Discussion: Publisher 'Appalled' By Employee's Comments In James O'Keefe Video

For O’Keefe the context behind it doesn’t matter. He got the sound bite the right wingers wanted to hear.

TPM: Why, why, why, WHY are there so many problems with “Comment” programs to so many of your stories? It’s frustrating as heck.

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javascript:void(); must be the new TPM intern.

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Well, since she is a celebrity, she cannot sue O’Keefe for invasion of privacy that cost her job. Oh, wait a minute…

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Actually, in this case it means she was in charge of West Coast accounts (i.e. clients). Different from “accounting”. She’s a sales person.

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What does O’Keefe think he ‘proved’? That a business is in business to make money or that an employee could have a job without buying into that business m odel? He REALLY needs to find a real job…he doesn’t ‘get’ it.

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"You don’t think that educational publishing companies are in it for education, do you? No. They’re in it for the money."

This is pretty much the case, up and down the spectrum.

She just had the bad judgment to say so out loud.

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Second this. Seems particularly exacerbated today.

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Back when I was taking high school geometry, we spend a couple of days monkeying around with a chapter that many teachers skip on non-Euclidian geometries–geometries that will change just one Euclidian postulate to one that doesn’t make intuitive sense (though some are prominent in advanced physics) and it unlocks this whole bizarre world of internally consistent but deeply strange theorems. So, say, change the parallel line postulate so that two lines can intersect point “p” that are both parallel to a line not on point p, and off you go to the world of hyperbolic geometry.

And so it goes with conservatives. They have a few postulates that make no sense to people and from them, they reason their way to all manner of intellectual destinations utterly incomprehensible to those whose postulates are moored in physical reality.

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Show me a publicly traded company that is NOT “all about the money”.
You won’t find one.
In something as big as textbook publishing, they hire salespeople based on their ability to SELL BOOKS (with bonuses over 100% of quotas.)
This is normal operations for any big company. Just look at Pharmaceutical Sales reps, or any other sale rep.
They are in it for the MONEY. Full Stop. End of Story.
The publishers are hypocrites.

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I’m impressed that you remember high school geometry with such clarity. All I can remember is my teacher, who was actually an excellent teacher, but with the personality of a cinder block.

I’ve worked with educators and because they’re used to creating their own curricula it’s trivially easy to find teachers to criticize any effort to create a broad standard. They feel, with a lot of justification, that it results in teachers “teaching to the test.” And publishers are in it for money? NFS. One of the really pathetic things about this penny-ante grifter with the world’s most punchable face is that the stunts he pulls are easy—you just lie. You find some gullible person, fail to mention you’re recording, and they’ll say all sorts of embarrassing things. Let’s consign him to the oblivion into which that similar garden slug Charles C. Johnson seems to have mercifully faded.

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Textbook publishers are not non-profit organizations. Neither are they scholars. They are businesses which hope to turn a profit. I don’t know why anyone would believe otherwise. Like other businesses, they will stock what the public wants to buy. This should not shock anyone. If your school district wants textbooks that say the Civil War wasn’t about slavery or Joseph McCarthy was an American hero or climate change is not scientific, they’ll produce them for you. Textbooks now come labeled with the state for which they are appropriate so here they are labeled New York version to distinguish them, I presume, from say, the Texas version. It has absolutely nothing to do with affection for or dislike of children.

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Oddly, it’s one of the few things I remember from that class, besides my over-the-top frustrated teen lust for the girl I sat next to (who, inconceivably, is my age now, somewhere far away). It was just such a “what the fucking fuck?” up is down, mind blown diversion, it stuck with me.

What I think is sort of funny is that Dianne Barrow could easily be either speaking her truth about HMH or be an O’Keefe plant who got a job there last spring just for this gig.

“most punchable face” and “garden slug”.

Just.

Awesome.

So during an undercover interview, a woman who’s job is selling educational materials for a text book publisher, reveals that text book companies are in the business of selling educational materials.

Can’t wait for the undercover interview with McDonald’s marketing exec where it’s revealed that fast food companies are primarily in business to sell fast food.

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James O’Keefe is a slug. That’s really all that needs to be said.

I’ll wait for the unedited version.
Somebody needs to follow the money on James O’Keefe.

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One thing about O’Keefe’s video is unsettling. There is an educational/publishing complex like the military/industrial complex. Education officials and curriculum developers are too close to publishing companies (and testing companies, by the way, which often also are publishing companies). Publishers have high priced educational consultants who are hired by school districts, and are a rip off.