After America - Mark Steyn [163]
As for the train “barreling by their classroom,” the closest the railroad track comes to the school is about 240 yards, or over an eighth of a mile.2 The president was wrong: trains are not barreling by any classroom six times a day. And, even if they were, that’s fewer barrelings per diem than when the school was built in 1912, or the new wing added in 1957. Incidentally, multiple press reports referred to the “113-year old building.” Actually, that’s the building behind the main school—the original structure from 1896, where the School District bureaucracy now has its offices. But if, like so many people, you assume an edifice dating from 1896 or 1912 must ipso facto be uninhabitable, bear in mind that the central portion of the main building was entirely rebuilt in 1983.
That’s to say, this rotting, dilapidated, mildewed Dotheboys Hall of a Gothic mausoleum dates all the way back to the Cyndi Lauper era.
Needless to say, the Obama stenographers up in the press gallery were happy to take the Hopeychanger-in-Chief at his word on the facts of the case. But even more striking is how indifferent they were to the bigger question: “She had been told her high school is hopeless,” said the president.
But surely a school lavishly funded by world and historical standards that needs outside help from the national government for a paint job is, by definition, “hopeless”?
What of the students’ alleged ambition to “make a change to not just the state of South Carolina but also the world”? Well, why not start closer to home? Instead of “changing the world,” why not try to change your crummy school and your rundown town? Or does that lack the Obamaesque glamour of healing the planet? Come to that, why would the rest of humanity want to have the world changed by someone who can’t organize a paint job?
In practice, one-worldism conveniently absolves one of doing anything about more localized and less exotic concerns—such as peeling paint and leaking ceilings. And, if a schoolhouse is so afflicted, what’s the best way to fix it? Applying for federal funds and processing the building maintenance through a huge continental bureaucracy? Or doing what my neighbors in New Hampshire did when the (older than Dillon) grade-school bell-tower was collapsing? The carpenters and painters donated their time, and the materials were paid for through the proceeds of such non-world-changing activities as community square dances and bean suppers.
If that sounds sick-makingly Norman Rockwell, well, take it from me, small town life is hell and having to interact with folksy-type folks in a “tightly knit community” certainly takes its toll, and the commemorative photo montage in the restored tower of gnarled old Yankees in plaid looking colorful while a-hammerin’ and a-shinglin’ doesn’t fully capture many of the project’s arcane yet fractious disputes. Still, forget the cloying small-town sentimentality: it’s the quickest and cheapest way to get the job done. It always is.
Dillon, South Carolina, is a city of about 6,000 people. Is there really no way they can organize acceptable accommodation for a two-grade Junior High School without petitioning the Sovereign in Barackingham Palace?
Like many municipalities with a significant black population, Dillon has an absence of men: in a quarter of its households, the only adult is a female; in the town as a whole, there are 80 men for every 100 women. Then again, painting walls does not require a burly old brute, and, with a county employment rate