Joplin Globe columnist: The remarkable C. J. Huff and the evil one who is after him

Frequent Joplin Globe guest columnist (and C. J. Huff confidant) Anson Burlingame is at it again.

Burlingame, about the only one who is still singing Huff's praises, wrote in a blog post today about his heroes- Huff, Mark Rohr, and David Wallace of Wallace-Bajjali- and how unfairly they have been treated.

This was Burlingame's take on C. J. Huff:

We are almost complete in rebuilding new schools after the destruction from the tornado. Has anyone stepped back and considered how remarkable that single achievement might be? Three years and, what, some five new schools and the money to pay for them. That alone is a real achievement, along with the political courage to ask for and receive new taxes to support that effort. And that of course ignores the way our students have remained in schools for the interim three years, in a Mall for goodness sakes, and a good place it seems to educate high schoolers in the transistion.

Note we are not just rebuilding a destroyed facility. We are building a really new facility in our High School that should far exceed the capacity and equipment for education far into the future. That alone is significant in my view.

Yet here we are now arguing over money. Did we spend it wisely? Have we hired the wrong staff, mistreated teachers, failed to provide a “worker friendly” environment for both teachers and students, and the list of complaints goes on and on from some sectors in this city. And along with all those complaints, the old “hero” (Dr. Huff) has now been tarnished and accused of lots of malfeasance, by some malcontents at least, one previously fired teacher being the ringleader of that bunch.

Since it has been well established in recent weeks that Burlingame's thoughts on local education are shaped by his friend C. J. Huff, his opinions come as no surprise.

In some recent blog posts, Burlingame has continued to do Huff's work for him, trying to get across the message, which has been totally discredited, that I am the only one who is "after" C. J. Huff and all others who oppose the damage Huff has done to this district are my puppets.

The most damnable lie that Burlingame has told at Huff's behest is that I was not a good teacher. When one of my students testified at my May 23, 2013, hearing that what she appreciated about my teaching is that I let her write what she believes and I didn't judge her on her beliefs, Huff and Burlingame jumped on that as a sign that I did not require my students to back up their opinions with evidence. In other words, I was a bad teacher.

After Burlingame made that accusation the first time, some of my students responded and told him that I always required my students to back up their opinions.

That has not stopped Burlingame from repeating his attacks on my teaching ability two or three times since then.

I bring this up because it seems like poetic justice that everything I have written about C. J. Huff has been backed up by evidence, much of it in documents, while Huff's greatest defender, Anson Burlingame, time after time has written interminably long blog posts and newspaper columns supporting Huff without citing one shred of evidence.

With friends like that, C. J. Huff doesn't need any enemies.