Hush-Hush on the QT with Teresa Cordova, Elsy Fierro and Friends

In an attempt to shield a young man from having his name and school grades made public, a parent appears with the son on television. In an attempt to shield herself from professional scrutiny in her role in changing the young man's grades, a woman (through her attorneys) tries to make a hearing about the grade change public, thus ensuring massive and long-lasting media coverage of the hearing process.

Now I don't know much about marketing and public relations, but I've gotta wonder about the "shielding" success possibilities of the strategies being employed here. I reckon about the only way Teresa Cordova, Elsy Fierro and other players involved in this grade change thing could do a worse job of "shielding" would be to have Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears drive them to the hearing. Maybe Cordova could name Brad Pitt her attorney and the hearing judge could be changed from G.T.S. Khalsa to Angelina Jolie. Jennifer Aniston could be named temporary State Public Education Department Director to round out the "shielding" tableau.

In other words, I haven't seen such bad "shielding" since that episode on Star Trek when the Klingons penetrated the Enterprise's defense system. You remember the one.

Okay, I'll stop now.

The whole thing stinks and reminds me again on why I decided to never pursue a degree in Law, despite the highly appealing concept of "billable hours". Maybe billable hours and wearing really nice suits changes things, but I have a hard time believing I could keep a straight face for more than two seconds if I was in a room with people "shielding" themselves and their loved ones in this highly-advertised manner.

My really nice suit would be ever-so-rumpled from the time I spent on the floor laughing at these people. Then I would remember taxpayers are footing the bill for all these billable hours and my head would explode, fully ruining a really nice suit.

Better to stay out of it, laugh from afar and try not to think about how much money this is costing, and that I can't get a lousy $1,000 for a mounted computer projector in my classroom simply because some kid missed almost a month of school his Senior year and couldn't pass English and then got all whiny about it and got his parents, who happened to be "just as important as everybody else, only a little more important", and they pitched a fit and talked some formerly no-name bureaucrats into changing the whiny kid's grades and then the grades got changed and all Hell broke loose and everybody either appeared on television and/or paid a bunch of lawyers to cry crocodile tears about "privacy" and "open hearings", and next thing you know Lindsay Lohan is driving Teresa Cordova to District Court in the new Lamborghini she got for graduating from Rehab H.S..

Okay, the head is dangerously close to exploding. Time to put the shields up. Make it so, Number One. Please (Insert Deity Here) make it so.