On Monday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel sat down with graduate students at Stanford University’s business school to tell them what a wonderful job he’s doing in Chicago—as though his experiences would help them achieve their entrepreneurial dreams.
In reality, CPS is hopelessly broke and Rahm has no clue how to fix the problem.
That part of the talk has gathered all the notoriety. But it’s only a small portion of an one-hour talk. And, yes, I listened to the whole damn thing, in the hopes that Rahm can help me achieve my dreams of becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg.
Rahm didn’t mention the shuttered mental health clinics. However, he did offer a creative interpretation of the 2012 teachers’ strike. It was, he declared, all about his valiant effort to get Chicago’s kids a longer school day.
It was instead the end result of more than a year of belligerence from our “winning is everything” mayor. In 2011, he charged into office eager to prove to the older versions of the students in the Stanford classroom that he was the type of Democrat who wanted to kick some teachers’ union ass.
When his talk had concluded, the mayor flew home to a Chicago that’s arguably more broke, violent, and divided than it was when he took office.
