My goal this morning is to get the blog updated and a story written about the budget meeting at my local city council in the next 75 minutes. Hang on, folks — we’re going to see just how fast mommy can screw things up this morning.

Fortunately, I have supplemented last night’s 5.5 hours of sleep with three cups of coffee.

And I already edited and posted one story from my intern. Because that’s how hyperlocal online news runs these days — all the meetings happen early in the week. That makes for a miserable Monday and Tuesday, but by Thursday, the air smells like Weekend.

My intern’s story was on the first budget meeting of the year for the school board, which is facing the possibility of seeing $5.8 million in cuts if the governor’s budget goes through as proposed, a pretty hard swallow for a 8,500-pupil district. That means larger class sizes at a bare minimum and the usual no-more-this, can’t-have-that elsewhere in the district. I used to marvel sometimes that pretty much the last decade of my newspaper career — and, really, many years before that — were spent in a fiscal environment where all you knew for certain was that next year would suck more than this year. Now, the whole country lives like this. (Well, except for Goldman Sachs. And General Electric. Et cetera.) I always knew I’d find my true calling as a canary in a coal mine.

Speaking of sucking and newspapers, my alma mater — which I have taken to describing as the paper I might have worked at, had I not been in that tragic, 20-year coma from 1984-2004 — is in a minor ethical kerfuffle, thanks to its sports editor’s tweeting. I hope you all understand how hard it is for a person of a certain age to think of tweeting as serious communication worthy of sustained attention, but that’s what you get in a world where Sarah Palin is looked up to. Anyway, evidently the sports editor advised a recent Indiana University basketball recruit to play for Butler instead, his alma mater. In a tweet. Which ended with the phrase, “Go ‘Dawgs!”

I guess this is a problem. I guess some people consider this recruiting, and it’s a blow to the hard work of many who have tried to give sports departments more respect. I see their point, although every sports department I’ve ever worked near has fanboys galore. Still, journalism is journalism, and you’re supposed to keep this stuff to yourself.

But not if you work for Fox! Ahem:

Bill Sammon, who’s responsible for the network’s Washington coverage, linked Obama to socialism many times during the 2008 campaign, but didn’t believe the allegation, he acknowledged. In the final stretch of the 2008 campaign, a Fox News executive repeatedly questioned on the air whether Barack Obama believed in socialism.

Now it turns out he didn’t really believe what he was saying.

Bill Sammon, now the network’s vice president and Washington managing editor, acknowledged the following year that he was just engaging in “mischievous speculation” in raising the charge. In fact, Sammon said he “privately” believed that the socialism allegation was “rather far-fetched.”

OK. Now, to me, this is a scandal at the very, very least on a par with the recent NPR affair. This guy isn’t a fundraiser on contract, but a bureau chief in the nation’s capital, i.e., the very person in charge of directing and shaping the network’s coverage of Washington, D.C. And he was being “mischievous” with repeatedly making a charge that the Democratic candidate was a socialist, something a vast segment of his readership viewership takes as an article of faith.

I can’t fucking stand it. I just can’t.

The audio of that speech is nauseating — the amount of back-scratching, log-rolling and ass-kissing in the first two minutes alone is just vile. “My good friend James Carville,” “his lovely wife Mary Matalin,” “my old friends from Hillsdale.” Urgh.

But then, what is GOP politics at this point but a giant vaudeville act. Donald Trump, born-again birther, wants the governor of Hawaii “investigated,” he tells Fox ‘n’ Friends. What is this, a performance art piece? No other explanation makes any sense. Also:

“Why doesn’t he show his birth certificate?” Trump asked. “I wish he would, because I think it’s a terrible pale that’s hanging over him.”

What is “a terrible pale?” Can someone explain?

OK, well. I have a budget story to write in the next…42 minutes. So I best go. Let the above be your bloggage, although I close on yet another journalism-related nugget. Alan and I saw “Kill the Irishman” last weekend, a film about a Cleveland gangster named Danny Greene, whose compelling story and Belfastian death would make a pretty good movie someday. Alas, “Kill the Irishman” isn’t it. But a guy I know had a small part in it, and Ray Stevenson, aka Titus Pullo in “Rome” a few years back, played the lead, so it seemed worth the time.

There are two shots in the movie where we look over a character’s shoulder at the front page of the Plain Dealer, Cleveland’s muscular, dominant newspaper and at the time the film covers, the best daily in Ohio. I always look at the other stories on prop pages like this, because I know that’s where the art department’s inside jokes go. I was able to read two. One was:

High school
gets new
lockers

and the other was:

Attorney
opens
practice

Somewhere, an editor is weeping.

Gotta run!

Somewhere in the firehose of information that blew past me yesterday — just another day at the office — someone said that Elizabeth Taylor, like Frank Sinatra, was a generational artist. You had to catch her early to consider her an artist at all, because at some point she stopped being an artist, pretty much stopped working at all, and was content to simply be Elizabeth Taylor ™, the brand.

That’s probably right, and I’d put people my age on the dividing line. I was about 10 when I discovered my grandmother’s stash of Hollywood fan magazines and learned of the latter. Every so often the hot couple of the moment comes along — Brangelina, Bennifer (remember that one?) — and tries to blot out the sun, but they are mere satellites to the original, Liz and Dick, whom we should be grateful came along before the mushed-names thing, because no one would have gone for a couple nicknamed Lick. Or Diz.

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were the alpha and omega of celebrity couples, and much in between. They were together, apart, together, apart. After the breakups, he wooed her with ever-more-lavish gifts of jewelry, which she’d wear dangling from her ears or nestling in her famous bosom. They fought in public (booze), snuggled in public (ditto). Like Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, she gave him glamour, he gave her prestige. They gave each other fits.

I’ve never understood relationships like this, but then, I’m not a movie star. I guess they enjoyed makeup sex. They certainly enjoyed drinking, which fuels the breakup/makeup cycle.

About that jewelry. I was by no means a feminist at the age of 10 or so, but even as a kid, there was something about Taylor’s romantic life that bugged me. Never mind the marriages, Mrs. Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Fortensky — what sort of woman comes back to a man after he gives her a pair of diamond earrings? Major ick factor. At the same time, she was gimlet-eyed enough to know that a girl ought to get something out of a relationship like the one with Burton, and I guess she cashed in.

In the end, if you were younger than 50 or so, you remember Taylor more for this:

…than this:

And that’s a shame. But she had a good time along the way. Women like her don’t have the Clint Eastwood Option for later-in-life work, particularly if you’ve been known as a great beauty. I think Manohla Dargis put her finger on it:

Living large proved a brilliant survival strategy as well as something of a rebuke to the limits of the studio system, both its formulas and false morality, which was all but gone by the time she appeared in “Virginia Woolf” in 1966. Her weight went up and down and the accolades kept coming. She cheated on one husband and then another at a time when adultery was still shocking, and her career kept going. She was a lovely actress and a better star. She embodied the excesses of Hollywood and she transcended them. In the end, the genius of her career was that she gave the world everything it wanted from a glamorous star, the excitement and drama, the diamonds and gossip, and she did it by refusing to become fame’s martyr.

So, bloggage? Sure:

I’m so glad Kate has grown out of “American Idol,” so we don’t have to watch stuff like this. (I’m talking about J-Lo, not the singer. Although he’s got at least as much diva Diana as mellow Marvin in him, unless I miss my guess.) You’d think, by this point in the competition, the stylists would have gotten the performers clothes that fit.

This is why people choose careers in journalism: To answer ads like this.

In Britain, he’s been stripped of his medical license. In the U.S., he’s free to keep spreading his special brand of quackery, and to a poor, minority population, no less.

Happy birthday to our regular commenter, 4dbirds, who turns 29 again today.

Sunny today! But still in the 20s. Dammit. I’m outta here, and have a great Thursday.

I kept the Oscars on while I worked last night, because it’s the sort of thing you don’t need to watch-watch, or even pay much attention to. Every time I looked up, Anne Hathaway was in a different dress and James Franco was all but squinting at the teleprompter. I happen to like both of these folks, and I take it from the Twitter traffic that everybody thinks they really sucked. I disagree. Franco sucked (and I loves me some Franco). Hathaway’s only sin was trying too hard. But she was amazing to look at — all those dresses! all that hair! — and in a traditional matchup like that, it would be her only job. Look lovely, and occasionally zing. But she sparkled and zinged enough for the both of them.

I didn’t understand that Hugh Jackman thing. Was it some reference to last year? Because I forgot last year already. The Oscars are always highly forgettable, especially the singing and dancing parts. Here’s what I remember from previous years: Jon Stewart saying, “The score is now Martin Scorsese zero, Three-Six Mafia one.” Rob Lowe and Snow White. And a few acceptance speeches. That’s about it. So I don’t understand the annual whining that the show was too long, too serious, too dull, whatever. It was ever thus, and likely always will be. Let’s prize this opportunity to look at Hollywood unmasked, and revel in all the people who call themselves “artists” with a straight face. And let’s check out Hathaway’s Oscar dresses, shall we?

Tom & Lorenzo counted eight, enough to “rival a Cher Farewell Tour,” and I’d be hard-pressed to find fault with any of them. My favorite was the shiny cobalt column, but that might be my favorite color ever, and if anyone can rock shiny cobalt, it’s a slender strand of a woman with classic brunette coloring. I didn’t know this whole lineup was put together by Rachel Zoe; this may require me to change my opinion of her.

Looking at the pictures, you know what else I noticed? She had red fingernails when she arrived, and nude ones after the show started. So besides the eight costume changes and four hairstyle changes, she also had time for someone to blow through her dressing room with a bottle of acetone. Meanwhile, James Franco evidently smoked a doobie. The girl always works harder.

My single favorite award? David Seidler, 73, the oldest person to ever win for original screenplay. My role models these days are mostly old men, but I think it’s a mark of maturity that I’d rather be Seidler than Hathaway.

Manic Monday, so a quick trip to the bloggage:

Mitch Albom disapproves of Kim Kardashian. Says she does nothing to earn a reported $65 million last year. Oh, I don’t know. I think she works harder getting dressed and staying in shape for her many public appearances than Albom did on that lame-ass column.

Man, the Onion has been on fire lately. Marauding gay hordes react to lack of DOMA enforcement:

“It was just awful—they smashed through our living room window, one of them said ‘I’ve had my eye on you, Roger,’ and then they dragged my husband off kicking and screaming,” said Cleveland-area homemaker Rita Ellington, one of the latest victims whose defenseless marriage was overrun by the hordes of battle-ready gays that had been clambering at the gates of matrimony since the DOMA went into effect in 1996.

Also: Open-minded man grimly realizes how much life he’s wasted listening to bullshit.

Finally, our own Brian Stouder, guest-blogging at Fort Wayne Observed. If you want to know how to live life as a parent of a child at an “urban” high school, well, he shows you how.

Gotta run, kittens. More tomorrow.

Because it seemed like something worth doing while another snowstorm bore down on us — now in progress, a few new inches — I took myself way the hell out to the west side last night. There was a “town meeting” for supporters of the Michigan film incentive tax credits, threatened with near-elimination in next year’s budget, and while my job isn’t on the line, I thought I’d go to fly the flag, another warm body in the crowd. I should have known something was up when it was moved at the last minute from a local studio with cavernous sound stages to a nearby banquet hall with enough room for an army.

Because an army showed up, and then some. Thousands, I’d estimate, at least two, maybe more. Parking was a nightmare, the hall so overfilled the fire marshall shut the doors and turned away probably a few hundred more. I squeaked in under the wire, but spent a lot of time standing around; the show started half an hour late, and the first speaker was ol’ shoe-polish head, the li’l man himself, ladies and gentlemen, Misterrrrr Mitch! Albom!

And to be sure, he wasn’t terrible. In fact, he was easily the best speaker of the night, doing what he does best — telling people what they want to hear: “This isn’t about saving Hollywood! This is about saving Michigan!” Big standing O for that one. And he did what newspaper columnists do best, talk tough without fear of contradiction: “Like it or not, this industry goes where the incentives are.” The message of the night was, the generous tax credits — and they are the most generous in the country, ranging from 30 to 42 percent — given to the film industry for work done here, is getting results beyond the chance to see Robert DeNiro in a restaurant. It’s providing jobs, building a talent base for future productions, etc.

No one talked about an end game, or even a compromise, at least while I was there. I had to leave during Mike Binder’s lament that “The Upside of Anger,” set in Bloomfield Hills, was shot in London because that was the best deal. (You remember “The Upside of Anger,” don’t you? Kevin Costner, Joan Allen, lots of University of Michigan references?) Is there ever a sunset on tax incentives, or do they set the state up to be thrown over when the next state gets stardust in its eyes? On the other hand, what else does Michigan have going for it at the moment? And the incentives have been an adrenaline shot to the burgeoning creative-class economy, and they are my people.

On the third hand, the same budget Gov. Rick Snyder has proposed cutting education funding by $920 million. (Mitch Albom has no children, and if he did, he’d doubtless send them to private schools.)

We’ll see how this works out. I’ll do my part, but I’m not hopeful. The best-case scenario would be for a cut that falls short of disastrous. Fingers crossed.

It was nice to get out of the house, even to wrangle with impossible parking. That’s how bad my cabin fever is at the moment.

Not much bloggage today:

Keep it classy, Georgia!

New York Times cooking columnist reveals, in his final column, that he doesn’t really cook all that much. (His wife does. Quel surprise.)

Think I’ll make some broccoli-cheddar soup today. Just because it’s snowy. A great weekend to all.

It’s just as well that the weekend is coming, as I need to unplug from the internet and stop paying attention to politics for a while. I’m starting to feel that old sourness, the simmer I maintained from roughly 2004 through 2008…no, through now, that pecked-to-death-by-ducks feeling.

Part of it is — when will I learn? when??? — paying attention to Sarah Palin again. She “slammed” Michelle Obama over her breast-feeding proposal, in CNN’s headline. In the copy, she “took a swipe” with this nonsensical comment:

“No wonder Michelle Obama is telling everybody, ‘You’d better breast-feed your baby,” she said at a Long Island appearance on Thursday, after slamming President Barack Obama for rising gas prices and other items — like milk — since he took office. “Yeah, you’d better, because the price of milk is so high right now.”

Because the price of milk is, what? The White House’s responsibility? Is she making a joke? Infants aren’t fed milk, at least not directly. Should we bother to point out no one is saying “you’d better” breastfeed? Or by doing so are we falling into her trap?

Meanwhile, her wingman, Michele Bachmann:

“To think that government has to go out and buy my breast pump for my babies? You wanna talk about the nanny state, I think you just got a new definition.”

Oh. Again, no one suggested government should “buy” a breast pump for anyone, only that women should consider it for their babies, and that the IRS considers the cost deductible as medical supplies. This sounds very reasonable to a reasonable person; the benefits of breastfeeding are well-known, for both mother and child, and encouraging more of it is like encouraging healthy eating across the board, but as we well know, $P is opposed to that, too. Except when she’s claiming we all have first responsibility for our own health, in which case it’s a good thing.

(Most poor women — the ones most in need of financial support for breastfeeding — will find many pumps out of reach, financially, at least when they’re purchased new. However, there is a wide range of alternatives to the one I used, the Medela Pump in Style, which retails for $350. Those include the vast secondhand market (I paid $100 for mine, used), rental and the old favorite, “hand expression,” i.e. self-milking. But I wish more women would give breastfeeding a try; it is truly one of the best things I ever did. And I did it for a year, working most of that time. I never needed one of these. Mrs. O’s on the side of the angels here.)

And I’ve been watching the Wisconsin protests with mixed feelings, as I cannot avoid the spin from both sides, but having it all spun through my brain leaves me with this conclusion: This is not about public employees learning to give back or whatever. This is about busting their unions, and don’t even tell me it isn’t. Anyway, I guess this is the left’s tea party. The capitol building was so packed the people who work there were having trouble getting through the halls. And while this legislation will no doubt pass eventually, I can’t begrudge folks a few days of …well, not rage, exactly, this is Wisconsin. Disgruntlement? The Democrats’ run-and-hide strategy is nothing new, either; Molly Ivins wrote some of her best columns about this when tactic was used in Texas in the ’80s. Meanwhile, wait until the unions are gone — then the fun really starts. Wisconsin teachers are prohibited from striking under terms of their current contracts. When those are gone, well, careful what you wish for, King Walker.

(For an alternative on how one might successfully bargain with a union in a time of diminishing public resources, see here. I’ve linked before, but there you are.)

All is not grim, however: “I Am Number Four” looks like the best generator of hilarious bad reviews since “Sex and the City 2,” even without the “smells like number two” headlines. Ebert:

I like science fiction. The opening shot of “I Am Number Four” holds promise, as John (Alex Pettyfer), the narrator, explains that he is a Mogadorian, no doubt from a planet named Mogador. Specifically, he is Mogadorian No. 4. Don’t expect me to explain the Mogadorian numbering system. He is hiding out on planet Earth and doing everything possible to disguise himself as a box-office attraction like Edward Cullen.

Paul Constant:

Oh, and there are aliens called Mogadorians, who are evil and who want to murder John for some evil reason. They have evil monster dogs that look almost exactly like every other evil monster dog in cinematic history, from Ghostbusters onward. And John has some kind of power that can do whatever he needs at any given point. (He can cast light out of his palms like a flashlight, push things around with telekinesis, blow shit up, and… jump-start cars?) It’s just one scene of generic sci-fi garbage after another.

And so on.

So. Here’s to an internet-free weekend. Think I’ll clean a bathroom.

I’d like to go on the record to register my astonishment at how much discussion the RoboCop statue question has engendered hereabouts, but I really shouldn’t be too surprised — this is exactly the sort of topic for which talk radio, blogs and newspaper columns were invented, the equivalent of a bag of potato chips.

It all started when the mayor’s staff, in responding to a tweet, nixed the idea of a permanent RoboCop, and from there, the internet swung into action. It took just six days to raise $50,000 via Kickstarter, which should be more than enough to pay an artist’s foundry bill and stick him somewhere on the riverfront. As for all the arguments against, which boil down to It’s Not Serious and There’s a Better Way to Spend $50K, I say (shrug).

My thinking may have been influenced by a weekend in lovely Milwaukee last year, where you’ll recall I met yet another fictional character who lived in a real city, represented in statue form:

The Bronze Fonz stands there all day, offering photo ops for all. Fun fact: Sylvester Stallone funded his own Rocky statue, and was miffed when the Philadelphia art museum refused to place it at the top of the steps.

Of course, if it were up to me, I’d add ED-209…

…as a salute to the glitches in all of us.

For what it’s worth, I recall liking that movie. It had the usual ridiculous Paul Verhoeven ultra-violence, and a coke-fueled cynicism that will always be associated with the Reagan administration, in my memory. Peter Weller carries the lead role acting mainly with his mouth, an impressive achievement. There’s a show that seems to be playing on all background TVs throughout, called “I’d Buy THAT for a Dollar!” I want to see that show someday. As for Detroit being the model for our dystopian future, I remind you the film was shot almost entirely in Dallas.

So, who watched “Jeopardy!” this week? I didn’t see all three nights of Watson’s triumph, but I saw enough. The revelation, for me, was in how much we need more carbon-based life forms like Ken Jennings. I’d forgotten how much I missed him — a guy who wears celebrity lightly and always keeps his sense of humor, proof that fame doesn’t turn everyone into Sarah Palin.

The new governor of Ohio — not a Sarah Palin, but a cocky shit in his own right — stepped in it recently, calling a Columbus police officer who issued him a ticket an “idiot” in a public forum. Because I believe police are entirely capable of being idiots just like the rest of us, I watched the dashboard video of the stop. Didn’t see anything idiotic going on. I’d forgotten those Columbus P.D. uniforms, with the white shirts and hats. There was a story a few years back about a couple of Columbus cops doing something heroic — I forget what. They were photographed sometime after the heroism, and were cited by supervisors for not wearing their hats, as per department policy. Now that’s idiocy, guv’nor. Just so’s you know.

So, this has been something of a meander today, eh? Any more bloggage? A little:

The Amish Bernie Madoff. Priceless.

Come the revolution, I hope women like this are sentenced to life in Carhartt coveralls:

After Ana Pettus, a 42-year-old mother who lives in Dallas, watched a gold minidress with a plunging, fringed V-neck go down the runway at the Balmain show in Paris last year, she knew she had to have it. She bought the piece—she wears it as a tunic instead of a dress—along with three others from the fall 2010 collection at the Paris boutique of the luxury French fashion house. Price tag: €55,150, or about $74,000.

Fashion weeks in New York, Paris and Milan generate a tremendous amount of press and buzz for some of the world’s most expensive clothes. But many of the runway styles are actually purchased by a small group of customers, not all of them from the isle of Manhattan. And unlike celebrities and socialites, who often get designer clothes at no charge in exchange for publicity, these customers pay full price.

Things not to do when you’re pulled over on suspicion of drunken driving: Start drinking from a bottle of scotch and play the “don’t you know who I am?” card. Adios, Miguel Cabrera.

And adios to you, too. Have a great Thursday.

In the case of resigning fit fun classy guy Rep. Chris Lee, I think I have nothing to say. Except maybe, this: Are we all 15 years old inside? Does our emotional development in adolescence stay with us forever? It’s like a grain of sand in an oyster, only instead of giving you a pearl, you get those Blackberry/mirror self-portraits: Here I am flexing the guns. It’s appalling.

And may I just say this? I have never, at any stage of my life, found politicians attractive at all. Show me a girl who sleeps with elected officials, I’ll show you a real sicko. Rock stars I understand. John Boehner? No.

Day two of Too Early to Blog week is today. Fortunately, I have collected much linkiness.

Thanks to Hank for finding this fine appreciation of “Broadcast News,” pegged to the Criterion Collection DVD release. It rolls around from time to time on cable, and I usually stop to watch at least a few minutes. It’s amazing how much worse the journalism it predicted turned out to be, but as a romantic comedy, it’s hard to beat.

An acquaintance of mine bought this book for her son, and said so far she’s found four typos in it. So far.

Dunno why I’m including this, except that I like to see animals doing what they’re best at, and in slo-mo high-def video? It’s kind of mesmerizing.

If today’s office hours are anything like yesterday’s, look for me in comments.

I didn’t see “Waiting for Superman,” although I followed the chatter about it. The story had considerable buzz going into its fall release; Roger Ebert wrote a rave from Sundance last year, and it continued from there. The documentary film, about several poor families desperate to get into a handful of outstanding charter schools, had The Answer to awful urban school systems, and it was? Yes, charter schools. Also, taming the terrible teachers’ unions. And so on.

And then it was snubbed for an Oscar nomination. Hmm. On the one hand, that’s not that surprising. Documentarians — who decide which films will get the five coveted slots — are a notoriously petty and jealous crew, and while things have supposedly improved since 1995, when “Hoop Dreams,” the best documentary of that or any year, was denied a nomination, it’s safe to assume jealousy and pettiness wasn’t driven from the system entirely.

But it turns out the problems go a little deeper than that:

(Director Davis) Guggenheim edited the film to make it seem as if charter schools are a systemic answer to the ills afflicting many traditional public schools, even though they can’t be, by their very design. He unfairly demonized Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and gave undeserved hero status to reformer and former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. Guggenheim compared schools in Finland and the United States without mentioning that Finland has a 3 percent child poverty rate and the United States has a 22 percent rate.

One scene showed a mother touring a charter school — and saying things such as, “I don’t care if we have to wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning in order to get there at 7:45, then that’s what we will do” — that turned out to be staged; she already knew her son didn’t get in, according to The New York Times.

Interesting. My problems started with the story about how the film came to be, how Guggenheim would drive past the lousy Los Angeles public school that his children would attend if they weren’t the offspring of a wealthy filmmaker — of course they attend private schools — and be struck by how terrible and depressing the school looked, and wondered why that was. That the answer he came up with is, “because they have terrible teachers, who are protected by a powerful union” is understandable, although I wonder how much consideration he gave to the idea that one reason the schools suck is that Guggenheim’s children don’t attend.

What ails our public schools is a complex problem, and complex problems don’t have simple solutions, but for my money, there’s something so repellent in this sort of (literal) drive-by analysis it makes it hard to listen. I’ll give a more respectful ear to someone like Sandra Tsing Loh, who had the same feeling looking at her own local public school, but coped by actually enrolling her daughters, rolling up her cuffs, and wading into the pond herself.

My own child goes to public school, but a suburban one, so I don’t really have skin in the game, either. But at least I’d never say there’s a single answer to a problem as big as this one, and I wouldn’t stage a scene in a film to prove it.

Diane Ravitch, who has forgotten more about education policy than all of us combined will ever know, took the film apart in the New York Review of Books last fall. She didn’t pull punches:

The movie asserts a central thesis in today’s school reform discussion: the idea that teachers are the most important factor determining student achievement. But this proposition is false. Hanushek has released studies showing that teacher quality accounts for about 7.5–10 percent of student test score gains. Several other high-quality analyses echo this finding, and while estimates vary a bit, there is a relative consensus: teachers statistically account for around 10–20 percent of achievement outcomes. Teachers are the most important factor within schools.

But the same body of research shows that nonschool factors matter even more than teachers. According to University of Washington economist Dan Goldhaber, about 60 percent of achievement is explained by nonschool factors, such as family income. So while teachers are the most important factor within schools, their effects pale in comparison with those of students’ backgrounds, families, and other factors beyond the control of schools and teachers. Teachers can have a profound effect on students, but it would be foolish to believe that teachers alone can undo the damage caused by poverty and its associated burdens.

But the political right loves “choice,” vouchers and the like, and hates teachers’ unions, so I expect we’ll carry on in this vein for a while. A friend of mine teaches in a Detroit charter. She says there are teachers who have been there a decade who are still not earning $50,000 a year, a nice bread-and-water wage level that should please those who think teachers are overpaid. I wonder what that’s done to the test scores.

By the way, Michigan has a modified level of school choice. Districts can choose to open themselves to non-residential enrollment, and students bring their per-pupil financial allotment with them. School districts advertise on TV — it’s freaky. Ours isn’t one of them, and our teachers are unionized and the highest-paid in the state. And it’s a first-class district. Why do you think that is?

Today is office-hours days, so skedaddle I must. A little bloggage before I go:

Rabbis tell Rupert Murdoch to make Glenn Beck put a sock in it with all that Nazi bullshit. Good for them.

Dennis Kucinich sues his country when he accidentally gets an olive pit in his sandwich. Why doesn’t he just get the tooth fixed with his no-doubt-top-drawer dental insurance and settle for an apology? Just a suggestion.

One of my filmmaking friends is celebrating a birthday today — happy birthday, Dan Phillips — and just updated his Facebook status: What better way to celebrate than to be on set doing what I love to do — cutting off someone’s legs. I can think of no better note to finish on. Happy Thursday, all.

Jeff TMMO has asked me to address the big news from last night, although it was really the big news from Monday: Mark Bittman is dropping his Minimalist column from the NYT, but starting an op-ed and magazine gig with the same paper, moving on from recipes to ruminations and analyses of U.S. food policy.

Jeff seems to mourn the loss for the food pages. I’m thrilled for the other sections’ gain.

I guess I should have mentioned it sooner, but as owners of the two Bittman cornerstones — “How to Cook Everything” and “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian” — I have paid less attention to his column, save for those “101” blowouts he does from time to time, the 101 salads piece, or the make-ahead Thanksgiving dishes, or whatever. I learned what I needed to learn about cooking from Bittman a while ago, and I think he’s going to be a wonderful voice on the opinion pages.

In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and predict that within five years, Bittman will win a Pulitzer Prize for commentary. He’s that good, and besides, the ranks of commentators in the dailies has grown so thin, the juries will be desperate to hand one to a fresh new voice. When Kathleen Parker and Leonard Pitts win the Big P, you know it’s time.

And judging from the lively discussions we have in this space about food, food policy, eating and all the rest of it, he’ll have no shortage of thought-provoking material. I can’t wait.

Meanwhile, what about the other news last night? I’m talking about Chris Matthews yelling at some Tea Party d’bag over their shameless use of Michele Bachmann to deliver their propaganda last night. While I congratulate Matthews for being one of the few journalists (on TV, anyway) who actually tells people they’re not answering the question he asked, all his spluttering isn’t going to change anything or anybody, so maybe the answer is to not pay attention to Michele Bachmann. Works for me.

And the Oscars! Nothing really really surprising there, was there? Brian took umbrage over Hailee Steinfeld being nominated for best-supporting when she was clearly in a lead role, but that’s the way Oscar rolls. Promising ingenues who hit one out of the park in their first role are almost always supporters, especially if they’re minors. It’s the Rookie of the Year prize, and all you have to do is think of all the people who have won it who never did work of the same caliber again. There was Haing Ngor (“The Killing Fields”), who wasn’t even an actor; Marlee Matlin (“Children of a Lesser God”), who still acts, but whose work is strictly at the TV-drama skill level, and, of course, Mo’Nique. I just hope the Oscars aren’t a total walkover for “The King’s Speech” this year. A very fine film, but there were many others, and those big consensus winners don’t age well. When was the last time you saw “Gandhi” on cable and stopped to watch even a minute of it? Or “Out of Africa,” for that matter? (Actually, I will watch “Out of Africa,” but only for Meryl Streep. Robert Redford is laughable.)

A quick pass by the bloggage before our mortgage man stops by. We’re refinancing our house, and I need to limber up for signing my name 400 times.

Via Lawyers, Guns and Money, a site you can waste a minute or an hour on: Better Book Titles.

I’ve been giving Tom & Lorenzo a lotta love of late, but what the hell, they’re on a hot streak, like today’s Dress Libs with Zooey Deschanel.

Someone should do this with “It’s the End of the World as We Know It:” A visual map of “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Actually, someone should do a master’s thesis on the pop-culture afterlife of songs like this. Exhibit A, of course: the Rickroll.

Finally, today is my state’s 174th birthday, or so one of my tweeps tells me. Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam, circumspice. Happy birthday to the pleasant peninsula.

Off to flex my fingers. Good day to all.

I’m getting to the “Downton Abbey” episodes a bit later than the rest of the world, but I am getting to them. I’ve never been much for these upstairs-downstairs British house dramas, but the ground has to be fertile for the seed to grow, and I guess that’s finally happened. You have to run a modest modern household of your own to appreciate how much work goes into it, even with today’s considerable labor-saving devices. To think what it must have taken to keep a pile like Downton operable as a habitable home, much less what kept it from falling to rubble, is mind-boggling.

The number of scurrying serfs required to keep its fires burning, its beds made, its kitchen turning out meals, its ten thousand chandeliers dusted and its inhabitants properly dressed is mind-boggling. (Although we only meet a few, the Granthams being a modest family. Or maybe the production budget only allowed for a cast of 20 or so.) Of course they all have complicated lives outside of their work, and the family itself is going through the things families went through in the Edwardian era, what with the need to get their daughters well-married and their estate properly passed down, all while the modern age lurks just offstage, the way the ’60s loom in “Mad Men.”

But being a woman, and the mistress of NN.C Abbey here in Michigan, I’m most interested in the domestic details of clothing and housekeeping, the way the ladies dress for dinner, what everyone eats. You needed a valet or maid just to attend to all the details of your wardrobe, to lace your corset or fasten your cufflinks or attach the stiff collar to your stiff shirt, so you can sit at the head of your table like a penguin and preside over dinner. I read once that true upper-class people call tuxedos “dinner jackets,” because that’s what they are.

I notice you don’t see the laundry being done. If you want to keep me awake at night, whisper in my ear that in my next life, I might be reincarnated as a laundress. I’ll stare lasers into the ceiling. The main character in the novel “The Girl With a Pearl Earring” was a laundress in the large and child-heavy household of Johannes Vermeer, and the paragraphs of description of the daily chores involved made my hands ache with sympathetic pain — the washing, the scrubbing, the rinsing, the starching, the bleaching, the wringing, the hanging, the ironing, the folding. My earliest memory of a washing machine at our house was one where you had to move the clothes over, a few at a time, into the spin-extractor, and yet, my mother did it happily. She also owned a washboard for problem cases, and I think she knew what the alternative was.

So far, my favorite moment is the old cook, trying to tell young Daisy, the kitchen maid, that Thomas the footman is not for her. Thomas is gay, and the cook tries to tell her a half-dozen ways, but Daisy, besotted with his attention, can’t hear her. “He’s not a ladies’ man,” the cook says; she’s a rougher sort, but apparently sodomite and buggerer aren’t in her vocabulary. And of course I love anything that drops from Maggie Smith’s mouth. She plays the dowager countess, and she gets all the best lines.

I can’t believe it’s only four parts, and we’re almost there! But a second season is on tap. So in that spirit, and because it’s Burns Day, let’s start the bloggage with a story about haggis. Mmm, gray food served in offal — my mouth is watering.

Although, when you think about it, what we eat isn’t much better. What’s the difference between what you put in homemade tacos and what Taco Bell calls “taco meat filling?” You probably don’t want to know. And in the right frame of mind — i.e., after a beer or three, during a blue moon — I’ll actually eat this stuff. Maybe I should stick to the vegetarian options.

The predates “Downton Abbey” by a few years, but I bought this book a while back — “What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew” — and enjoyed it immensely. It’s an explanation of Victorian England that concentrates on the little details of daily life, including maybe the biggest one: Why have a Downton Abbey at all? (Answer: To have a home base for fox-hunting, and an escape from plague season in London.)

Now I must fly. But first, was Trent Reznor really nominated for an Oscar? If so, I hope he wins. The score in “The Social Network” was outstanding, and I’m not a score-noticer by any stretch.

Good Burns Day to all. I’m headed for Taco Bell.