In this interview Yale Law Professor John Macey and fake news show host Jon Stewart have an accessible and spirited conversation about how private equity firms operate and how laws and policies support profit making as that central goal. As you watch this, consider that there are billions of dollars to be made, and being made, by corporate involvement in education. From textbooks to school cafeteria food, there is lots of co-mingling of ties and obligations. There are three parts to this interview, and lots of interesting moments in all three, particularly in a mainstream mediascape that rarely values engaged discourse.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-31-2012/exclusive---jonathan-macey-extended-interview-pt--1
The conversation about the "non-level playing field" of access (around the 3:30 mark, part I) reminded me of a memorable line I recently read in Christopher Hitchens' autobiography, Hitch-22:
ReplyDeleteAn old joke has an Oxford professor meeting an American former graduate student and asking him what he's working on these days. "My thesis is on the survival of the class system in the United States." "Oh really, that's interesting: one didn't think there was a class system in the United States." "Nobody does. That's how it survives."