From “Time for Sanders, or Diane Ravitch, to Pack It In? Part 1” by Jim Horn at Schools Matter (h/t Mike Antonucci)
Since 2010, [Diane] Ravitch has built a network of autograph seekers and blogmates who are sated by her compliments and water-logged rhetoric of wishful thinking, and she has consolidated her position as the voice for the anti-reformy movement. Most importantly, however, she has earned a position as chief propagandist for corporate unionism, while working both sides of the aisle of the big business political jet.”
Also, for those of you who, like me, are awestruck by Ravitch’s blogging output, Horn explains how it works:
Many of the posts at Ravitch’s blog are packaged for her by Jon Pelto, who spends a good deal of his time, it seems, scouring the blogger network of Ravitch hangers-on for any suitable Ravitch echoes that Diane can then post at her own blog. This repackaging process gives the attention seekers of Basecamp a chance to bump up the number of visits for their blogs, Facebook pages, etc., and it allows Ravitch a chance to camp out at her computer headquarters like an old self-exiled Tory, now fully in charge of her own band of privileged revolutionaries determined to banish the current group of corporate royals that Ravitch, herself, was once a proud member, and to hand off power to another insider group with the same self-aggrandizing values that Ravitch now promotes. This arrangement also gives Diane a chance to stand behind others and push them forward to say what she will not say in her own voice. In doing so, she can deny that she is supportive of a post if it ends up not so well received, as in a recent promotion she did for Randi Weingarten.
