MEDIA WATCH: Matt Damon took on silly right-wing TV crew on stage at SOS event
ActorMatt Damon had it out with a right wing reporter during interviews at the SOS rally and march on July 30, 2011. The question, from a reporter for a conservative video blog, tried to get Demon to support merit pay and oppose tenure for teachers. It was followed up by a typical conservative talking point, where a second reporter, off camera in the video here, asked whether the "ten percent" of teachers who are "bad" shouldn't be fired.
The first reporter challenged the actor, claiming that he worked hard at his job because he didn't have tenure and was always facing job insecurity. "You think job insecurity is what makes me work hard?" Damon responded. "I want to be an actor. That's not an incentive ... It's like saying a teacher is going to get lazy when they have tenure. A teacher wants to teach. I mean, why else would you take a shitty salary and really long hours and do that job unless you really love to do it?"
Undaunted, the young and self important right wingers continued to press the actor, a second "reporter," this one male, demanded to know whether Damon believed the ten percent of teachers who are really bad should be fired. When Damon asked how the questioner knew that ten percent of all teachers were "bad," the answer was that ten percent of people in any profession were bad, a version of reality that's been heard from the Obama administration since Arne Duncan announced that Race To The Top would close the nation's 5,000 "worst" public schools at an event in Chicago in June 2009.
The URL for the video is
http://blog.moviefone.com/2011/08/02/matt-damon-fighting-with-a-reporter/"
By: Susan Ohanian
Matt Damon Smackdown of Libertarian
I barely know who Anderson Cooper is but he has a funny explanation of why anyone who messes with Matt Damon has earned a spot on AC360's RidicuList. tinyurl.com/4355Qkm
And isn't it interesting that the only press to cover the event is a twit like this? 178 Georgia teachers are accused of cheating on secretive, corrupt testing system & New York Times is all over it. 5,000 teachers (8,000?) march on DC? And there's a very cold, deliberate silence.