I’m still sort of puzzled at one of the lighter moments from Saturday night’s Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire. It was treated like a joke, but it sort of defies conventional wisdom. Or not. This is why I am so confused.
If you watch the debate using the strangely compelling NY Times Democtatic Debate Analyzer, right around the 82-minute mark, moderator Charles Gibson was trying to make a point about how the Democrats were defning “wealthy” as being in the $200,000 per year combined income range.
He started to say that two married professors from New Hampshire’s St. Anselm College would be bringing home $200,000 worth of bacon each year — a notion that caused folks in the St. Anselm auditorium (as well as the candidates) to laugh because it seemed to be considered a bit of a stretch.
Sen. Clinton made a joke, that perhaps Gibson was talking about professors at NYU. (Oh no she didn’t!)
But then came the strange part.
Well, read for yourself:
MR. GIBSON: If you take a family of — if you take a family of two professors here at Saint Anselm, they’re going to be in the $200,000 category that you’re talking about lifting the taxes on. And — (laughter).
MR. EDWARDS: I don’t think they agree with you.
SEN. OBAMA: I’m not sure that that’s — (laughter) —
SEN. CLINTON: That may be NYU, Charlie.
I don’t think it’s — (laughter) — Saint Anselm.
MR. GIBSON: Two public school teachers in New York? (Laughter.)
Aside from the fact that I don’t ever recall a time when a NYC teacher’s salary was used as part of a punchline, the entire exchange struck me as kind of odd. Isn’t it pretty much conventional wisdom, from coast to coast, that teachers are believed to be underpaid? Everywhere you go, even in places where teacher salaries are well above the average income in their communities, people will tell you that they believe teachers are underpaid, under-respected, etc.
But what is it about NYC that makes Gibson’s joke – with whomever it was behind him who seemed to have uttered it first — funny? Sure there are teachers in NYC who earn $100,000 per year, but that isn’t normally part of the image we have of the starving young teacher. Why is it that there is this seemingly accepted notion that NYC public school teachers, in particular and unlike teachers elsewhere, are paid so well? If this wasn’t the accepted notion, no one would have laughed, no?
Is this some kind of Al Shanker thing, a la “Thanks to Al, all the teachers are eating well,”???
The whole thing was kind of bizarre.