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Lauer for the Defense: Matt Asks Colorado Teacher "Were You Set Up?"
Today Show/NewsBusters ^ | Mark Finkelstein

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?


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; US: Colorado; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: abc; academicbias; adolfhitler; antisemitism; aurora; bds; bennish; bigmouthbully; boortznotbortz; bortz; bush; bushbashing; bushhate; capitalism; cherrycreek; cocaine; colorado; columbia; communistmanifesto; condirice; democrats; denver; detroitfather; drudge; drugcartel; drugs; du; dubya; education; fakeindian; generalmotors; georgebush; gm; gwb; hamas; hannity; hate; hateamericafilth; hateamericatrash; hatebush; hatecheney; hatingamerica; hitler; horowitz; indoctrination; iraq; israel; israelis; jaybennish; jews; lauer; leftist; leftistlunatic; leftists; liberal; liberalbias; liberalmedia; liberals; limbaugh; littlemarxists; malkin; marx; marxism; mattlauer; media; mediabias; michellemalkin; moonbat; nazi; nea; nealnotneilboortz; northkorea; overland; overlandhighschool; palestine; palestinian; pinko; preducator; propaganda; publicschool; publicschools; publikskoolz; radicals; revisionism; rice; schools; seanallen; socialism; socialist; teacher; teachers; teachersunion; terrorism; terrorist; terrorists; unhinged; usefulidiots; voucher; wardchurchill; waronterror; whacko; whitemale; wmd; wot; zionist; zionists
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1 posted on 03/07/2006 5:09:45 AM PST by governsleastgovernsbest
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To: Behind Liberal Lines; Miss Marple; an amused spectator; netmilsmom; Diogenesis; YaYa123; MEG33; ...

Today Show guaranteed engine-starter ping.


2 posted on 03/07/2006 5:10:54 AM PST by governsleastgovernsbest (Watching the Today Show Since 2002 So You Don't Have To.)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

Ah yes, another last gasp by the dinosaur media. Who watches this stuff anyway?


3 posted on 03/07/2006 5:11:24 AM PST by RightCanuck (Not right enough.)
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To: RightCanuck

Millions of sheeple.


4 posted on 03/07/2006 5:13:17 AM PST by johnny7 (“Iuventus stultorum magister”)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest
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?

Yes..........

5 posted on 03/07/2006 5:13:41 AM PST by Red Badger (And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him...)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

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.


6 posted on 03/07/2006 5:13:58 AM PST by TommyDale
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To: RightCanuck

Antique collectors?


7 posted on 03/07/2006 5:14:41 AM PST by freedomson (Tagline comment removed by moderator)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

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.


8 posted on 03/07/2006 5:15:38 AM PST by YaYa123
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To: governsleastgovernsbest
LOL! The teacher gets set up by the student.

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.

9 posted on 03/07/2006 5:16:58 AM PST by Dane ( anyone who believes hillary would do something to stop illegal immigration is believing gibberish)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

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.


10 posted on 03/07/2006 5:19:38 AM PST by outlaw1_2003
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

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.


11 posted on 03/07/2006 5:20:28 AM PST by Just mythoughts
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To: governsleastgovernsbest
HEADLINE:

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!!!

12 posted on 03/07/2006 5:21:30 AM PST by Candor7 (Into Liberal Flatulence Goes the Hope of the West)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest
Today Show=F- Thanks for the ping. You get an A+
13 posted on 03/07/2006 5:22:08 AM PST by EmilyGeiger
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

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.


14 posted on 03/07/2006 5:23:41 AM PST by Tanniker Smith (I didn't know she was a liberal when I married her.)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

I can't believe the way this NBC leftist program hates America......why are they still on the air.


15 posted on 03/07/2006 5:23:43 AM PST by Fawn (I want the Madonna and Mick Jagger diet and exercise books!!!)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

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.


16 posted on 03/07/2006 5:24:20 AM PST by Carolinamom (I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves. ---Ronald Reagan)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

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.


17 posted on 03/07/2006 5:24:20 AM PST by UncleSamUSA (the land of the free and the home of the brave)
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To: Red Badger

You meant to put your /sarcasm tag, didn't you?


18 posted on 03/07/2006 5:24:48 AM PST by IrishRainy
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Comment #19 Removed by Moderator

To: governsleastgovernsbest

20 posted on 03/07/2006 5:27:22 AM PST by PBRSTREETGANG
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