"Unfortunately, the people of Louisiana are not racists. "

-- Dan Quayle, VP and Founder of the 'foot in mouth in a majorly public way' club

I remember when leg warmers were in, Dan Quayle was VP to a certain George Bush, and we wore our sunglasses at night out of sheer embarrassment. This was also the time of a Vermont organization whose sole life purpose centered on following Quayle around, capturing the myriad of crap that would emerge from his vocal cords, and broadcasting it through a monthly newsletter. Meaning that he spoke in a cringe-worthy manner enough to fill a monthly newsletter. Which he did... and then some. Amazingly, the whole time he was in office, their monthly newsletter remained thick enough to moonlight as insulation. You perhaps remember:

"Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child."

"I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican."

"I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix."

"A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls."

"Mars is essentially in the same orbit . . . Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."

"The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century."

"I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people. "

"Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It's the other way around. They never vote for us."

"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."

Ah yes, Danny Boy, truer words were never more confusing, how wonderful that the pipes, the political pipes, are calling...

Anyways, just a few highlights for you there on Memory Lane. But let us pull ourselves into this century, the century in which we all live, minus perhaps the DQ. The way things are going these days, a person need not a monthly newsletter; one could instead modernize to a daily "WTF" blog of bigoted, ignorant, hateful things that public people say.

I for the sake of not totally wasting my mind, like to limit my public bloggy WTF rantings to the sporatic. Like a suddenly bitter wedge of tangerine. But today is definitely one of those days, because Education Secretary Duncan? I wish he had been lawsuit-provokingly misquoted by last week's The Washington Post article:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan called Hurricane Katrina "the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans" because it forced the community to take steps to improve low-performing public schools, according to excerpts from a television interview made public Friday.

So let us just be clear. And in honor of the start of Standardized Testing Season and my colleague Alita, let's do this in SAT terms (Lord knows that shit is clear):

Hurricane Katrina :(IS TO) New Orleans Schools AS
War : Urban Renewal
The Plague : Medical Research

Or, in the words of the DQ, "We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world."

WTF.