Friday April 22, 2005

WHATTAYA WANT ME TO DO, SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU? DRAW YOU A PICTURE? DON'T ASK ME MORE! AS LONG AS YOU LIVE, DON'T EVER ASK ME MORE! Oh Jesus, they're still talking about Ward fucking Churchill at National fucking Review, and bawling how the evil liberals won't let them go to school:

There is bone-snapping pressure of conservative not even to pursue PhDs! I simply don't believe that the "chilling effect" on conservatives can get much worse. Meanwhile, the warm, nurturing, environment for champions of Jackassery couldn't be much more encouraging. Hang Churchill (metaphorically of course). Send a signal...

Studying Churchill like he was a lab rat isn't a good idea precisely because he is exactly that -- a lab rat. Typical in every way; the baseline. No one studies lab rats qua lab rats anymore. You only study them after you've done something to them. The only thing that would make Ward Churchill interesting for study is if you cut him loose. See how the other lab rats react. I'm sorry if I sound to Machiavellian...

You don't, Jonah. Machiavelli was smart.

The cognitive dissonance (for future NatRev contributors, that means when things don't make sense) is anted up on the same fucking page, when Steven Hayward brags on his alma mater, Claremont: "Most (not all) of my classmates have teaching jobs, usually at smaller, red-state colleges, and are reasonably happy, but on the merits many of them deserve to be department chairs or senior pooh-bahs at the top universities, but have been prevented from doing so by political correctness."

I'm heartily sick of saying this, but as long as these people maintain their pretense of stupidity in the service of their cause, I suppose I must repeat myself: So Fucking What? There are hundreds of colleges and universities in the United States. Right-wing crackpots seem not to have suffered from a lack of educational opportunities at Claremont, Bob Jones, Liberty University, the University of Tennessee, and other state-accredited and Jesus-approved institutions. (Even Hayward, citing Harvey Mansfield, agrees that lots of schooly-cons have been highly placed in the Bush Administration.) If a talented wingnut wishes to attend college, no liberal magisterium prevents him or her from doing so. Hell, even the barely literate Goldberg holds a degree.

And if these guys are as smart, and as right, as they insist they are, over time their academic nut-hatches should have acquired a reputation for intellectual probity, at least among the people they seem to care about. So what if the Times likes Yale men? The Republican managers of nearly everything are cool with a BA from Goucher. Yet the fuckers scream bloody murder against affirmative action for minorities, while they demand it for themselves.

Pardon me. I don't usually get so exercised at their moronism. I've come to expect that, and even their self-ridiculing arguments in defense of the indefensible. But I guess even a jaded soul such as mine has its limits, and when they use ignorance as a defense of their right to an Ivy League education, I... just... go... berserk!

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