Eat my shorts! Bart Simpson takes on teacher unions
EL BARTO: An inferior teacher finally met his match in the troublemaking Bart Simpson.
By Johnny Kampis | Watchdog.org
CULLMAN, Ala. — Teacher unions finally met a foe they couldn’t conquer in the form of the yellow, spiky haired Bart Simpson.
Those unions were skewered in a recent episode of the long-running Fox series “The Simpsons,” as a new teacher at Springfield Elementary tormented Bart before being embarrassed by the oldest Simpson child at Blazing Man, a knockoff of that great hippie commune in the desert, Burning Man, when Bart’s flame retardant prevented the teacher from lighting the Blazing Man statue on fire — no doubt that in its 26th season, the plot twists on “The Simpsons” are growing only stranger.
Jack Lassen, voiced menacingly by Willem Dafoe, was transferred to Bart’s school during what Superintendent Gary Chalmers referred to as the “Dance of the Lemons,” in which school officials practice what little control they have over teacher unions by allowing principals to select their worst teacher to send to another school in the district.
“The union is happy, the parents are placated and only the children suffer,” Chalmers explained.
MAKING LEMONADE: Superintendent Chalmers explains to Springfield district principals the benefit of “Dance of the Lemons.”
Lassen — among the group Chalmers refers to as “sociopathic child-haters who are only teachers because they got tenure after two short years” — doesn’t suffer Bart’s foolishness, responding to the mischievous one’s skeleton-in-the-closet prank by buzzing the top of his head with clippers.
“I didn’t know that a teacher could cut kids’ hair,” his mother, Marge Simpson, says as they eat dinner.
“The teachers union won the right in their last strike,” Bart replies.
D’oh!
Lately, teachers unions have done plenty to merit skewering outside the world of animation.
Watchdog.org reported last week the American Federation of Teachers passed a resolution banning Coca-Cola from its facilities and events, noting the move may have been more about the beverage company’s practice of subcontracting work rather than hiring permanent employees.
We also noted that recently retired National Education Association president Dennis Van Roekel received a pay package bump above $500,000 even as his group hemorrhaged members.
And perhaps topping them all, the Florida Education Association is fighting a school choice program that’s providing scholarships to special needs students because it sees it as a threat to public schools in the state.
It sort of brings to mind a famed Homer Simpson quote, “Boy, everyone is stupid but me.”
