Host of The Daily Show Trevor Noah seems hell-bent on pushing his progressive agenda at the expense of viewers who have an actual sense of humor. While former host Jon Stewart was also openly progressive, these days the show is altogether devoid of good-natured joking with Noah at the helm. Instead, Noah almost unfailingly spends his hour picking on conservatives and twisting the available facts to suit his own narrow view of American politics — which he clearly doesn’t understand even half as well as he thinks he does.
The latest proof of Noah’s problem was his attack on Betsy DeVos, who was confirmed as secretary of the Education Department earlier this week in the closest confirmation vote in Senate history, with Vice President Mike Pence on hand to cast the tie-breaking vote in her favor. Like most progressives, Noah seems to have completely bought into the many unfounded criticisms of DeVos’s record on education reform, baseless accusations that almost cost her the job. Here’s what Noah said in the segment:
America seems to be going back to a place where your wealth will determine how much knowledge you can attain. And so I think it’s a scary time. If Betsy DeVos gets to do everything she wants to, you will live in a world where even more people who do not have the means will now no longer have the opportunity to achieve the means.
Because Noah didn’t bother to understand the U.S. education system before launching a no-holds-barred assault against our new Education secretary, he missed a crucial point: The system he describes is the very system we already have. What’s more, it’s the system that DeVos herself is opposed to and wants to reform by expanding school choice and instituting voucher programs.
Neglecting this essential detail, Noah went on:
It goes back to that saying, which is: ‘Teach a man to fish.’ Well, now it looks like in America it’s: ‘Can the person afford to be taught how to fish?’ And we get further and further away from people being able to feed themselves.
This is precisely the critique that conservative advocates of education reform offer. DeVos has devoted much of her professional life — and millions of her dollars — to advancing the idea that one’s economic status shouldn’t dictate the education he receives. Our current public-school structure perpetuates a failing system in which low-income children remain stuck in low-income neighborhoods and never obtain the type of education that would allow them to climb out of their situation.
The real reason that Noah and fellow progressives so staunchly oppose school choice and voucher programs as detrimental to low-income families and children — when, in fact, they are the very opposite of detrimental — is because of the left’s allegiance to teachers’ unions, which have a huge financial stake in preserving the failing public-school system exactly as it is.
It’s fine for Noah to come to the U.S. from his home in South Africa and make a career here as a comedian, and it’s fine for him to be a comedian incapable of producing a laugh without engaging in bitterly partisan attacks. What’s not acceptable is that he grossly misinforms the American public in the process.
Watch the full clip here:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=pvXJnukCFoo%3Fecver%3D2