…like Unethical Quote of the Month, Ethics Dunce, “It Isn’t What It Is” Master, “Biggest Hypocrite of 2023” frontrunner…oh, lots of Ethics Alarms awards. Plus, she outed herself as a rhetoric-challenged idiot who has no business teaching children, much less presuming to lead those who do. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Stacy Davis Gates has been an vociferous opponents of parents who advocate for the ability to eschew public schools (which, as we know, are terrible educationally and politically) for other options via school vouchers. Here are some of her publicized comments:

• “School choice was actually the choice of racists. It was created to avoid integrating schools with Black children. Now it’s the civil rights struggle of our generation?”
• “I’m also a mother. My children go to Chicago Public Schools. These are things that help to legitimize my space within the coalition.”
• “‘Segregation Academies’ …Call them private schools supported by taxpayer funds-vouchers-so your norther cousins understand better.
• “I can’t advocate on behalf of public education without it taking root in my own household.

…and more. You know what I’m going to write next, don’t you? Surely you’ve seen this kind of set-up before. Yes, Gates recently placed her own teenage son in a Catholic high school located in Chicago’s South Side. This was so outstanding an example of hypocrisy by a politically involved public figure that even a CNN Democratic flack talking head was moved to challenge her on it.

CNN “Primetime” host Abby Phillip interviewed the Chicago teachers union leader and asked, “You’ve likened in the past private schools of today to quote ‘segregation academies’ of the Jim Crow South. Why then send your child to a private school after speaking out so publicly against them?”  And  Gates, bless her heart, caught as red-handed as Jimmy Durante trying to sneak the biggest elephant on Earth out of the circus,  thought she would try out Jimmy’s response when asked where he was going with “that elephant'( “What elephant?”) but with the erudite adaptation of a trained educator. She answered,

“I didn’t speak out against private schools. I spoke out against school choice. School choice and private schools are two different entities,” Davis Gates replied. Oh! What??? You spoke out against parents choosing private schools over public schools, you insulting, arrogant, lying hack! The least Davis could have done was babble a Ralph Kramden-esque “Huminahuminahumina” upon being asked a question that could only be ethically answered, “You got me!”

Phillip should have laughed in her face and said, “So you’re really going with that?” Davis Gates is a Democrat, a woman and a hypocrite of color, however, so instead, the CNN host persisted with polite questions, like “I think at the end of the day, people are asking here about whether the rhetoric matches your actions. What do you say to them?” After Davis Gates ducked that one, she read the CTU prez’s letter explaining why she had taken her own child out of public school for a sports program at a private school because the new school had a better sports program and asked, “The question I think your critics are asking is why not afford that nuance to the families who might live in the South Side of Chicago and in other major cities, and they want the same choice that you were able to afford to give to your child?” Davis Gates answered that by making no sense in light of her earlier rejection of parental school choice, saying that that she has two children currently in public school, and besides, Chicago schools are under-funded. Phillip should have responded to that by saying, “Wait, are you arguing that only accessing your school choice options for one-third of your children means you’re not like a “segregationist”? Is your proposal that every family can send a third of its kids to a better school than the government offers, or just one?” Instead, CNN’s best pressed the still wildly spinning imitator of The Great Snozzola with “I totally understand the point that you’re making, but I do wonder, do you regret your own rhetoric here?”

[The issue isn’t whether she “regrets” her rhetoric, but whether she acknowledges that she has done exactly what she claimed it was wrong for others to do, and either officially retracts her former position or confesses that she has done exactly what she has insisted that it was wrong for others to do.]

Davis responded, clearly convinced that if she ducked the question enough times, at least Chicago residents would be too stupid to realize what was going on, answered, “Regret rhetoric? What I’ve said are facts. Again, I’m a history teacher.”

An undoubtedly a bad one. At least Jimmy Durante’s original Jumbo was intended as a joke. Davis’s is tragic: it demonstrates how corrupt and incompetent the leadership of the teachers unions are, how little they can be trusted, and how devoid of honesty and integrity they are. A group that would hand leadership to someone like Davis cannot be trusted any more than she can be.