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American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten has had a busy two years. Keeping students out of schools, helping teachers fight for permanent, paid truancy, watching her liberal columnist friends write slobbering, glowing profiles of her in the New York Times — these are things that can really take it out of a woman.
So, Cockburn has absolutely no patience for the right-wing internet trolls (or Russian bots, possibly?) who had a good laugh at Ms. Weingarten’s expense this week after she had a small spelling error on Twitter. “We #StandWithUkriane,” Weingarten wrote on Wednesday in a since-deleted post.
Big deal, says Cockburn. She was only one letter off, which is almost as good as spelling “Ukraine” correctly. Ms. Weingarten toils every day, as the president of the nation’s largest teacher’s union, to ensure that America’s teachers — let’s call them what they are, America’s heroes — have the right to stand up for what they believe in without any consequence of termination or loss of pay.
It is in large part due to the tireless efforts of Ms. Weingarten that teachers have the ability not to show up for work, or to teach hands-on masturbation techniques to first-graders, or to statutorily rape any particularly comely adolescent with impunity. She is simply too busy to be bothered with such trivial things as accurately spelling the name of countries currently under attack from rival European powers.
But Cockburn, the same right-wing degenerates and Russian propagandists on Twitter will say, Randi Weingarten was also photographed this week with another union executive holding an official AFL-CIO poster that printed the Ukrainian flag upside-down!
Tosh. It is simply unreasonable to expect that those holding the reins over those who teach facts and geography and world events to America’s youth have a basic grasp of such things. You wouldn’t expect the CEO of Ford Motor Company to be able to identify the engine in a Mustang, would you? And just because Ms. Weingarten is a former teacher who taught AP Political Science and US history and government doesn’t mean she should be expected to know when the flag of a different country is upside-down. US history, you hear?
This last week has proven yet again that Ms. Weingarten has the exact level of diligence, competence and knowledge about the world that you would expect from someone with so much influence over America’s teaching profession. Just imagine where America’s students would be without her. #CockburnStandsWithRiandy
