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by Dacia Nichol

At yesterday’s New York Young Republican Club’s monthly meeting, Bob Bowdon was the guest speaker of the night - a man who has enjoyed success as a reporter and anchor on various media networks.  His most notable work has been as an anchor/reporter for Bloomberg Television and recently as a reporter named Brian Scott on The Onion News Network.  Plug: He’s a highly effective and hilarious speaker even as he tells us things we should cry about....

Bob has done some great investigative journalism work for his new feature documentary film, The Cartel, about the mishandling of our education system (New Jersey in particular), which will be premiering at The Hoboken International Film Festival in New Jersey on May 30th at 2 pm. 

[Please note that his premier is not actually in Hoboken, it’s in Teaneck, and Bob has stressed that Teaneck is much easier to get to than Staten Island...which actually holds no relevance to the film festival but would be a funny mention had you been at this awesome meeting...just saying...]

It is highly recommended that you visit the film’s website, or even better, visit, purchase tickets, and then take a haul out to Teaneck, NJ next weekend to see The Cartel for yourself.  Some very interesting points of discussion in Bob’s film are summarized as follows...with some sensationalist modifications of course...perhaps to peak your interest?  Yes, the evil plot unfolds:

- America ranks last in educational effectiveness (or for a positive spin, #1 in Suck-y-ness) among the world’s industrialized countries, and first in amount of money spent per student in the world.* [Read: modified GIGO effect - gold in, garbage out]

- 15 year olds in the United States have worse math skills than kids in Azerbaijan.*  Pop quiz: Do you know where Azerbaijan is?  [No, sorry - Borat was from Kazakhstan...]

-  Some Jersey superintendents in poor districts make some serious bling.  I’m talking presidential salaries folks.* 

- There should be a show called “I Dream of Janitors”...or their salaries that is.  For cleaning duties not to exceed 4 feet above the ground, you just might bring home a whopping $100k a year as a janitor in a Jersey public school.*  Now if only they required a degree in waste management for it, they could be Stafford slaves like the rest of us over-achievers.

And there’s more where that came from!  Be there for the premiere on May 30th at 2 pm in Teaneck, NJ.  If you don’t, the forces of good in the world will unite and....in spirit of the United Nations...send you a letter**...telling you just how angry they are about it.  Maybe.

* Based on information provided at http://www.thecartelmovie.com and by Bob Bowdon at this meeting.
** Link has explicit language used.
 


Comments

Aim Higher

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:41:49

From now on you might want to do a little background check on your guests and their films.

http://en.wordpress.com/tag/bob-bowdon/

http://www.njea.org/pdfs/TheCartelMay2009.pdf

 

Dacia Nichol

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:16:34

I guess I get that "right wing" is being used as a negative throughout these arguments, but the fact that the links are coming from NJEA itself (the demon of the movie) and a tenured professor in the ... Read Morestate (pretty much part of the problem the whole movie is getting at) quibbling over tiny details rather than the overall failure of the education system as a whole...eh. To be expected.

 

Dacia Nichol

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:18:13

Cleaned Up:

I guess I get that "right wing" is being used as a negative throughout these arguments, but the fact that the links are coming from NJEA itself (the demon of the movie) and a tenured professor in the state (pretty much part of the problem the whole movie is getting at) quibbling over tiny details rather than the overall failure of the education system as a whole...eh. To be expected.

 

Aim Higher

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:01:24

Ha! You're joking right? Professor Bruce Baker from Rutgers' Graduate School of education and the founder of one of the country's most highly respected blogs on school finance (while agreeing that reform is needed) meticulously and logically points out the flaws in the filmmaker's reasoning and logic.

Professor Baker goes so far as to refer to Bowdon as a "gutless ignoramus" and this is your only response. How sad and myopic. There are plenty of gifted right wing documentarians out there. Bowdon is not one of them. He's a struggling comedian looking for an easy way to get some press. He's not a journalist or a writer or a father. The bottom line is you were too lazy to do a background check on Bowdon before you booked him and as a result you got burned.

 

Ted

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:28:17

Dear Aim Higher,

Thanks for checking in, Bruce Baker. We hope you take your new pseudonym of "Aim Higher" to heart.

Such a caustic, visceral attack on a movie that this guy has never even seen? The name-calling: “Gutless ignoramus”? "Moron"? "Idiot"? Are you a professor or teenage chat room instigator?

And it’s all based on one chart that was supposedly previously on the website???

Is anyone else smelling a credibility problem with this “objective” poster? (Raise your hand the last time *you* made a post like this about a film you never saw.)

Sorry dude, you’ve outed yourself. No one blogs that consistently and harshly about a film they've never seen without an ulterior motive. This smells fishy. You're either a Union flak or being paid by one.

My advice: your ruse of objectivity will be taken more seriously if you've actually seen the movie. Your trashing might actually be believed then.

 

NeoConservative

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:46:34

Well, i'm convinced. I'm gonna see this movie now to see what the hell you all are fighting about.

 

Aim Higher

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:45:45

Truly sad Mr. Bowdon, I mean Ted.

http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/vacuous_bowdon/


 

Dacia Nichol

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:22:45

So have you seen the movie yet? Surely there will be plenty more than a graph for you to dissect if you have...which by the way doesn't have a whole lot to do with the movie as a whole. It was a figure of irony for pondering - rip it apart if you like, but the overall message of this film goes much deeper.

No one was burned. We were enlightened. =)

 

Ted

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:26:43

Dear Mr. Baker,
Im really Bowden? Wanna bet me?? want to meet for tea- hows this Sunday at 3? If your wrong you can admit making false claims on the internet and give a public apology and use all that name calling on yourself. He is a friend, and unlike you Ive seen his film.

here's a math equation for you
Hytericle rants about a film + Not having seen the film = AGENDA

That's you Bruce.

Maybe i'm a moron too but i prefer my movie reviews from people whove seen the film:
http://jbspins.blogspot.com/2009/07/cartel.html

 



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