No one sucks the last shred of dignity out of an expiring life better than media whores. Take Joni Balter — please!

Wow, I don’t know if I’m up to giving General turned Education Czar John Stanford’s last publicity stunt the attention it deserves. There’s so much to report on!

I just finished reading the propaganda in the Sunday Seattle Times (Nov. 29, 1998). It consisted primarily of the run-of-the-mill crap Times fans have become accustomed to: Stanford was an unconventional educator who quickly became a voice for children and whose legacy “can be measured in ways both large and small.” (I won’t argue with the latter point.)

But I spotted three things that really caught my attention. Compared to the great things Stanford did, it’s a small contribution to education reform.

With Friends Like These...

What a motley collection of John Stanford fans “education reporters” Dick Lilly and Jolayne Houtz curiously quoted! Like Terry McDermott, “a former Seattle Times columnist.” Hey, isn’t that the guy who got canned after he penned a parody of Stanford’s whorish blackmail attempt last spring?

David Marshak is an associate professor in the School of Education at Seattle University who first caught my attention when I read his criticism of the lack of leadership displayed by Seattle School Board member Don Nielsen. If I remember correctly, he similarly criticized Stanford himself.

Apparently, Marshak has evolved into an Uncle Tom — a mentally unbalanced one at that. Marshak notes that “One of the unfortunate side effects of John Stanford’s illness is that there is a lot of instability in the leadership [of Seattle Schools].”

If Marshak bothered to keep up with current events, he might have noticed that Seattle Schools’ leadership was unstable long before Stanford got sick for the first time in his life. Indeed, some of the biggest education news during the weeks preceding Stanford’s illness was the startling defections that lent an aura of credibility to rumors that Stanford himself was a bit unstable in the mental department.

Stanford disciples who abandoned ship include Seattle School Board member Linda Harris and veteran Seattle Schools spokesperson Dorothy Dubia (whose exit opened the door for ex-Washington Education Association propagandist Trevor Neilson, perhaps the most talented crier in Stanford’s last publicity stunt).

But the most notable defector was former Seattle City Council member Tom Weeks, who forsook Seattle Schools’ personnel department with little or no advance notice! In a stunning series on bad principals published by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Weeks blew the whistle on Stanford’s shoddy job performance, noting that he hadn’t even been evaluating principals.

So what the heck was Marshak talking about when he implied that Stanford’s illness was responsible for the instability in Seattle Schools administration? For that matter, if Stanford was such a sensational leader, why couldn’t he assemble a management team capable of functioning in his absence? What hope is there for school districts across America if the only person who could make education happen is dead?

In fact, all the evidence I’ve examined suggests that Stanford went out and hired a bunch of flakes. Even the Times conceded that Stanford had picked a loser to pilot his grand Meany Middle School experiment turned flop. It’s common knowledge that two of Seattle’s worst principals were promoted into the central bureaucracy under Stanford’s visionary tenure.  God knows what they’re going to do now without Stanford to hold their hands.

“One of Stanford’s greatest legacies is that he’s shown that engaged [John Stanford, the man who was famous for snubbing people, engaged???], charismatic [110%], thoughtful [really?] leaderhsip can make a difference in an urban school district,” said Marshak, who also worried that there may not be another leader like Stanford out there. Praise the lord!

Another Stanford supporter of questionable intelligence is Leslie Osgood, of Lakewood, Colorado. She first heard Stanford’s name mentioned by another celebrated education expert and Stanford fan, Rush Limbaugh!

Rush Limbaugh reminds me of another whore turned Stanford admirer, Roger Erskine, Executive Director of the Seattle Education Association (a former teachers union). Erskine’s chief claim to fame is the fact that he’s probably hated by more teachers than John Stanford. Like Stanford, he’s an extraordinary (and grotesquely overpaid) liar who talks the talk, with virtually no walk.

Seattle Times reporters Dick Lilly and Jolayne Houtz related Erskine’s reminiscene that the day his friend Stanford called him to reveal his latest contribution to education reform — the phrase “The victory is in the classroom” — was “probably my best day ever.” (This meat-and-potatoes contribution to education reform is strikingly similar to the title of Stanford’s leadership book, Victory in the Classroom, which he was presumably working on at the time. God knows he wasn’t evaluating principals!)

Anyway, I wanted to relate that Erskine unwittingly insulted his good friend (John Stanford) at the last monthly SEA representative meeting. Erskine reported that schools personnel have been asking him to persuade Stanford’s replacement to not just visit schools but actually talk to teachers and principals, as opposed to Stanford’s “blow-through and media drag” routine. (Erskine revels in colorful language, as when he tells teachers oppressed by administrative tyrants “I want to get in the middle of that!” Of course, he never does.)

Add Seattle Times expatriate Terry McDermott, David “Uncle Tom” Marshak, and twin whores Roger Erskine and Rush Limbaugh to Stanford’s more traditional supporters: Seattle School Board conservative weirdo Don “Desperate” Nielsen and his partner in crime, Barbara Schaad-Lamphere; Seattle’s Mayoral combo, Paul “Port of Seattle” Schell and Norm “washed up” Rice; D.C. Seattle Schools experts Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and Colin Powell; telecommunications billionaire Craig McCaw (who thought the U.S. Department of Education should pay Stanford’s perks); such political horrors as Governor Gary Locke, Senators Patty Murray and Adam Kline, and King County Executive Ron Sims, and the mother of all news tabloids, the Seattle Times. Now how can you argue with such a distinguished education panel?

The Ultimate Sacrifice

The Seattle Times editorial “John Stanford’s striking leadership and character” contains at least a couple bloopers:

“He [Stanford] could have gone off to a leisurely, monied, sunset career.” Could have, what do think his superintendency was?

Second, the editorialist says that, since Stanford rarely missed a day of work (Stanford claimed he had never missed a minute of work), he didn’t bother to seek a doctor’s advice when leukemia first began to drain his energy. By the time he did, it was too late. “That means he worked for the schools until his strength ran out — and then he worked some more.”

First of all, I wouldn’t praise a man’s stupidity in failing to seek medical advise. As far as working until his strength ran out goes, Stanford never worked hard at committing his much-touted five- and ten-year vision to paper.

“Then he worked some more”? I recall reading that Stanford was taking piano lessons (to justify his impulsive purchase of a concert grand piano) and took a laptop computer with him on his last trip to the hospital so that he could work on more books. Meat-and-potatoes education reform, right up to the last minute, eh?

Why I’m Not Leadership Material

Seattle Times editorial columnist Joni Balter wrote a patriotic, and somewhat bizarre, farewell to her friend, “Remembering John Henry from the beginning.”

Balter reminisced, “I remember once asking him [Stanford] why he was doing, well, a dumb thing by not firing Patrick Renfro, school construction manager. Renfro had a conflict of interest after accepting free golf games and meals from a construction-management firm the district did business with. So why not can him?”

Stanford replied, “I don’t destroy people.”

Of course not! Stanford let his flunkees do his dirty work; but that’s another story.

What shocked me about this bombshell was that it confirms Stanford’s extraordinary tolerance for corruption and incompetence. If I had been Supe for a day, I would have fired Renfro (who, evidence suggests, was guilty of a lot more than playing golf on duty) on the spot, then cooperated vigorously with the FBI (which investigated Renfro).

But then, I’m not a great leader like John Stanford, the taxpayers’ friend.