Michael Bérubé - American Airspace

Autocratic but fun Friday

Sean Hannity on academe, this week on Hannity and Colmes:

Kids are indoctrinated. They’re a captive audience. What can be done to remove these professors with these radical ideas from campus?

My reply (not that I was on Hannity and Colmes at the time):

That’s a great question, Sean. Let’s break it down into two parts.

Kids are indoctrinated. They’re a captive audience.

The process all starts with the captivity, really. As you know, Sean, in America, students are assigned to their universities by the Federal Education and Re-education Committee. Once they arrive on campus, they are subjected to a rigorous system of mandatory coursework. We like to call it “basic training,” and let me tell you, the foreign language requirements are especially punitive. Now, the FERC records tell of a student who tried, in 1988, to “choose” an “elective” course at a Big Ten university. That student was sentenced to twenty years in the Nevada silver mines, where she works today. And I don’t think I have to tell you what happens to undergraduates who violate curfew!

[Laughter]

Now, you mentioned indoctrination. Let me dilate on that for a bit.

Once they get into my course (required for graduation), Advanced America-Blaming and Applied Appeasement of Terrorists, they are graded primarily on attendance and recitation. They are also required to turn in two essays, one in which they blame America first, the other in which they propose a strategy for appeasing a terrorist enemy. I am very strict about these essays. I demand that their essays conform to the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Sixth Edition, and that they spell America with a k. (Extra credit for three k’s!)

The results are quite dramatic. Many of my students come from conservative backgrounds, but by the tenth week of class, they can chant “all power to the Supreme Soviet” with the best of them. Basically, we party like it’s 1929. At the end of the semester, they leave my classroom and plaster the campus with posters reading “Meat is Murder” and “Bush is Hitler.” Two years ago, one enterprising student came up with a “Meat is Hitler” poster. I have recommended that student to some of the nation’s top graduate schools.

My thinking is that if we can’t get them in college, we inevitably get them in graduate school. Look at young Ben Shapiro. When he got out of UCLA he was still an ultraconservative firebrand in the D’Souza/ Coulter tradition. He even wrote a book called Brainwashed, even though he himself had not been brainwashed. But after just two years at Harvard, he’s dropped out of law school to join the national touring company of The Vagina Monologues.

As to the second part of your question:

What can be done to remove these professors with these radical ideas from campus?

That’s actually quite easy, Sean. I think a simple auto da fé should do the trick. But let me answer you in a song.

Hey Sean Hannity, whaddya say?
I just got back from the auto da fé
Auto da fé? What’s an auto da fé?
It’s what ya oughtn’t to do, but ya do anyway

Sean Hannity:

Great tune, Michael! Let me join in!

Auto da fé? What’s an auto da fé?
It’s what ya oughtn’t to do, but ya do anyway

Fox News Channel, what a show.
Fox News Channel, here we go.
We know you’re wishin’ that we’d go away!
So all you professors better get a clue
We got big news for all of you:
You’d better change your point of view . . . today!
‘Cause Sean Hannity’s here and he’s here to stay!

UPDATE: Don’t forget the First Rule of Satire, kids! The wingnuts are always worse than you can possibly imagine. Right now, in fact, in the sunny state of Arizona, they’re promoting a bill that would protect undergraduates from . . . novels by Rick Moody! Here’s State Senator Thayer Verschoor on The Ice Storm: “There’s no defense of this book. I can’t believe that anyone would come up here and try to defend that kind of material.” Someone get this guy a copy of Gravity’s Rainbow!

Posted by on 02/17 at 12:55 AM

I for one can’t even sufficiently indoctrinate my freshman comp. students to get dressed for class, come on time, or come sober, let alone participate or take a point of view. Anyway Hannity really ought to give kids some credit: they’re plenty savvy, and can sniff out a politically charged argument a mile away.

Posted by on 02/17 at 02:44 AM
I guess it would be kind of crappy to start a counter auto da fe along the lines of:

Television viewers are indoctrinated. They’re a captive audience. What can be done to remove these talking heads with these radical ideas from the television airways?

You know, maybe write a book about the 101 most dangerous journalists in America. Sure, we’d have to split some hairs to narrow it down to 101, but it could be done. But, in the end, I guess the danged nagging sense that witch hunts are deplorable would undo many of The Left’s writers.

Posted by on 02/17 at 07:00 AM
Sean Hannity as Mel-Brooks-cum-Torquemada?? Well, I suppose Fox is less intellectual than Marx. But Horse Feathers seems about the right level of ... hmmm ... something ...

As usual, I learn a great deal from reading your blog. I didn’t know until looking up the complete lyrics this morning that Spike Milligan appears in that movie.

Posted by Sherman Dorn on 02/17 at 07:23 AM
It is amazing how all these wingers, many of whom attended public universities, were apparently the only ones to escape the brainwashing. Gee, it almost seems like they are the only ones smart enough to see through it. One more reason to be impressed by their giant intellects, I guess.

Posted by on 02/17 at 09:05 AM
"See, I. Am. Wonder Mike, and I’d like to say hello // To the black, to the white, the red, and the brown, the purple and yell-ow.” Wait, didn’t Mel Brooks try rapping in Robin Hood: Men in Tights? Oh well, at least it gave Dave Chappelle a start outside the comedy clubs.

I keep hoping for the inevitable announcement by Hannity: “Look. I can’t read or identify any of the continents on a globe, and look at me now! The world’s most successful 4th grade dropout. Break out of school, kids. I mean it. By any means necessary!”

Posted by norbizness on 02/17 at 10:22 AM
Whatever kind of brainwashing my Alma Mater tried didn’t seem to take. From the mail I get, I can only assume it involved some willingness to keep sending them money even after graduating.

Posted by on 02/17 at 10:42 AM
How we doing, any converts today?
Not a one, nay, nay, nay.
We’ve flattened their fingers, burned their arms with cigarettes.
Nothing is working. Send in the Fox News Anchorettes!

Posted by JDC on 02/17 at 11:09 AM
Answers:
Q1. Don’t send your kids to College. Send them out to work instead and leave all the college places for the poor kids.
Q2 I don’t have the answer, but I’m sure you and your friends can out-think them.

Posted by Saltydog on 02/17 at 11:15 AM
Can anyone confirm that Ben Shapiro is actually in law school? His legalesque opinions all seem to come from Beulah Land: American History for Homeschoolers.

Posted by Doghouse Riley on 02/17 at 11:36 AM
I keep hoping for the inevitable announcement by Hannity: “Look. I can’t read or identify any of the continents on a globe, and look at me now! The world’s most successful 4th grade dropout. Break out of school, kids. I mean it. By any means necessary!”

How about this statement by Richard Cohen: “You will never need to know algebra. I have never once used it and never once even rued that I could not use it.”

All the talk against liberal bias in educational institutions is just one manifestation of the larger anti-intellectualism movement.

Posted by Charlie on 02/17 at 12:02 PM
His legalesque opinions all seem to come from Beulah Land: American History for Homeschoolers.

Hey, don’t be hating on homeschooled kids, now. It’s not their fault that 99 percent of homeschooling advocates can’t spell.

Posted by Chris Clarke on 02/17 at 12:06 PM
Thanks for bringing up the inconceivably stupid Richard Cohen, Charlie! It looks as if he has finally found that elusive twelfth way of being wrong. Fortunately, however, PZ is on the case on behalf of everyone who doesn’t want to go through life being as dumb as a Post.

Posted by Michael on 02/17 at 12:52 PM
They can take our LIVES! But they can’t take away our AKADEMIK FREEEEEDDUMMMMMMMMMM!

Notice that in the 90’s, with a Dem in the White House, Fox’s signature show was the X-Files, about sinister cabals, where the theme was “trust no one” and “the truth is out there.” Now, in the 0’s, which really do define the modern era, as well as delineate its timing, Fox’s signature showS are (1) a sadistic exhibitionist “reality” show and (2) a show glorifying governmental torture in the name of protecting us from some unseen enemy.

That said, I sure hope one of the required courses is music in service of the state; I just can’t get enough of a spirited Internacional… (in its native French, of course, which we also force the poor rubes to learn).

You gotta love wingnuttia: the WORLD is going to hell (thanks to them) RIGHT NOW, and they STILL have the foresight to try to destroy the future as well. Way to go, guys!!!

Posted by the talking dog on 02/17 at 01:39 PM
Well, chien qui parle, as Fafblog has pointed out many times, they have the foresight to destroy the future because they can see the future and bend all space and time. So it’s not really foresight at all, relativistically speaking.

Posted by on 02/17 at 01:46 PM
Here in Charlottesville, I keep wondering when Sean is going to demand the breaking of the reign of terror in which capitalist professors have gripped the Commerce and Graduate Business schools. Why not all views? Are not the Commonwealth’s children deprived of calculated, careful study of Marxist-Leninist theories by which they might challenge the idea that the rich, even rich talk show hosts, are compensated exactly according to the true value of the rich in society, and that the wealthy should therefore be favored in law and taxation? Not to mention the way those teaching physicians keep pushing that “science” stuff over at the Medical School. Get crackin’, Hannity.

Posted by on 02/17 at 01:55 PM
To be fair to Arizonans, the impression I got about the state legislature when I lived there was that members were elected so everyone else in their district wouldn’t have to deal with their dumb asses.

I’m convinced that a typical nominating committee in Show Low proceeds something like this: “Well, now that Warren’s off his meds, he’s running around claiming that gays are stealing his cable, demanded that we have a mass Mormon baptization for the dead in the cemetary, and he took a dump on my patio twice last week. I think only one question remains: do we run him for House or Senate?”

Posted by on 02/17 at 02:34 PM
Wanna watch Sean Hannity’s head explode?

Read him back his comment about adult age college students somehow being “captive” audiences. Then, ask him if he supports removing commercials from children’s programming--you know, the REAL kids?

For Hannity, when push comes to shove, there is no “morality” but the market…

Posted by Mitchell Freedman on 02/17 at 02:36 PM
“Well, now that Warren’s off his meds, he’s running around claiming that gays are stealing his cable, demanded that we have a mass Mormon baptization for the dead in the cemetary, and he took a dump on my patio twice last week. I think only one question remains: do we run him for House or Senate?”

I say Senate.

And for the record, I did not make up the name Thayer Verschoor.

Posted by on 02/17 at 02:44 PM
The only reason Ben escaped UCLA with his conservative ideals intact was that he cut the Michael Moore film class. That’s the one where they strap you down like Alex in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and hit you with ‘Bowling for Columbine’ and ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ for 12 hours straight. No one can remember it except under hypnosis.

Posted by on 02/17 at 03:47 PM
This has got to be completely symbolic on the part of the AZ legislature. For me, the key quote of Thayer’s is:

He said that he doubted colleges would follow the bill’s provisions now “because of the whole academic freedom thing.”

Us perfessers are so mighty that we won’t even listen to those little, powerless State Senators. Even when they pass a law!

So, his solution to negotiate in order to gain compliance. Jiminy Jeebus, this guy has a BA in Political Science, too.

Posted by on 02/17 at 04:10 PM
Here is what I have to admire about wingnuts. They have mastered a technique which is so infuriating that it reduces most people to incoherence. The technique is a combination of playing dumb and accusing your opponent of doing what you are doing. It’s a noxious mixture of stupidity and chutzpah that really needs it’s own name. Obnoxious only catches the merest flavor of it.

A prime example of this would be accusing people on the left of advocating victimhood for everyone, at the very same time as you are pretending that college students are helpless victims of their mindwashing professors.

Posted by on 02/17 at 04:14 PM
Who’s going to print up the Meat is Hitler t-shirts? I’m putting in my order now.

Posted by on 02/17 at 04:19 PM
How dangerous the wingnutty troll beasts??? Well this from Paul Craig Roberts today evidences some of their deeply held “beliefs.”

Last week’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference signaled the transformation of American conservatism into brownshirtism. A former Justice Department official named Viet Dinh got a standing ovation when he told the CPAC audience that the rule of law mustn’t get in the way of President Bush protecting Americans from Osama bin Laden.

Former Republican congressman Bob Barr, who led the House impeachment of President Bill Clinton, reminded the CPAC audience that our first loyalty is to the U.S. Constitution, not to a leader. The question, Barr said, is not one of disloyalty to Bush, but whether America “will remain a nation subject to, and governed by, the rule of law or the whim of men.”

The CPAC audience answered that they preferred to be governed by Bush. According to Dana Milbank, a member of the CPAC audience named Richard Sorcinelli loudly booed Barr, declaring: “I can’t believe I’m in a conservative hall listening to him say Bush is off course trying to defend the United States.” A woman in the audience told Barr that the Constitution placed Bush above the law and above non-elected federal judges.

These statements gallop beyond the merely partisan. They express the sentiments of brownshirtism. Our leader über alles.

As for Nevada Silver mines: not so much. Gold is in “them"(captcha) there open lands and hills; gold that is beautifully extracted by former handmaidens--unable to properly conceive and/or obey their lords and masters--sent to the cyanide pits for eternities or a few days, which ever comes first.

Posted by on 02/17 at 04:27 PM
"It’s a noxious mixture of stupidity and chutzpah that really needs it’s own name. Obnoxious only catches the merest flavor of it. “

How about “putzpah”?

Posted by on 02/17 at 04:44 PM
“There’s no defense of this book. I can’t believe that anyone would come up here and try to defend that kind of material.”

Wow.

With the eager audience for this kind of talk, I can’t help wondering who’s worse: the thayer, or the thayee?

Posted by on 02/17 at 05:24 PM
Brainwashing students into embracing my anarcho-syndicalist ideal was the reason I went into academia - didn’t everyone?

Posted by on 02/17 at 05:29 PM
Whoa!!!
Study Reveals German Bank’s Nazi Past

*Link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,185235,00.html

Posted by on 02/17 at 05:30 PM
“Meat is Hitler”

A revision of Godwin’s Law may be in order . . .

Posted by Matt on 02/17 at 06:12 PM
Little known facts--*holds finger to mouth like Carson*--it’s true: Dale Peck is now working as a legislative aid in Arizona, thinking he could make the transition from artist to avowed legislator of the world.

Posted by Tyler on 02/17 at 07:27 PM
How things have changed. I went to college in 1969. We had to indoctrinate the professors, now that generation is the professors!

I guess it really hasn’t changed

Posted by on 02/17 at 09:51 PM
Oh, stop it. I have it on reliable word that good senator Verschoor’s intentions were earnest and sincere. He was looking out for his constituents. No doubt he saw the film adaptation of The Ice Storm and was repelled by its awful triviality. Thinking the book was no different than the movie, he threw himself athwart folly yelling “no more, save your money save your time, better yet, let’s shut it down. Stay home, go to church, go quail hunting for goodness sake.”. Cloddish but sincere.

Now contrast the Sentator’s actions with those of another public official this week, one who utterly betrayed his constituents. Mr. Richard Herman, Chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana, who shouted down the student editors of the student run university daily the Illini, insultingly and ham-fistedly comparing their coverage of a most important international news story to just so much pornography. Herman weighed in on the side of the howling mob calling for the heads (not really figuratively either) of the student editors, pissing away 340 years of enlightened principles, bowing to the demands of the oh-so-easily-offended muslims at the University (note to Department of Homeland Security, check effn’ student visas, please). The short of it is the student editors who ran the satirical cartoons of the so-called prophet muhammed (pee be on him) were fired. What a courageous man that Chancellor Herman is, isn’t he?

What kind of university is this Urbana anyway? I hope he doesn’t set the moral tenor for the faculty and administration.. I heard they had a good Computer Science department but who knows.

Half a world away an iman in Pakistan stuck his beak into the air, and sniffing craven appeasement showed his gratitude to Chancellor Herman, offering a $1 million reward for the heads (severed, or course) of the Danish Cartoonists, and a howling mob of savage Libyans showed their appreciation by burning down the Italian embassy in Benghazi.

Way to go Chancellor. You and your ilk, just keep it up. Really, though, if you did have to trust someone with your liberties and rights in ultimately stressful and dangerous times, who would defend them more, Senator Vershoor or Chancellor Herman? Who would throw them to the mob the minute things got a little uncomfortable?

Posted by on 02/18 at 01:28 AM
I just listened to a short report on Horowitz and his book on Scott Simon’s Saturday morning show on NPR. The tenor of the report was critical of Horowitz, but the actual criticism was superficial and satirical. Orville Schell was featured, and he did what I fear most would do when their character is impugned and they are placed on such a list: He defended himself. I find no fault with this except when the response ends with self-defense. What is needed is a strong defense of free speech on colleges and universities issued and supported by a collective voice. So far, at least the way the press is covering the story, the tactic of dividing and conquering the professoriate is working. We know the AAUP’s response is a good start (as is Michael’s eloquent, well-researched defense of academic freedom), but it is receiving scant attention in the mainstream media.

Posted by on 02/18 at 09:37 AM
All blog posts and all blog comments are about the Danish cartoons. We have told you this before.

Posted by on 02/18 at 09:57 AM
Half a world away an iman in Pakistan stuck his beak into the air

Next time anyone tries to pull something like this on this not-quite-infinitely tolerant blog, s/he will be redirected to LGF where s/he belongs. In the meantime, in light of Daniel’s defense of a state legislator who “sincerely” wants to protect students from Rick Moody, together with his suggestion that Illinois’s Muslims are uniquely “easily offended” (does anyone in this country remember how right-wing Christians responded to The Last Temptation of Christ? sure, they weren’t as violent as Christian eliminationists like Eric Rudolph, but then, Illinois’s Muslims were merely protesting too, not threatening anyone’s life or safety), I’m heading over to Wampum to nominate comment 31 for a Koufax Award in the “Most Disingenuous Blog Comment Ever” category.

Posted by Michael on 02/18 at 12:38 PM
The story on Barr and the audience reaction at the CPAC conference to his defense of the Constitution as opposed to blindly following our “Leader” reminds me of the scene where Pilate offers the mob a choice between Christ and Barabbas. “Give us Barabbas!” Brainwashed doesn’t even come close.

Posted by on 02/18 at 01:52 PM
In an excellent blog on Academic Freedom, Professor Bérubé says that “outright instances of punitive liberal bias appear to be as rare as fumbles by Jerome Bettis,” and I agree. Yet Horowitz and his ilk have been trying to tar me with that neocon canard for the past year and a half.

My former student, Marissa Freimanis, who as a sophomore took my freshman composition class (English 100) at California State University, Long Beach, in the fall of 2004, began her complaints with an anonymous, homophobic posting almost immediately after the first class meeting at the Students for Academic Freedom, an organization founded by Horowitz.

http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/comp/viewComplaint.asp?complainId=229

After right-wing commentators on the Internet picked up her story, she began signing her complaints with her own name, appearing on Fox News, and embellishing her story, which was already filled with many falsehoods and misrepresentations.

Her piece, “Is This An English Class?? [sic],” was first posted on 27 October 2004 in Horowitz’s Frontpage.com

http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15678

Freimanis claims I was unfair in grading her in-class paragraph on the Michael Moore movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. I asked the students to find a moral issue in the film and provide logical/factual evidence for and against the argument as Moore presented it.

She says she was “blown away” by my comments. “I didn’t realize that I was being graded on the way I interpreted the film! From what I understood about our in class paragraphs, Dr. Snider was only supposed to grade grammar, spelling, and mechanics, of which I had no corrected errors. Funny though that I still received the lowest grade in the class on this assignment (after receiving all A’s on past assignments), while papers with numerous spelling errors and mechanical corrections but with an anti-Bush perspective received A’s.”

The story she tells above, however, apparently wasn’t strong enough, so she further changed the facts. Appearing with Horowitz on Paul Gigot’s The Journal Editorial Report on the 23rd of September 2005

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/journaleditorialreport/092305/briefing.html

she continued to claim she had a “straight-A record” in the class, only now the paragraph had become an “essay”:

“I got the lowest grade in the class,” says Freimanis (as reported by Lisa Rudolph). “He told us that we would be writing an essay on FARENHEIGHT 9/11. The reason that we write these papers is for him to correct our mechanical and grammatical mistakes that we make of which I had none. The only thing that he wrote on my paper, in big red maker, was that I had missed the point of the film.

I have the grade book in front of me for the class Freimanis took with me, and it clearly shows she did not have a “straight-A record” when she wrote the paragraph (not the essay she later claimed it was) on Fahrenheit 9/11. The paragraph was worth 10 points; she got an 8, the equivalent of a B, based on factual error. I have never graded only on “grammar, spelling, and mechanics.” Those kinds of errors account for only about a third of a grade.

Freimanis had written two full-length, 50-point papers when she wrote the paragraph and had received the equivalent of an A- and a B.
The paragraph the class wrote on the Moore film was in preparation for a full-length paper on a movie of the students’ choice. According to my records, Freimanis got a solid A on her full-length essay.

I could go through her various complaints that have appeared in cyberspace (and, indeed, in one of our university student newspapers) and dispute her point by point. And I am certain were Horowitz to reply to my corrections of the record he would claim that the Iraqi war and Bush shouldn’t be discussed in an English class. Were he to do so he would reveal his ignorance as to what, at CSULB, English 100 is supposed to entail, and that is critical thinking and writing. It includes an argument paper which by definition must deal with controversial issues. In the class Freimanis took, I let students know on the first night that I thought the war immoral, but I also encouraged anyone who disagreed with me to speak up. Freimanis and another student did speak up and they were never penalized because they did so. To claim that I was unfair to her because of her views is an insult to my professional integrity which I am glad to correct now.

Posted by Clifton Snider on 02/18 at 07:28 PM
First of all, let me congratulate you on the fantastic humor of this post.

Second, the caveats: I am loathe to ask you this in a comments section, because the last time I did so, another commenter described me as “Kryptonite to literature” and suggested I get out more often (sadly, a valid suggestion).

I would rather address this in a private email, but unfortunately, I cannot locate an email address for you. Furthermore, I ask because you are a professor of literature, which I presume means you have some knowledge of the English language and its correct usage. You have mentioned, moreover, attending MLA conferences, so I assume you are “up” on the current usage standards.

So here goes (and I will attempt to make this long story less so--although I have failed thus far):

What’s with this “more (most) important"/"more importantly” thing? For most of my life, I have inexplicably favored the “-ly” version. However, I have recently noticed a preponderance of the “important” usage.

So, I considered it was shorthand for the clause “what is most important.” Or, I thought it might have to do with what the phrase was modifying: if another modifying phrase (such as the last in a modifying series), use the -ly version; if a clause, which could collectively be considered a noun, use the “important” form.

Then I checked the American Heritage dictionary, and it “states” that there is some objection to using the “-ly” version (oh, the ignominy) because “important” should be used before an assertion, but both versions are now considered correct, both having been used by reputable writers (would that I were among them).

I however, thought that explanation (that is, an assertion) didn’t necessarily cover all circumstances. On further reflection, however, I realized that if one thought something was more or most important, that was pretty much an assertion (of course I hate asserting myself).

So help me out here. I don’t want to continue swimming in this sea of the unknown.

And, yes, right now, I’m putting on my coat, gloves, and hat, and planning to brave the outdoors.

Posted by on 02/18 at 09:46 PM
And of course I screwed up on the loath/loathe thing. Damn.

Posted by on 02/18 at 09:51 PM
Inspired by your post, I have a challenge for you (and your students, if you’d like.) Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is posted here.

Posted by Morgaine Swann on 02/19 at 03:30 AM
Hey Doug, we hardly ever do usage around here. That would be the eatsshootsandleaves.com blog, I think. That said, I go with “most important” (unless I screw up), on the grounds that it’s short for “what is most important.” I don’t get the whole trying-to-adverbialize “important” into “importantly” thing, unless of course you’re modifying a verb with it. (He whistled to himself importantly?)

Clifton, Morgaine, thanks for weighing in, and keep fighting the good fight.

Posted by Michael on 02/19 at 01:48 PM
They have mastered a technique which is so infuriating that it reduces most people to incoherence. The technique is a combination of playing dumb and accusing your opponent of doing what you are doing. It’s a noxious mixture of stupidity and chutzpah that really needs it’s own name.

Well, in the decades following the Hitler/Stalin pact when David Horowitz’ was learning political tactics from a mom and dad who didn’t find that particular act to be revelatory in any way, they were defined as “Stalinist”

Posted by julia on 02/19 at 01:58 PM
Sean Hannity is a pit bull. He is stupid and aggressive. He disarms you with his stupidity and then mows you down with name-calling.

I had several on-the-air fights with him before he became famous and I quickly learned that the only way to handle him is to ridicule him. You can’t have a reasonable discussion with him. If you’re not dealing with his huge set of “self-evident truths” he’s nitpicking at the edges of every argument.
Absolutely the only way to put him on the defensive is to ridicule his idiocy.

When I did that, listeners loved it. As huge as his fan base is, everyone knows he’s a bully.

Posted by on 02/19 at 10:38 PM
A romping literary retort is well and fine.

But what about the growing objective social science data (eg, see the results compiled by economist Daniel Klein, Santa Clara University - you can google his page and look up the stuff for yourself)?

What I read above in this thread is petulence masking arrogance - not engagement with the facts of reality (which everyone apart from the media and academics knows is true, I hasten to emphasize).

But then whoever believed that “facts” are respected by literary or cultural academics? Not I.

Posted by on 02/21 at 12:33 AM
Klein’s data proves something that no one contests. Big fricking whoop.

Posted by Chris Clarke on 02/21 at 12:47 AM
Orson, dear soul, despite your remarkable smugness, and your ignorance of this blog’s previous (and more serious) remarks on the subject of liberal “bias” in academe, I will humbly direct you—with all the civility I can muster—to my more substantial remarks on the matter. As to whether Daniel Klein has proven that students are a captive audience indoctrinated by radical professors, I think it is best for such claims to be adjudicated by the reality-based community.

Posted by Michael on 02/21 at 01:19 AM
Most excellent interview Michael - I sincerely wish it had taken place. Hopefully you’ll be invited to contribute to Horowitz’s newest blog, advertising The Professors. But you’ll have to move fast - a week after publication and FrontPage is already offering DEEP discounts. Personally, I’m waiting for the price of an autographed copy to drop.

Mine own, minor contribution to the issue here:
http://hairytruth.blogspot.com/2006/02/david-horowitz-nutty-professor.htmlhttp://hairytruth.blogspot.com/2006/02/david-horowitz-nutty-professor.html

Posted by truth4achange on 02/21 at 09:40 AM
What I remember from my university days, as an undergrad, a grad student, a post-doc, and a research associate, is that the opposite gender is well represented, readily accessible, and lotsa fun. Was there something I missed?

Test word: fire, as in, “Where there was a smokey look, there was often fire.”

Posted by on 02/21 at 05:19 PM
Permit me an addendum to my comments above about my ex-student, Marissa Freimanis. Respecting the implicit wishes of my administration, I said virtually nothing in my defense at the time the right-wing assault was in full force. However, it wasn’t long before progressive blogs and commentaries started to come to my defense. The first to do so, “Brown Shirts in Cyber-space,” by Marie, was posted simultaneously on The Left Coaster and Daily Kos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/4/0377/58571

The latter elicited 178 comments, and among them was one by “sula,” a “parent,” who, on 4 December 2004 posted this:

Google Marissa Freimanis

she’s all over the place with the right wing blogs covering her story.....she also wants to be an au pair and is listed at an au pair website....evidently she wants to go to Switzerland.

http://www.aupairconnect.com/aupairfinddetails.asp?id=13708

also if you hit newsgroups her parents show up in an LA Times story about a fracas at an Orange County high school that turned nasty when parents attacked a group of students who crashed a hearing on whether or not to have a Gay Straight Alliance at their school. Evidently Ms Freimanis parent didn’t think the fact that the kids were grabbed and choked was out of line.

She seems to be parroting whatever is dished out at home. Perhaps a trip to Europe might broaden her mind...or not. In reading the accounts that she’s putting out there it’s very evident that she is totally operating from a political agenda, almost looking for trouble if you will. One wonders if she took the professors’ class knowing that she’d be presented with such a reading list [for the required book review], an opportunity to get someone in “trouble”.

I did a little googling myself, and found an article in the Los Angeles Times

http://www.youth.org/loco/PERSONProject/Alerts/States/California/2000/elmodena4.html

about the “fracas at an Orange County high school,” El Modena High School to be specific, in which a parent, “Jan Freimanis,” is named and quoted as saying: “I really didn’t think the adults reacted inappropriately,” she said. “I just saw it as the adults being protective in a situation that got out of hand.” A different witness said “administrators appeared to choke and hit protesters,” and another parent, Bill Hayes, is quoted as having said, “I saw adults acting like kids.”

As far as I can tell, Jan Freimanis is indeed the mother of Marissa (if anyone has evidence to the contrary, I’ll be happy to see it), and if that is true, it means Marissa came to my class with a homophobic agenda. Her first anonymous complaint says, “The list of books in his syllabus has a dominant theme: Sexual perversion and anti Bush rhetoric. . . . This website which indicated in his syllabus “contains important class material” is a website dedicated primarily to his own gay literature and anti Bush poetry.”

Although of course my web site, and indeed my book list for English 100, has been updated since Marissa posted her complaint, I invite anyone to visit it and judge for himself or herself:

http://www.csulb.edu/~csnider/

Apart from the fact Marissa didn’t know the difference between a syllabus and a book list, she clearly intended to attack me as a gay man, although I never attacked her or anyone else for being, presumably, heterosexual. But then I ought not to presume, ought I?

Posted by Clifton Snider on 02/24 at 02:32 AM
Wow,...I don’t know where you get off calling Marissa a “homophobe”. She is anything but that. I have known her for 4 years now and she has never demonstrated to me any form of being “anti-gay” I think her complaint was that instead of concentrating on English, the class was centered on your sexuality and anti-bush sentiments. I could care less who my teacher sleeps with,...I can even not care about what my teacher thinks about our president,....but c’mon. If you are paid to teach English,...teach English and stop centering the class on your sexuality. It’s stupid to think that a professor would center his class on his own sexuality, homosexual literature, and bush bashing,...but in this case it happened. Mr. Snider....you just don’t get it. Your “book list” was a pathetic demonstration of a heightened sense of self-worth. Stop victimizing yourself. You’re a grown man and it’s pathetic that you allow one students differing opinion hurt your feelings so bad. Look,…You need to get over it. I don’t want to attack you because you are gay, people want to attack you because your class was a joke. Get over it Mr. Snider. It must be easy for you to think that the only possible reason someone could not like you is your sexuality. That’s pathetic. Stop playing the role of a victim,…you poor thing you. Get over it.

Posted by on 03/08 at 07:36 PM
It does seem,...as if at least one,...of “your” english teachers,… may have slipped up somewhere,…

Posted by julia on 03/08 at 08:37 PM
Chris, one thing of the many things I’ve learned since my ex-student, Marissa Freimanis, began telling lies about me on the Internet is that trolls aren’t just legendary creatures in the native land of some of my Scandinavian ancestors. One of the neotroll attributes is that they do not read the posts they’re responding to; nor do they read the links in those posts. By read I mean pay attention to what is written down.

In your post, you wrote, referring to me: “You’re a grown man and it’s pathetic that you allow one students [sic] differing opinion [to] hurt your feelings so bad. Look,…You need to get over it.”

Frankly, I don’t care about her opinion, now that she’s not my student. (She may think otherwise, but I did care when she was my student.) Her opinions are one thing; her lies are another. She has from her first anonymous posting at Students for Academic Freedom lied about what happened in the freshman class she took with me when she was a sophomore. Here, again, is the URL:

http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/comp/viewComplaint.asp?complainId=229

By the way, her misspelling of “Anonymous” as “Anynymous” has been silently corrected, presumably by someone at SAF. I have a printout of the original if you don’t believe. I’ve never mentioned this before because it is petty. But since I’d like you to provide evidence that Marissa is not homophobic, I ought to provide evidence for what I say, as I do in my postings above.

“Get over it”? She has slandered my good name online and on TV, and for reasons that I give above I felt constrained to remain silent. Now that I no longer feel those constraints, I’m not about to let her continue lying about me on the Internet and on TV. If she has proof that I was grading her unfairly because of her political opinions, let her bring it forth. If not, let her stop lying. I do have proof she was lying.

As for her homophobia, did you read what I wrote in my last posting? Here it is again: “Her first anonymous complaint says, ‘The list of books in his syllabus has a dominant theme: Sexual perversion and anti Bush rhetoric. . . . This website which indicated in his syllabus ‘contains important class material’ is a website dedicated primarily to his own gay literature and anti Bush poetry.’”

“Sexual perversion”? She surely didn’t mean the book she chose to review, which as I recall was called “Lolita,” by Vladimir Nabokov. At the time my list contained 107 authors, many with multiple titles on the list. No student had to choose to read and review a book he/she objected to.

Although my CSULB web site has obviously changed since fall of 2004, I invite anyone to browse through it. One of the things I teach occasionally is creative writing, so that including my own books is perfectly appropriate, but most of the pages are more purely pedagogical, as any disinterested person can see. The URL is above, but to save you the trouble of rereading my words, I’ll give it here

http://www.csulb.edu/~csnider/

If you are really interested in an examination of my book list as it was at the end of the fall semester, 2004, I invite you to read the comments, trolls included, on Marie’s great blog, “Brown Shirts in Cyber-Space”:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/4/0377/58571

and at

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/003286.php

Of course I’ve changed the list a bit, and you can see the current one on at

http://www.csulb.edu/~csnider/book.list.2006.html

Finally, you wrote: “the class was centered on your sexuality and anti-bush sentiments.” Have you any evidence for this? If your evidence is Marissa’s word (or the word of her fellow classmate, Sean Holland), she is lying again. There were lots of other students in that class and not one of them has run to the Internet to complaint that “the class was centered on your sexuality and anti-bush sentiments.” Yes, I am very anti-Bush (it’s spelled with a capital B, by the way; even war criminals deserve to have their names spelled correctly) and I am openly gay. However, none of my classes has ever been “centered on” my “sexuality and anti-bush sentiments.” Again, if you have hard evidence to the contrary, please produce it.

To quote Bill O’Reilly after he settled the sexual harassment suit against him out of court: “All I can say to you is please do not believe everything you hear and read.”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,136997,00.html

To that I add, as he should have, “without evidence.”

Posted by Clifton Snider on 03/09 at 12:38 AM

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