Lawrence O'Donnell explains it all for me (O'Donnell Goes BERSERK...Again)

Above, thanks to Vik Rubenfeld, is a pic of me, Lawrence O'Donnell and his furiously throbbing neck veins from the Dennis Miller show the other night. (And thanks to Emmanuelle for providing an almost identical shot until Vik made this crystal clear one available. Not shown: former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, the other Varsity Panelist.) What led to all this was a discussion of how Arnold Schwarzenegger's popularity is sinking because of his fight with the California teachers unions -- which balk at the idea that some teachers are better (or worse) than others, and should be rewarded...or dismissed.

O'Donnell at that point began figuratively patting himself on the back as a man-of-the-people dedicated to public education and said that Arnold's troubles with the teachers are "because of public school parents like me. Every single teacher my daughter has had has been a GREAT teacher."

Me: "You're delusional."

O'Donnell: "I've met them all! I know my daughter's teachers! Don't you tell me that they're not GREAT! They're GREAT!" Lowering his voice, he then said to Dennis: "This is how California parents in public schools feel about our teachers. So if you wanna mess with them like Arnold did, guess what's gonna happen to your poll numbers?"

Dennis: "Listen, if a teacher raised their voice against your kid in a California public school like you just did with Cathy, you'd protest, right?"

O'Donnell: "She's never met my kid's teachers..."

Me: "I've met my own -- "

O'Donnell: "For HER to tell ME about the teachers at the Canyon Charter School" -- here his voice began rising again -- "without ever having MET them, that they're not GREAT -- "

Me: "Every one?"

O'Donnell: "EVERY ONE OF THEM, YES! FROM KINDERGARTEN TO 5TH GRADE!" EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM! They're better than you will ever imagine."

This is where the neck veins really began throbbing, the eyes began bulging, and the teeth, like an offended dog's, actually seemed to increase in number and size. The lumberjack flannels also seemed to start flapping, like the wings of a puffed up grouse. But that was probably my imagination.

Me: "You're out of your mind."

Dennis: "So there are no bad teachers?"

O'Donnell (voice lowered, since he was speaking to Dennis again): "There are some bad teachers, yes, I've never met them in the California system as long as my child's been in it."

Me: "Because he kills them."

Dennis: "Can't go to the joke there, 'cause he could hit me -- he can't hit you."

Actually, I felt that he might indeed have hit me if no one had been watching. Maybe all this was just a canny act of camera-hogging on O'Donnell's part, cleverly designed to focus more air time on himself. But that throbbing neck vein seemed like a sign of sincerely self-righteous fury.

The funny thing is that as I stared at O'Donnell yelling at me, I was suddenly filled with sympathy for his child's teachers. Because schools in rich neighborhoods like Canyon Charter's, where even the post-Prop. 13 property taxes on a typical home can be twice that of annual private school tuition, are often terrorized by privileged parents who storm in screaming if little Madison or Taylor gets less than an A-plus on a diorama or something.

It occurred to me that perhaps O'Donnell, in one of his less than great moments, may have offended some of his kid's great teachers and his tirade on their behalf was an attempt to make it up to them. Yelling out the name of your small child's school on TV doesn't otherwise seem like the kind of thing a prudent rich person would do. But who can ever really know what's going on in the brain of a "West Wing" writer? Maybe O'Donnell was just trying to seem like Martin Sheen facing down evil Republicans.

At least comedian Doug Stanhope got some good material out of all this in the one-on-one segment with Dennis later. "I took a second during the break and went to Canyon Charter School and met all that guy's teachers," he said. "Some of them suck."

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