This seemingly eternal election season is finally stumbling to a finish, so our last chance to take our shots at the walking freakshow that is James Talarico is drawing to a close. So let’s pull out those rotten tomatoes:
An email address that James Talarico’s attorneys confirmed belonged to and was at one time used by the Texas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate appears in a database search result associated with the adult dating website Fling.com’s 2011 data breach. A Fling.com account was created with Talarico’s email address just before Talarico began teaching sixth graders.
The result lists the username “mohawk787” and an account creation timestamp of December 26, 2010, at 20:56:49. The profile’s interests field lists “FETISH,” “GROUPSEX,” “SEXUAL RELATIONS,” “ONLINE FLIRTING,” and “OTHER.”
His lawyers claim he was “hacked,” but why would anyone care about an unknown Talarico in 2011, long before he ever ran for office?
James Talarico has a compelling story about teaching classrooms with 45 students during a two-year stint as a Teach For America educator, but even the New York Times is poking holes in it.
“When I entered the classroom, the Texas Legislature had just gutted the public education budget by $5 billion — so I had 45 kids in one classroom,” Talarico claims on his website. “There weren’t enough desks for everyone, so some of my students sat on the air conditioning unit.”
“In the richest country on the planet, I knew that was unacceptable,” he says.
It is a compelling claim – Republicans cut public education funding so these students suffer. Talarico certainly thinks it will resonate with voters, which is why he keeps repeating it.
“At one point, I had 45 students in one classroom,” he said. “There weren’t enough desks for all those kids, so I had students sitting on the air-conditioning unit in the wealthiest country in human history — in the 21st century, children sitting on the air-conditioning unit.”
But the NY Times says the story may not be true.
The Times reported:
Documents from the Texas Education Agency indicate that the most students ever assigned to a class period that Mr. Talarico taught was 30, with most of his classes ranging in size from 22 to 27 students. In the interviews with Mr. Talarico’s former students and colleagues, they recalled classrooms where every desk was occupied, but not crowding to the point where students were sitting on air-conditioners.
It all comes down to turnout…
