Michigan Lt. Governor John Cherry has been getting a lot of press lately for his travels around Michigan, going to every random gathering of two or more people to get his name out for a likely gubernatorial run in 2010.

When he popped up in the UP at an "education summit," this quote piqued our interest.

From the Mining Journal in Houghton, he said, "We believe education is a sacred cow and we will fight to protect it..."

We've always known the term `sacred cow' to be used rather pejoratively.  In fact, Wikipedia says, "The term sacred cow has passed into the English language to mean an object or practice which is considered immune from criticism, especially unreasonably so."

Perhaps Mr. Cherry just had a poor choice of metaphor written in his speech, but Michigan's education system deserves a lot of scrutiny.

When Michigan has a system (Detroit's the worst) where 75% of students don't graduate on time, something must change.

What likely is the real sacred cow in Mr. Cherry's world are the interests in Lansing that want to keep throwing money at the system with as little accountability as possible.

Seeing Mr. Cherry would need the MEA to propel him to the nomination, and perhaps to ultimate victory, he's not likely to be one to take on the real sacred cows in Lansing.  His boss took a swipe at a sacred cow last year (after she told the MEA she would "have your back"), in the form of the reform law that affected the MEA's MESSA insurance.  Cherry is still apologizing profusely for that one.

The last thing he needs is to offend the sacred cow again.