December 4, 2008 (GBN News): Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the Washington, DC school system, achieved another in a series of stunning professional successes today when she was declared the new Guinness world record holder for total number of emails in a year. The 95,000 emails that Ms. Rhee was said to have answered in the past year were over 6500 more than those of her nearest competitor, ironically another schools Chancellor, Joel Klein of New York.However, the Chancellor’s accomplishment was not without controversy. J. Fredrick Mugson, a history professor at Potomac University, questioned the validity of the email record. He cited a statistical analysis which demonstrated that Ms. Rhee would have to have emailed for over 4 hours a day to achieve such a large annual number.
“This is reminiscent of Mao Zedong’s famous record-breaking swim of the Yangtze River in 1966”, Dr. Mugson told GBN News. “It was great PR, but nobody seriously believed he swam at a world record pace.” However, he went on to say, “To be fair, there is one positive similarity between Chairman Mao and Chancellor Rhee. Like all the great leaders, they both love children.”
When reached by phone for comment, Chancellor Rhee replied tersely, “I don’t comment by phone. Send me an email.”
This emailing record reminds me of Michelle Rhee's claim to have hugely increased achievement of the students in her class when she briefly taught in Baltimore-- a claim that has been repeated countless times by the press but never confirmed.
ReplyDeleteAnd thank you Gary; this post was also great because it brought me back to one of my favorites: All Great leaders love children -- with pictures of Chairman Mao, Stalin, Mussolini and of course, our great leader Mike.
perhaps it should be renamed Rhee-Mail in her honor
ReplyDeleteOf course I love children. They are delicious.
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