Opinion: In today’s pages: Palin and Obama, Locke H.S. and movie sets
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Columnist Gregory Rodriguez waxes nostalgic about the politics of old, before the ‘contemporary culture of self-esteem’ yielded politicians who tried to seem like just us folks. He calls out both Sarah Palin and Barack Obama for building campaigns around who they are, rather than what they’ve done:
At their core, both politicians seek to appeal to us by flaunting their personal “essence” rather than their objective achievements. Absent in what they are selling us is any sense of deep transformation or personal triumph; there is no man or woman from Hope, Ark., or Dixon, Ill., here. (Even average guy George W. Bush was transformed: An indulgent, lost rich kid redeemed, in part, by religion and sobriety.)
Also on the Op-Ed page, Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern details the house-cleaning the union has undertaken in response to the corruption alleged in a series of stories by the Times’ Paul Pringle. And Catherine G. Burke, an associate professor at USC’s School of Policy, Planning and Development, calls for a new form of mass transit: ‘podcars’ that ride on rails above the roads.
The editorial board makes another visit to Locke High School in Watts in anticipation of its first day of classes as a charter school. The board notes that the students attending Locke, unlike those at other charters, didn’t opt out of their neighborhood public school to attend. It is their neighborhood public school:
Green Dot’s experience with Locke’s many doubt-filled teens will provide a more realistic measure of what charter schools can do for poor and minority students who typically have lower test scores and higher dropout rates. And if it succeeds, Green Dot will have created a blueprint for public schools. If it fails, it won’t be for lack of trying.
The board also inveighs against a proposal to have the LAPD take over the business of directing traffic around movie shoots, saying it should be left in the hands of the retired cops and off-duty officers who’ve been doing it for decades.
The editorial cartoon is by Clay Bennett of the Chattanooga Times Free Press.