Rahm's press corps reduced to doing damage control

My favorite S-T headline. But just who is EVERBODY anyway?

"If you want to throw something at the cameras, go ahead, have at it. You let ‘em know the City of Chicago is on watch for the children of Chicago.” -- Rahm Emanuel

The mayor's war chest is overstuffed with money. He has the political backing of many of the biggest and richest  players in both political parties, including the POTUS. He has as yet, no announced opponent in the upcoming election. His expensive City Hall and CPS media spinners need an entire floor to fit them all in and his golf buddies even own the Sun-Times. .

My question then is, why is his press coverage so bad? Why is his message so out of control? Why does it seem like his PR people have been reduced to doing damage control and just about every editorial in both papers are dissing him and especially his ed policies?

Possible answers--

• It's because Rahm is such a a-hole that every reporter in town hates him.
• It's because his policies, especially around the school closings, are hurting so many people that there's just no credibility left in positive news play.
• There's so much internal corruption in this administration that no one wants to risk going down with the ship.
• Rahm is losing it. Can't control his outbursts or be trusted to stay on message, especially when he's under pressure. 

But all this means nothing unless the city's scattered, local-issue oriented progressive forces can come together around a viable opponent or at the very least, a united voter registration drive. A hundred-thousand new voters -- not that hard to register under the new online registration law -- would go a long way in convincing such an opponent to step out there and start the fund-raising ball rolling big time. The CTU is in the best position to launch such a drive.

Today's best read

Chris Farone in Esquire tells why Boston is ducking ed reform...for now. 

As far as tragically perverted euphemisms go, "ed reform" makes "corporate personhood" look like an insignificant white (collar) lie.

 The mayor [Rahm Emanuel] pocketed more than $700,000 from [Stand For Children] SFC donors for his last campaign and subsequently aided in provoking a teachers' strike, closing 50 public schools, and urging for new charters to replace them.

 Perhaps most egregiously, New Orleans has four charters that advertise their corporate sponsor right in the school name. They're not doing so well. Of four Capital One-New Beginnings labs, two hemorrhaged half of their staffs last year, while only one retained its principal through spring semester.

Best FB post

Deb Meier reports:“Eye On Education” is offering to sell us the answer to our dreams in a series of 4 new books entitled: “Literacy, Rigor and the Common Core State Standards.” It’s got all the latest buzz words into one short unsurpassable sentence. The one of the four I like best is entitled “Rigor Made Easy”. The inventor of that title deserves a bonus.