Bob Chanin, the man with all the answers at the NEA, now has his own fan club.
This afternoon, Chanin—who gets rock-star applause when he takes the mike at the RA —received an homage from members of Huntingdon County Education Association in New Jersey who presented him with a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Bob Chanin Caucus.” Replicas of the T-shirt will be sold at the RA to raise funds for the NEA PAC.
On the midnight-blue T-shirt is an almost Gandhian caricature of the union’s general counsel, except for two corkscrew curls sticking out of either side of an otherwise bald head. On the back is a request: “Show us your amicus briefs.”
He didn’t respond to that request (thankfully!), but a visibly moved Chanin came back with a characteristic quip: “When I showed that to my wife, she said nobody in their right mind would pay anything for that.”