Dorothea Lasky

Three years and still true

We need to fight Sarah Palin/John McCain. They are not what this world needs. We need to fight, as adults, for the world.

We need to forget about George Bush/John McCain Republicans that are betting that we have the TV on with the sound down. 

I care about sound. So do you, I think. 

We are a country where charisma matters a lot. George Bush and Sarah Palin look awfully good on TV with the sound down. They are good-looking. Don’t deny it. That’s the problem, looking good, deadpan-style, with no sound. The American deadpan is only important when you have the sound on—that’s when you see our depth. But unfortunately that’s the way a lot of Americans watch TV, with the sound down, while doing something. This soundlessness undercuts everything this country is good for. Still, there is an inherent tension between what looks good and the sound of it that happens when we watch TV in this country with the sound off. Which is what a lot of Americans do, cause we are a busy and lonely people and we need company—a soundless company that doesn’t make a fuss. And I don’t think that’s good per se, but I do think it is a practice that elucidates an implicitly American relationship to charisma that does not involve sound. If want to win this election, we need to understand this soundless relationship immediately.

What circumstances you give a person is of the utmost importance to their experience. In education, this is not only the objects or ideas you give them to manipulate, it is also the world you give them to manipulate the objects and ideas in.

It is certainly not a new idea to think that social justice is married to providing people with proper education. What is proper is certainly up for debate. What is not proper is another four years of George Bush-style policies, another four years of the purposeless, soundless allotment of more. Or bravery for the sake of it. Or of a soundless beauty that masks death.

First and foremost, we don’t need people like Sarah Palin dictating educational policy. Just because you like children or can have them doesn’t mean you know one “goddamn” thing about the way people learn. It doesn’t even ensure that you care.

–Dorothea Lasky

They are not what this world needs. 
Always true. Always true.