A resurfaced clip of Matt Damon going in on a reporter's absurd claim about teacher pay has gone viral all over again, and has people cheering the actor on.
The clip was filmed at a 2011 Save Our Schools rally in Washington DC, where thousands gathered to protect the Obama Administration's education policies, which focused heavily on standardized testing. Damon flew in to attend the rally with his mom, who is a teacher.
While there, he was interviewed by Michelle Fields, a reporter from libertarian news organization Reason, who claimed teachers have no incentive to be good at their jobs because they have "job security" thanks to teacher's unions, tenure and other protections.
Fields later went on to work for Steve Bannon's far-right outlet Breitbart, in case her biases weren't immediately apparent. You can see how well her right-wing talking points went over with Damon and his mom back in 2011, below.
The reporter attempted to draw a parallel between how gutting the entertainment industry can be and how little adversity teachers supposedly face.
She asked Damon:
"There isn't job security [in acting], right? There's an incentive to work hard and be a better actor because you want to have a job, so why isn't it like that for teachers?"
Ooh, good old-fashioned right-wing "bootstrap" nonsense and slagging off teachers as lazy, entitled moochers in one go? This must be some kind of Republican—er, sorry, Libertarian (same thing)—hat trick! Damon was having none of it.
"So you think job insecurity is what makes me work hard?"
When the reporter again tried to make her case that "job security" is somehow bad, Damon cut her off and hit her with the truth.
"See, you take this MBA-style thinking, right? It's the problem with ed policy right now. This intrinsically paternalistic view of problems that are much more complex than that."
He then said what the reporter didn't seem to have the guts to come out and say, before underlining how intergalactically stupid her point is.
"It's like saying a teacher is going to get lazy when they have tenure, a teacher wants to teach!"
"I mean, why else would you take a sh-tty salary and really long hours and do that job unless you really love to do it?"
Even the cameraman jumped into the fray, claiming that "10% of teachers" are bad at their jobs, which he defended by saying that "10% of any profession" are bad at their jobs. Damon again went for the jugular, calling him out for his made-up statistic by saying, "maybe you're just a sh-tty cameraman!" Game, set, match.
People on social media have been applauding Damon all over again for the resurfaced clip.
Anyone who's a critic of teachers should spend a single day in the teaching profession—except they wouldn't make it 15 minutes. End of discussion.
