{'theytheythey'}}},(in evil Republican voice) "shopped it around to conservative" {{{'conservconservconservative'}}}"media outlets and finally released it to one"{{{'oneoneONE'}}}"and created an uproar"{{{'up...roar...roaruproar'}}}}."
LOL. Sounds like one of Rush's hilarious parodies!
Who is this Lauer of which you speak?
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