Besty DeVos was confirmed as the new Secretary of Education in a 50-50-tiebreaker vote in the U.S. Senate Tuesday afternoon, sending liberals into a social media tailspin not seen since…well, about three weeks ago at Donald Trump’s inauguration.
DeVos has been criticized heavily by media pundits, liberal politicians and high-minded celebrities in recent weeks, whose disparagements have ranged from DeVos’s apparent lack of qualifications to her history of promoting school choice. She's a big fan of eliminating barriers for children to attend good schools regardless of their income or zip code, and is a proponent of the school voucher program, which allows taxpayer dollars to help send a child to a private or religious school -- a stance her critics say would hurt already-underfunded public schools.
The National Review published a stunningly revealing exposé on a number of Senate Democrats who opposed DeVos’ nomination, noting that many of these left-wing politicians tend to posture in favor of the public school option about five minutes before they head off to pick up their own children from the Prestigious Academy For the Elite and Gifted.
Likewise, large numbers of similarly hypocritical celebrities have wedged themselves onto the anti-DeVos soapbox Tuesday, a platform that’s becoming increasingly crowded with elitist mucky-mucks whose own history with public schools is sketchy at best – and, in many cases, entirely non-existent.
Take former Comedy Central star and current late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert, for example, who tweeted out this little tidbit following DeVos’ confirmation:
Elementary math under Betsy Devos
— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) February 7, 2017
Q: Ned and Sheryl each have 4 apples. Who has more apples?
A: Whomever Mike Pence decides has more apples.
Now this is an interesting take from Colbert, considering he learned how to do math at the prestigious Porter-Gaud School in Charleston, South Carolina. Touted as a private college prep school, it’s a pretty elite little institution – and by “little,” we mean it serves less than 1,000 students at a time.
In a similar vein, here’s TV's Kumail Nanjiani’s take on DeVos:
Betsy Devos got confirmed. Everyone who voted for her should be ashamed. Party before country. They're using children's education as pawns.
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) February 7, 2017
Secretary of Education doesn't care about schools. Head of EPA doesn't care about environment. What kills us 1st: Illiteracy or the oceans?
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) February 7, 2017
But not only did Nanjiani not attend a public school, he didn’t attend any grade school in the United States at all. Instead, he graduated from Karachi Grammar School, known to be the oldest private school in Pakistan and billed as an elite, “highly selective” institution.
Here’s an opinion you didn’t care about from Seth MacFarlane…
Betsy DeVos confirmed. What is also confirmed is that there is not one single man of courage in the Republican Congress.
— Seth MacFarlane (@SethMacFarlane) February 7, 2017
…which is just precious, considering MacFarlane got his own shiny high school degree from the Kent School, a private boarding school in Connecticut.
In his own anti-DeVos rant, Joshua Malina tweeted that all GOP senators are “craven f***ers,” adding:
Betsy DeVos has been confirmed. Everyone stop having kids.
— (((Joshua Malina))) (@JoshMalina) February 7, 2017
Eeeeexcept that Malina didn’t go to public school, either. In fact, he graduated from Westchester Day School, a private school located on Long Island, before being accepted to the Horace Mann School, an elite, private college prep school in the Bronx.
And while Josh Groban, who tweeted this…
The swamp is being drained and filled with Chuck E. Cheese sea of plastic balls.
— josh groban (@joshgroban) February 7, 2017
…did, in fact, go to a public high school, it happened to be the prestigious Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, a by-audition-only college prep school that only accepts about 130 students per year.
As for Yours Truly, I graduated from a pretty run-of-the-mill public high school in Virginia that you’ve never heard of. Before that, I attended a pretty standard public middle school. And, based on my own experience with government-run public education, I think I’ll err on the side of school choice.