Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com made a teeny little goof this week. Well, okay… it wasn’t so teeny. It was pretty bad.
Byrne was part of a debate on school vouchers in Utah, which he favors. During the debate, he said that when minority students don’t graduate from high school, “you might as well burn them.”
Yet in true Patrick “Sith Lord Conspiracy” Byrne style, he’s denying it. The Salt Lake Tribune reports:
Byrne didn’t apologize Friday. He said he said nothing wrong and his comment is being distorted.
“It’s worse than a cheap shot. It’s a lie. Somebody is trying to create the implication I said the exact opposite of what I said in that answer,” Byrne said.
The NAACP is demanding an apology from Byrne, but he’s got this to say:
“I’m saying we should not be throwing out kids. We should not be discarding kids. I’m saying the current system does,” Byrne said. “Forty-two percent of minority kids in Utah don’t graduate. That is a calamity. The people who are saying, ‘That’s OK, let’s not change the system,’ they are saying we might as well throw out those kids. Those kids don’t matter.”
Yo, Patrick! They’ve got it on video! Check it out for yourself…
Oh, and if you oppose vouchers, you’re a bigot, according to Byrne.
[…] in the past for neat stuff like suggesting that uneducated people are so useless they should be burned. Well, Byrne has a new gambit at present, and it’s slimier than […]
The current K-12 monopoly is depriving many children of their best opportunity for success. Real school choice for every family will rescue all but those with no motivation. “Burning” the victims of this monopoly is a metaphor for “wasting their opportunity for success in life.” Using such a metaphor is NOT bigotry: advocating for the status quo despite clear and convincing evidence of its costs (failure) is bigotry.
I am very much a proponent of school choice. But nutbag Patrick Byrne is not the spokesman we want for this issue. Not even close.