Why Are So Many People Interested In a Kevin Johnson/Michelle Rhee Sex Tape?

Every now and then I check my sitemeter and look at the things people are searching for.  I can't tell you how many people find my blog while searching for "Kevin Johnson Michelle Rhee Sex". 

Is there some sex tape we should know about?

Inevitably, their search leads them to this post, but honest, I don't have a Kevin Johnson & Michelle Rhee sex tape. 

Sorry. 

Michelle Rhee Raises Ire of D.C. Parents

Maybe she was just being flip, but Michelle Rhee's comments about the DC teachers she laid off in October were irresponsible and careless.

In an interview with Fast Company magazine, Rhee said:

After the October layoffs of 266 teachers and staff, the union claimed Rhee used a budget crunch as a pretext for dismissing veteran teachers, since seniority rules don't cover cuts for fiscal reasons. "I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school," Rhee says. "Why wouldn't we take those things into consideration?"

Her comments naturally raised the ire of DC parents who want to know why she used a reduction in force issue to terminate teachers who hit children or sexually molested them.

Rhee now says, in an attempt to clarify her comments:

"Student safety is our highest concern," Rhee wrote in the letter, "and we have thousands of teachers, principals and staff members who share that commitment and treat our students with great care and respect every day." She added that the examples she cited in the February issue of "Fast Company" magazine "involved a very small minority of the teachers who were terminated in the budget reduction."

Even if it is a "very small minority" questions still remain as to how those cases were handled; were they reported to the police as required by law? Echos of Kevin Jennings, anyone?

D. C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray wants to know. He's given Rhee a Wednesday deadline to prove how those cases were handled.

Rhee, you may remember, is the fiancee of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson who has been involved in his own brouhaha with the AmeriCorps scandal. Inspector General Gerald Walpin was terminated by the Obama administration because he questioned a settlement made with Johnson over misuse of AmeriCorps funds.

Rhee, for her part, has refused to apologize for her careless remarks about the terminated D.C. teachers which has prompted the Teachers' Union to offer this response:

"In one blanket, accusatory statement, you have potentially damaged the reputations of 266 teachers in a way that disregards fairness and deprives them of an opportunity to defend themselves," he said in a letter sent Monday.

"Furthermore, your statement has created a public uproar and raises uncertainties about the integrity of all DCPS teachers -- not just those who were" laid off.

I'd agree that an apology is in order. Her response? That she basically didn't mean ALL the teachers terminated could be characterized that way and she had made that clear already. Apparently we were too dense to get that.

The old "smarter than you" defense.

Michelle Rhee and the Kevin Johnson Sex Scandal

If you were going to write a trashy sex novel you could do worse than look at the Gerald Walpin story for ideas.

Byron York continues to expose the White House shenanigans that the majority of the media won't report. Today he explains the role Michelle Rhee, head of the Washington D.C. school system and the fiancee of Kevin Jones, played in the scandal:

At the time, Walpin was investigating a California private school known as St. Hope, which was founded by Kevin Johnson, the former NBA star and friend of Rhee's who was running for mayor of Sacramento. St. Hope had received about $850,000 in AmeriCorps money, and Walpin's investigators were looking into charges that Johnson had misused those funds by assigning paid volunteer tutors to run errands for him and wash his car, as well as making them take part in political activities.

In the course of the investigation, some young female AmeriCorps volunteers also charged that Johnson had made inappropriate sexual advances toward them and offered one of them $1,000 a month to keep quiet.

Rhee, who later became engaged to marry Johnson, had been on St. Hope's board of directors before taking over as chief of the District of Columbia system. Her apparent goal, as she visited Walpin, was to vouch for Johnson.

What a tangled web we weave...Rhee trying to vouch for Johnson?

Now cut to Stacy McCain's story today in which he digs up from WorldNetDaily this treasure regarding the sexual misconduct charges against Johnson:

About 11:00 p.m., Mr. Johnson arrived at St. Hope and instructed [her] to gather her things and come with him. Mr. Johnson drove to [her] apartment, which is managed by St. Hope Development and houses its AmeriCorps members, purportedly so that they could review the students' grades. While in [her] apartment, in which another AmeriCorps member had a separate bedroom, Mr. Johnson laid down on [her] bed. [The woman] sat on the edge of the bed to show him the grades, at which time Mr. Johnson "layed [sic] down behind me, cupping his body around mine like the letter C. After about 2-3 minutes or so, I felt his hand on my left side where my hip bone is."

Since sex sells, I guess we can expect to hear about this in all the major newspapers, right? I mean, if Sarah Palin had acted the way either Johnson OR Rhee had, wouldn't we hear about it? Wouldn't the ethics charges be gargantuan? What's the difference?

More at Memeorandum.