School's Out
Graphic: CNN Extra Special Report – No More Teacher’s Dirty Looks
Photo: A jubilant fifth grader taking an axe to his school desk.
WHIT: No more pencils, no more books. That’s the cry of school kids all over California as the newly elected governor has shut down the entire school system as a result of the state’s crippling fiscal crisis. How did this happen? We have on the phone Governor Mitzi (She’s the Mitz) Mitserello to explain what’s going on. Governor, good evening.
Photo: The governor, also swinging an axe.
MITZI: No new taxes! You try to raise my taxes and I’ll bite your frigging head off.
WHIT: Excuse me, this is Whit Moon from CNN. Could you put the governor on the phone?
MITZI: This is the governor.
WHIT: I’m terribly sorry. Governor, we know that ever since Proposition 13, California’s elected officials have refused to support additional taxes, despite crumbling roads, broken schools, and clogged-up sewerage systems. Why won’t you raise taxes?
MITZI: No new taxes. No new property taxes, no new sales taxes, no new personal taxes or I’ll put your frigging face in a sling.
WHIT: Good use of metaphor. But what about raising corporate taxes? We understand California businesses are doing much better lately and yet they’re still paying very little.
MITZI: Actually they’re paying nothing, Whit. We had to cut their taxes to get all these corporations to come to California, then we had to cut their taxes again to get them to stay in California, and then we had to cut their taxes to get them to come back to California after they lied to us and left anyway. So now we really can’t ask them to pay anything.
WHIT: So you’re closing the schools temporarily until the legislature agrees to your no-new-taxes budget?
MITZI: No Whit, we’re closing the schools forever. We’re converting them to condos. As soon as the real estate market turns around, we’ll sell them off and then we can cut taxes even more.
WHIT: So what are you telling all the school kids to do?
MITZI: We’re telling them that they should all just go to the mall. The mall is really the best place for them. They have security, they have the food court, they have bathrooms, they have everything we could give them at school, except the frigging teachers, and who needs them?
WHIT: But if we just send our kids to the mall, how are we going to have smart kids who will grow up and be able to earn a good living and raise families and contribute to society?
MITZI: We don’t really want that, Whit. What we really want are stupid kids.
WHIT: Stupid kids?
MITZI: Exactly. Nobody wants kids who are smarter than they are. If our kids are stupid, they’re not going to be bothering us with a whole lot of questions that we’re too stupid to answer. They’re not going to expect good career opportunities because they’ll know they’re idiots, and they won’t expect any better. Then we won’t have to have budgets or legislators or elections or any of that because nobody will even know what those things are.
WHIT: But won’t young people still want this great country of ours to be a democracy?
MITZI: Not if they spend all their time at the mall. When you’re at the mall, that sort of question really never comes up.
WHIT: But if people can’t earn a decent living, won’t the quality of their life go down?
MITZI: Absolutely, Whit. And that’s exactly what we’re hoping for. This way they’ll spend all their time scraping around for something to eat, and they won’t have time to ask questions.
WHIT: So at that point, everybody will be stupid, ignorant, and hungry, and no one will care what the state’s environmental policies are?
MITZI: Exactly. That’s our goal, Whit. We may not get there in my lifetime, but ever since I took this job, I have always lived by our state’s motto.
WHIT: And what is the California state motto?
MITZI: Eat an orange and shut up.
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