That's the charge from George Will, who picks up on Joshua Dunn's recent Flypaper post to give the Secretary of Education a hard time for crusading for "civil rights" while ignoring the D.C. scholarship program kids in his own backyard.
Duncan seems to fancy himself an Earl Warren, expanding civil rights. Actually, he resembles Mrs. Jellyby.While his lawyers seek evidence of displeasing enrollments in AP courses, he is complicit in strangling the scholarship program that enables 1,300 District of Columbia low-income minority students to escape from the District's execrable schools. Like Mrs. Jellyby in Dickens' "Bleak House," who was indifferent to her chaotic family while fretting about conditions in distant Borrioboola-Gha, Duncan practices what Dickens called "telescopic philanthropy." Sensitive about supposed injustices in distant AP classes, Duncan is worse than merely indifferent to children within sight of his office at the foot of Capitol Hill.
Now that's an analogy I didn't see coming! Still, seems pretty fair.
-Mike Petrilli
