Chicago Teachers Union

Humor me.

For the most part I am not in a position to be affected by things that go on in Chicago. I stay out of their big city business and hope they stay out of my small town America experience. City folk tend to be conformists and rural folk tend to be somewhat more independent, skeptical. Skepticism, by the way, is the opposite of conformity.

But it's hard to keep up with the news without hearing or reading about the dispute between Chicago's despicable and enormously ugly little mayor and the teachers union which is insisting on returning to remote learning because of the Covid surge. In this morning's Google News headlines I noticed one that triggered something in me so I began reading the article:

Children Belong in School. That’s Why We Support the Chicago Teachers Union.

To me at least, that headline seems a bit Orwellian. I suppose that's what triggered me. I have to admit I found the article a bit difficult to follow. In it I came across this sentence:

If you have the misfortune, as I do, to follow school policy debates on Twitter, you will, almost daily, see people decrying opponents of school closures as privileged white Karens who hate their children and don’t want them around.

It's almost like doing a difficult math problem just figuring out all the negatives in that one sentence and balancing the whole thing long enough in my mind to make sense of the sentence. Know what I mean?

1. misfortune

2. decrying

3. opponents

4. closures

5. "privileged white Karens" (There might even be two or even three negatives in this one if "privileged" is meant as a negative along with "white". White wouldn't be in this sentence if it wasn't a negative. Karens are certainly negative.)

6. "hate their children"

7. "don't want them around"

And that's just one sentence! Seven, possibly eight or even nine negatives confusingly jumbled into just one sentence in an article whose logic seems at its core to be Orwellian? This is journalism? How many times did it take me to read the term "people decrying opponents of school closures" before its meaning sunk in? OK so you have school closures caused by the teachers who all want schools to reopen if I read that article correctly [Orwellian or what!). Then you have opponents of school closures but not the teachers who want schools open but whose union doesn't. These teachers wishing the schools were open presumably want their unions to keep the schools closed. No, these opponents referred to in this one sentence are rational people who want kids to be able to attend school. So you have teachers who want schools closed against their own will and you have ordinary citizens like me who want kids attending school but what about these "Karens"? Where do they fit in?

Let's see, the sentence identifies Karens as "people decrying opponents of school closures". It also identifies these Karens as both privileged and white, one and the same thing if you follow liberal media outlets and leftist rhetoric. So wait, do these "Karens" want schools open or do they want them closed? Maybe I don't have this as figured out as I thought I did...