So Eduwonk and EdWize have had some light jabs recently regarding columnist Eric Alterman's comments in a recent "blogging heads" feature with Mickey Kaus in which he casually says while he digs unions, he simply doesn't dig teachers unions. I found his comments curious at the time (especially since he usually runs with the NYC knee-jerker crowd) so Alterman's subsequent remarks were fascinating:

But as anyone who bothered to look at the context of my discussion with Mickey Kaus would know, my displeasure with the teachers union has nothing whatever to do with political policies. Rather, it is as the parent of a New York City public school child who finds the union's frequent inflexibility and resistance toward what looks to my admittedly non-expert eyes to be common-sense reforms self-defeating in the extreme, as well as a significant barrier to badly needed improvements.

Funny how having your kids in the system changes the way you view things. I remember columnist Sam Freedman making the same point a few years ago, back when he was writing stuff in USA Today. The impact of policies, negotiated or otherwise, suddenly matters when it impacts your offspring.

In Leo's defense, I didn't hear Alterman offering any sort of context in his Kaus discussion to warrant the snippy "as anyone who bothered to look at the context would know" line in the follow-up. Then again, Leo did seem to walk into a landmine with this one.

PS - I am calling Alterman a "union-buster" in the headline because if I've learned anything with this blog, it's that union-busters are everywhere.

UPDATE: Eduwonk says Alterman's remarks should settle things.