Family 15 Minutes of Fame

My brother Ally needs to learn to look at the camera, though.  Or maybe it's just local-news dorkiness.  He's announcing the results of a study of the effects of economic and linguistic school integration on the achievement of Hispanic kids in Denver.  A study he commissioned when he was an officer of the Piton Foundation and now reports on, among other contentious topics, on his online magazine HeadFirst and gloves-off edublog Schools for Tomorrow.  He's a vice president of the Public Education & Business Coalition.  (Hard to contemplate one's siblings -- not to mention oneself -- rising to such eminences of responsibility without a mixture of pride and incredulity.  We're all still just playing dress-up.)

Comments

[reader_iam]

What you all are, is amazing.

Lucky us.

[reader_iam]

I've often thought I'd like to meet you and your siblings. That's still true, but--and take this, I beg of you, in the very best sense--I'd most like to meet your parents.

[reader_iam]

I mean, just for starters, how'd they do it?

[amba]

There's still time!

[Melinda]

Truly an accomplished family that makes mine look like a bunch of hillbillies by comparison.

But I know what you mean about feeling like a kid playing dress-up. In fact, it makes you realize that even the president is just somebody's dorky brother. Oooh wait...bad comparison.

[Ally]

Hey, they TOLD me not to look at the camera. Being interviewed on TV was easy. What terrified me was the talk-radio interview, where they tried to bait me into saying no one should be taught in Spanish ever, under any circumstances. Being on the other side of the journalism game for a day really showed me how debased our discourse has become.

[david]

Should've gotten a haircut. You looked like you just tried to spiff yourself up after a Loggins & Messina reunion concert.

[Ruth Anne]

I think he looked dapper and sounded Gottlieb-intelligent [that's the higher standard, btw].

Glad to hear that the vast majority of the Spanish-speaking parents wanted English immersion for their children.

[Melinda]

When I was a kid in the Bronx, a quarter of the class was Hispanic. The teacher taught everything in English, and the Spanish kids taught the Anglos how to curse in Spanish. It was an arrangement that seemed to satisfy everybody.

Ally, that's interesting about the talk radio interview. It's about what I'd suspected.

[Danny]

I can't believe how much he looks like David. (Are they both going to kill me now?) And I think it would have been creepy if he'd been looking at the camera, they always look off to the side to the fake interviewer. The Gottliebs always come off as super intelligent. I'm waiting for the secret videos to make it to YouTube--I seem to recall something about David in college appearing nearly nude for a Shakespeare play??