I am a new contributor at Memory Hole that seeks to frankly address a variety of issues in American academe from what will be an often ironic liberal perspective that this blog may from time-to-time lack. Being a generally open-minded chap, Dr. Tracy has offered me a platform and I am proceeding under a pseudonym of my own choosing.
This is necessary because the academic community, perhaps surprisingly for some, is among the foremost holdouts to views and analyses that even modestly diverge from its own. In addition, contributing to a site like this using my real name could seriously torpedo my chances of ever receiving an NEH grant or obtaining weighty blurbs from established colleagues on future book projects.
Given Tracy’s more or less dubious status following his outrageously conspiratorial, anti-Obama (i.e. racist), pro-gun control observations in 2013 concerning the Newtown shooting and Boston bombing events, having any association with him would also jeopardize my plans to one day “retire” into a substantially higher pay grade as an administrator at my institution.
We in the know in fact know can verify that the Sandy Hook massacre and Boston Marathon bombings took place because the New York Times reported on these events in tandem with other major media. The paper of record also fostered a public discourse upholding the Obama administration’s heartfelt and judicious responses to them. A newspaper as reputable and intellectually substantive as the Times would never lie to the American public.
Moreover, there’s no reason why Obama or Attorney General Eric Holder would have lied to us either–especially those of us on the progressive left. As most of my liberal colleagues implicitly know, if several centuries of wanton White Anglo Saxon racist imperialist brutality hasn’t taught African Americans some measure of docility and respect, what will?
But I digress. Despite the fact that Tracy’s insights were only called in to question by many of the very media outlets that reported on each of those occurrences, universities and their salaried faculty care far less about truth and integrity than fortifying their respective institutions’ bankrolls by bringing in grant money and doing the perfunctory work to further pad their own resumés.
This is particularly the case if any events or issues in question are, well, considered the least bit “controversial” by the media and broader public. After all, climbing the ladder in higher ed requires a sort of double-think, for otherwise one may fall in to the trap of possibly identifying with and researching the concrete social and political realities that “the 99%” must contend with on a regular basis.
This “go along to get along” approach requires a solid commitment of never second-guessing who you think you see in the mirror. An optimistic, “winning” attitude is key, particularly since one is enmeshed in an austere, manipulable workplace hierarchy where your privilege of tenure is directly predicated on your fear and carefully concealed loathing of the often poorly paid, non-tenured “instructors” who conduct close to 75% of the teaching at most US colleges and universities today.
But you didn’t hear any of the above remarks disparaging modern academe and what passes for official intellectual discourse from me. I am here to represent that tradition of unimpeded, politically correct, philanthropy-funded idea and knowledge production, provide to you an idea of how it all functions, while preserving my future prospects for career advancement in the process.
Dr. Tweed is a tenured professor of humanities at a middling university on the US east coast. “Barclay Tweed” is a pseudonym that the author hopes will prevent any macro or microagressions by esteemed and knowledgeable colleagues against future prospects for career advancement. He blogs at barclaytweed.wordpress.com.
I rather doubt any creature at or below the level of Homo sapiens will waste his/her time critiquing this vapid bowl of pig slop. It’s wasted my time, how I hoped that I’d reach some verbal terra firma before the end of this woeful drivel, such was not the case, sadly. The article says little and really projects an air resembling 29.9″ of vacuum, this can serve to attenuate the meaning of the phrase, “nature abhors a vacuum”.
Would that sentient bipeds that eat cereal and eggs for breakfast will omit this pithy and penurious excuse for either a slight tinge of attempted humor or, worse still, that the author keeps dreaming that there is heat but no light and/or light but no heat in this inanely crude construct. Mercifully, the author has pre-reached the Elysian fields of tenure and chose not to include this gaspingly deficient dereliction of duty on his/her lie saturated self analysis in fervent wait for the holy archangel of academic security to fly down with said gift of immortal merit.
You’re trying too hard to be clever mate.
I make the effort, you don’t, mate. I guess you see yourself as an arbiter of what is clever and what is not. Dream on.
Gil – I think you miss the point. Which is that most academics do not turn on their brains (like most of the American public), in a gaspingly deficient dereliction of duty, wanting to avoid all meaningful controversy in their attempted climb up the stairs of the ivory tower. You may not like Tweed’s style, but I can attest that the allegations are woefully correct.
I meant to ridicule the total lack of subtlety. The blatant and highly overdone yet crude attempt to appear as so neato cool caught my eye, but apparently others are fixated and fascinated by this how-to not be subtle. The author feels he has struck gold with his article, sorry I crashed the party and disappointed those who consider this schmaltzo as vastly superior to Mencken. Good satire, something many people have never seen, never announces itself in such brash terms that remove all hiddlen clevernesses and replace it with Tweed’s own special blatancy and obviousness.
After all, when eminent scholars give a piece 5 stars, one simply recoils in awe at the honors they have bestowed and the mere thought of differing from them is fraught with the danger of being, gasp!, out of step with the hallowed majority. Likewise, we see how people can shower overt disdain on one who differs and quickly we see how sentient people utter, “poor thing, he differs from us, maybe he needs a shrink”.
I hope you can extract that tongue from your cheek safely. Sarcasm doesn’t communicate well on the internet, don’t ya know.
“You are a true believer, blessings of the State, blessings of the masses. Work hard, increase production, prevent accidents and be happy”.
Damn! I’ve been recognized! I’d better try to escape “civilization”!
Dear Professor Tweed: The last interaction I can remember with a college professor was a cat named Essenburg at University of Colorado- Boulder. It was a course called Continuum Mechanics and it was the toughest course I had ever undertaken, it made triple integral calculus look pretty easy. It looked like I was getting a D and I was ready to audit the course because I didn’t have much hope of getting the minimum C required for my major.
Essenburg sold me on finishing the course by promising to throw out all previous exam grades if I did well on the last test and final. A handshake sealed the deal. So I buckled down hard and hungry. I got an A on my last test and a C on the final – weighted 2 times the last test. So two Cs and an A should have given me a B. I was stoked; turning a D into B was snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. When grades came out, He gave me D. I thought it was a mistake. I went to Essenburg and could not believe what he told me. He said I had to compete with the everybody in my class for a grade. I had no idea what he was talking about.
So many people got 100% on the final, he graded on a cranked up curve, that’s why I got a D. Trying to find answers to this injustice, I found out half the 250 people in the course got 100% on the final. I knew this was impossible. These problems are 13 steps long; some of Einstein’s last work before his death. Getting 90% on any given exam was a tall order. Digging deeper, I found out Essenburg gave the same exact final exam a year ago, without so much as changing the numbers. You were allowed one – two sided sheet of notes to take the exam with. All the people that put last year’s exam on it got a 100%.
I went to the Dean of Engineering department. He was brick wall. I raised a ruckus over Essenburg lie and the 100% give away of the final exam. I knocked myself out for C on the final. The people that got an 100% copied it from their notes, step for step. It made me despise and distrust college professors in general. By not using your real name Mr. Tweed, you are a coward. You are part of the problem.
Dear Mr. Lancer,
I’m sorry to hear about your experience with Prof. Essenburg. Of course, U of Colorado Boulder is a research-intensive university, and you must understand that, despite its “taxpayer funded” status, at such an institution teaching Colorado residents is at best a second thought.
Having to administer that final exam was likely akin to an inconvenient hiccup on the way to the lab or office. You probably should have been a member of one of UCB’s fraternities or sororities, most of which maintain file cabinets filled with carefully catalogued exam answer sheets from previous years for skirting the exact struggle you found yourself contending with.
You see, my dear Mr. Lancer, unlike your engineering professor and at least half of your classmates, you actually appear to have taken your education seriously. Pity.
We are all better off learning what we need and want to learn on our own, and it’s a lot less expensive.
yeah James, I guess before I raised the ruckus, I should have checked the course instructors for the rest of my major. Guess how many Essenburg taught? All of them! Such a huge school, I had no idea one guy would teach literally every last class left in my major. I knew there was no way I could finish my degree there. Something inside of me died after this screw job. I felt like there was no place to turn, no justice in the world.
Prof. Tweed, your erudition covers your cowardice perfectly. Your secret trepidation and fears for your career are safe with us! Keep thinking those subversive thoughts. Anonymously, of course.
I think Vivian Lee said it best when she/he wrote, “…most academics do not turn on their brains (like most of the American public), in a gaspingly deficient dereliction of duty, wanting to avoid all meaningful controversy in their attempted climb up the stairs of the ivory tower.”
Don’t worry, Prof. Tweed, we will not impede your ivory tower climb with appeals to honest intellectual discourse. Most of us have the same fears of being singled out by the government/media juggernaut. Who knows how far it could go? What’s losing a NEH grant when you could be set up as the next patsy?
(Very funny post, “Prof. Barclay Tweed.” Thank you. Looking forward to your future writing.)
Integrity surpasses all. It is incontrovertible.
lol. Brilliant post Prof. Tweed. At least you possess the insight of the reality of the situation. This is a topic in serious need of intellectual critique. Groupthink is close but we may need a new word to accurately describe it as an institutional phenomenon. Ironically, this is the system we created ourselves. We are prisoners of our own device (borrowed from Hotel California). Not only did we create it, but we continue to consent to it by participating in it. To deviate is to suffer immensely. Just ask the latest round of well known whistleblowers or any M.D. that speaks out against vaccines. How can we break free? In my opinion we have to collectively opt-out. The most effective way I can think of is to stop voting.
There is a great monument to scientific reasoning, a trophy actually for some I suppose, outside of the computer science building at MIT. It is the oversized, walk-through monument to Sean Collier of the BMB, and the faculty have had to attend at least two public events where, like members of the court of a Byzantine emperor, they have had to show their fealty and their disinterest in questioning the BMB event.
The intersection nearby, Vassar and Main, Cambridge, has a new name: Officer Sean Collier Square.
Oh, but did it not have another name, a few years ago? Yes, it did, but the sign designating it “Daniel Lewin Square” met with an unfortunate accident – it was said to have been taken out by a truck. You remember the big Akamai executive, Lewin, don’t you? He had his head cut off or maybe he was shot, by the hijackers of Flight 11 from Boston on 9/11.
That is such old news – that his bones (figuratively speaking) could be emptied out of the crypt and a new hero put inside.
I expect someone will know I am writing this and I may pay some price for knitting together these disparate pieces of information — or not.
Academic indifference is not just a cheat – it is evil. It bears a striking resemblance to the attitude of those who allowed Hitler to run roughshod over academia and to purge it of people for their ethnicity. The ones who knew they would not be affected figured it gave them more power to see their colleagues stripped of their professions. In the end, it destroyed the entire university system for a time, and split the country in half. Don’t think it can’t happen here. The swamp and sewer is expanding every day.
Amazing! James Tracy has not only attracted living thinkers and pundits,he has managed to resurrect none other than Dr. Benjamin Franklin! BRAVO!
Reblogged this on Today,s Thought.
Great satire. I love it.
My university experience (as a student) was more than half a century ago, back when edurcation was edurcation. Today it seems that the higher education in America consists of casting fake pearls before real swine.
People who live in ivory towers should not throw stones-or am I mixing my metaphors here?
I can honestly say that I have learned more on the internet in ten years than I ever did in Higher Education. The academics I encountered seemed especially adept at bullying weak-minded students who were keen to conform into various faddish orthodoxies. In my field Derrida and post-structuralism were de rigeur. Omit mention of such intellectual doyens as these and you failed your essay!
My real education began when I stopped watching TV or paying any attention to the MSM whatever.
The worst field for fabrication and controlled disinfo is easily History. The official accounts of the American, French, Young Turk and Bolshevik revolutions bear very little scrutiny at all. Nor do the official histories of WW1 and 2 stand up to investigative examination. Sadly they’re not going to get any real testing by university historians either. The only historians worth the name are trail-blazers like Eustace Mullins who come from outside the field and are not afraid to kick some ass! Mullins was famously the poet, Ezra Pound’s protege. He produced the unsurpassed Secrets of the Federal Reserve. The book and Mullins’s canon generally demonstrated what all academics and everyone else needs to know.
Whoever controls the money supply controls politics and the culture-and that includes even the writing of history.
Where did the Holohoax come from?
Well the venerable Doctor Baxter might like to read Alfred Butz’s seminal study and discover that the NYT and William Shirer were powerfully instrumental in this sinister project to deceive humanity. Butz like Mullins came from outside the field but boy did he kick some butt.
The truth will set you free.
That’s why they want to control the internet and ban it!
[…] I am a new contributor at Memory Hole that seeks to frankly address a variety of issues in American academe from what will be an often ironic liberal perspective that this blog may from time-to-time lack. Being a generally open-minded chap, Dr. Tracy has offered me a platform and I am proceeding under a pseudonym of my own choosing. This is necessary because the academic community, perhaps surprisingly for some, is among the foremost holdouts to views and analyses that even modestly diverge from its own. In addition, contributing to a site like this using my More… […]
Man is a prisoner of time and space. Only the use of intellect and reason, in ever-increasing amounts, will free him. This requires a large and strict, very strict and structured, academia. One size (a growing giant) fits all.
I did not find this piece particularly ‘attractive’, though I understand to some it is funny and they/you have that laughable right.
As a man, I’ve always preferred small- to medium-sized breasts over really BIG BOOBS.
Big boobs and big flops are one and the same.
As a ‘culture’ we are flopping.
Get ready to die.
Ha, ha.
Ned Lud
“…academic community, perhaps surprisingly for some, is among the foremost holdouts to views and analyses that even modestly diverge from its own.”
A number of comments on this seemingly innocuous piece seem exceedingly sharp. This draws my attention to the eternal question of cui bono?
The author, in a style of parody, points out a number of issues facing today’s college professors. The quote above is a most excellent observation of the herd mentality of groupthink that is really an illusion of consensus enforced by micro-aggressions, or worse. The issue of a dissenting, or otherwise controversial professor losing government, or even private funding is ubiquitous. Finally, the tenured professor, perhaps a last bastion of freedom of thought, is threatened by doing his job, and, thinking outside the box (that box is closing in and becoming something of a coffin).
The government hates freedom. Their idea of freedom is slavery certainly permeates mainstream academe. Other than the internet, and, 24/7 news outlets that could accidentally uncover their perfidy, the tenured academic is one of the last pillars of the establishment that is a real threat to their agenda of a closed and cowed society.
Kudos to the author for a great job! I will refer to you as Prinz Vogelfrei, because the reactionary negative comments drawn out by you, on this thread alone, qualify you as a real cowboy! Your comments, I’m sure, would resonate with the vast majority of your professorial peers, whether or not they had the courage to admit it! That’s what counts, ignore the noisy trolls. I hope to read more from you about the sorry state of academe in the future, and the very best of luck to you.
Tricky stuff, here. but interesting side issues pique my attempt to engage.
The good professor, IMO, (which isn’t always pitch perfect) hues fairly well to the creed of satire– Straight eye on the narrow path to expose hypocracy without stepping over into the genre of parody. Me gets his drift…
Political satire is a time-sanctioned device since the Roman empire began to fall, and not to be taken lightly, considering an author’s risk of life and limb.
Professor Tweed did out himself immediately, if anonymously. Therein lies the subtle humor. And he calls out fellow academics who nest in comfortable cat-bird seats above the common fray. They hold the power reins and know it.
Molly Ivins, was a modern-day satirist shedding light on corrupt Texas lawmakers in many books before she passed too soon. One of her favorite targets was the Bush spawn, G.W. She had this quotable comment on her mission:
“`Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel, it’s vulgar.”
With that in mind, I await with enthusiasm further pieces by Tweed spiced with cdomments by MHB devotees.
It is interesting that James’ cite was chosen as a vehicle to approach the byzantine tangle of American academe. We might be pleased and perhaps complimented.
Hi, Toni, me thinks I have broken the code: ONe does not speak disparaging of a Bush crime family member.
Under moderation yet again. Oh, boo hoo…and yet I march on–“bloodied but unbowed” to my fate.
You’re so dramatic! You crack me up.
I await your comment, once the bush crime family has parsed and released it.
Hey guys,
RELAX, my comments are frequently in moderation for hours, and, I have written as a guest writer on MHB.
We are RELAXED. We’re just funning around.
I fear as a professor that my questioning will have serious ramifications should my voice be made public. However, what I fear most is not moving up in higher ed but the fact that I know I am needed in the classroom to undo the manipulation that has been done. My job is to teach critical thinking and rhetoric. While I am unable to downright make statements that these events are staged, I am able to have students examine how language (both visual and printed/spoken) are at play and how receivers of information are situated. To lose my job would mean to lose someone on the ground trying to change things. Screw being an administrator. I already know my ideologies will not take me that far anyhow. Besides, I have the eyes and ears of 90 people every semester. I’d like to thing I have changed some perceptions. At the very least, jump started critical thought.
You’re in a difficult position, Nay. So sad that you must curb your speech and stay “under the radar.” I guess school has changed. When I was in college it was common for professors to propound outrageous opinions, that they often did not even hold, in order to arouse their students to intellectual combat. Challenged to consider new perspectives, students were expected to counter with questions and their own formulations. Like you, Nay, they were “jump start(ing) critical thought.”
We know that the government, et al, don’t want people exposed to certain ideas/facts, and give lip service to the assumption that students are harmed by such speech, but the real damage is done to people’s critical thinking. And I think that is the larger aim – to keep people, not from thinking the wrong thing, but from thinking at all.
I remember when I was in 7th grade, I had a “Social Studies” teacher who told us if we learned nothing else in his class we would learn “the meaning of the word significance.” All semester we probed and prodded for significance. As we got better at it, it became a new tool, used to hammer out meaning. I was proud of my new facility with it.
When the teacher charted out in class all the people related to the JFK assassination who had suffered untimely deaths, it was significant to me because I had seen Lee Harvey Oswald murdered live on television. For me, my teacher built a bridge with that lesson, a bridge over a chasm that was revealed by the assassinations of 1968.
Nay
I can identify with what you say. You know before I retired from the Border Patrol my old supervisor gave me a few evaluations, but with quips such as “Mick” does not take supervision too well!” I couldn’t argue with him because it is was true.
We stay in touch today, and when I retired he said you know I am going to miss that vicious, sarcastic sense of humor yours.
Our pilot flew a bomber in Vietnam and had pictures of airplanes on the wall. I used to put type written snippets under glass with quotes such as “pilot bombed villages for Shell and Standard Oil”.
I must say this reminded me of one of my favorite quotes.
“Beware of the pedant, the man in the ivory tower, who cannot be trusted any more than the rabble of the streets. Too long cloistered in the halls of academe, the first are dangerous, for they fail to understand the world, and know not reality. The second are like a mindless storm, roaring and insatiable, full of rage, and a self righteous and acquisitive passion Cicero
The nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools….Thucydides
The comments here were much more entertaining than the original article. Someone mentioned Mencken. I agree, if we had more Menckens we would not be in the dangerous situation we are in.
The professor reminded me of my college days at FSU. He is right about those file cabinets at the fraternity house. They did not help much with statistics however. Thank God they were multiple choice. My first day at class, the prof said there will be a midterm and a final. If you can pass them without showing up for class more power to you. Some of us took him up on it. I attended the first day, the midterm and the final. We took old tests and looked at how the question was phrased and where the ratio of correct numbers would be. I passed the course using my knowledge of statistics!
Then they informed us at the business school, we would be required to take calculus theory, which shocked many of us. The first day of class a Japanese professor began by covering 3 black boards with equations. I looked at a friend and asked, “what in the …. is he talking about?
My roommate was a math major. He was helping me out before the final with some problems. I asked him, what do you think? He said son you have no chance. I saw him recently and we were laughing about this. He finished a career at Dow Corning, told me he could not remember any of those formulas and that I was right, it was all smoke and mirrors. Incidentally Tesla has proven Einstein to be a fraud, space is not a vacuum. Einstein’s slavic wife prepared most of his compositions, and then he divorced her. He was not invited to the Manhattan project because they knew he would have no idea what they were talking about.
Anyway I soon became a loan officer and realized I hated business, became a social worker, the went to work for the state auditor general division of fraud. He that giveth also taketh away. Then one day a co-worker said I don’t believe it is possible to enter the border patrol, you have to have 10-10 vision and run a 10 flat hundred yard dash apparently, they never call me. I said where do they give the test, I will show you how to slide in.
I took the test and about 2 years later they responded. It was how would you like to go to Yuma, Arizona? I talked it over with the wife and then used my background in statistics and the business school. I decided that making 35,000 a year is better than making 15,000 a year. Bingo I arrived in Yuma and it was like arriving on the moon. If you like rattlesnakes, tarantulas, 135 degree heat, scorpions and hordes of dope dealers, you would love Yuma.
Before I retired, they talked me into becoming the union representative probably because they knew I had a big mouth and would risk it all to get my point of view across. Back then you initiate arbitration, write politicians and newspapers which I certainly did. That all ended about 12 years ago, the union is now a shell. If they want to fire you, you are gone. In fact the union now has an attorney to carry their position across to management. They can’t fire him.
I suppose that is why I blog, it cleanses the soul, but not sure it does anything else other than invite more drones over the house.
In the spirit of academia, I will leave a few more of my favorite quotes.
This is probably my favority-
The angels have grown tired of the clever …. Kahlil Gibran
The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance…..Socrates
There is no such thing as freedom in a Bastille of lies
Do you deny me the entrance to heaven, I who have at last learned the mystery of myself – Egyptian Mystery School Legend
We would rather forgive the evil proliferating all around us than the rebellion against it, which we mistake for the true evil – Arno Gruen (Betrayal of the Self)
All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth…….Nietzsche
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you….Nietzsche
He who cannot obey himself will be commanded…..Nietzsche
Beware of the man who would deny you information for in his heart he views himself as your master
Never hesitate, for upon the plains of hesitation, lie the charred bodies of the millions, who upon the threshold of victory, hesitated for one fleeting second…Alexander the Great
In each man both the coward and the brave march forth together, so that each will know the opposite of itself……Alexander the Great
Chance favors the prepared mind………Alexander the Great
It is more kingly to conquer ones self than to conquer his enemies…..Alexander the Great
Live your life with courage so that even your death will become an everlasting flame. ….Alexander the Great
It is the perfect slave who thinks he is free……Espinoza
There is no darkness like ignorance…….Egyptian Proverb
It is better to bear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools….Ecclesiastes 17: 15
The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of a fool to the left….Ecclesiastes 10:2
An answer is only important if you ask the right question…..Mencius
Nobility is defined by ones actions………Robin Hood
A few quotes that are really thoughts out of season:
Although tyranny, because it needs no consent, may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people. HANNAH ARENDT quoted by Chlamers Johnson
“Athens’ biggest worry was the sheer recklessness of its own democratic government. A simple majority of the citizenry, urged on and incensed by clever demagogues, might capriciously send out military forces in unnecessary and exhausting adventures.” TUCYDIDES
Mark Twain — ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.’ ..
“The frogs hopping indoors agree that we are on a prison planet.
They themselves are frog criminals that were convicted of doing frog crimes.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS
Oh, sorry! I’m still quoting VALIS, dammit!
Thanks to Dr. Tracy and the author (whoever he is, assuming he exists) for a perfect opportunity to tout my blog which may or may not yet exist. Treating of an alleged interspecies internet takeover, it’s not too early for a call for creation of copycat blog sites.
This alleged interspecies internet takeover which may or may not have occurred, blames horses. Like Mr. Ed, if you remember him. A droll horse whose multimedia surveillance of his owner and the neighborhood covered telephone, mail and media interference (look back on a few episodes to observe Mr. Ed’s finesse in confounding human affairs). In the final analysis Mr. Ed presents troubling evidence that horses even run households – consider Mr. Ed’s duped owner Wilbur whose activities proved nothing but a front for the family horse.
Whether or not it is true that horses or other impostors manipulate the internet is an irrelevant question. The phrase “it’s on the internet, it has to be true” has lost meaning in our times. Especially as horses – not unlike humans – have lookalike impostors among their race – impostors whose ancestry is truly the seed of other species. Namely donkeys, hence the fall of the horse. Bringing mules in to possibly man the internet in secret. These issues were, are or hopefully will be explored at length in tongue-in-cheek allusions to current human affairs on blogs about interspecies internet incursions, whether on my blog, others’ copycat blogs, or any and all blogs merely using me and/or my likeness as a patsy. Culminating in the creation of AssBook, celebrating the decay of the fine race of horses. To be continued by me, my human or equine imposters or perhaps even an official government black op titled AssBook….
horsegirl, hats off to you and your courage in broaching this subject. I’ve always admired horses for what they have done for us over millenia. I’m glad they’re finally getting something out of it now. ‘Bout time.
I also want you to know you have my complete support in coming out as interspecies. No, don’t protest! We can all see it. It’s right there in your name.
We love you, horsegirl, no matter what.
Yes Toni, time for horses to come out for sure. I might have written it differently starting from a history of how AssBook came about. Because I am a little suspicious that the author of this guest blog might have extraordinarily long ears..
Stealth donkey!
@ Toni – Where’s Donkey Jote when we need him?
Official wittiness is really charming. We are reminded of the police official who informed the questioning reporter that he was the “master” and not the servant. To question Orthodoxy is really beyond heresy, it mental illness. I mean, look at all the published academics that have been hosted on this blog- a virtual loony bin!
“Some animals are more equal than others”. Yes, I’m sure that the puppet Hirohito currently representing the interests that Eisenhower warned against would agree. I mean, he probably has as much real power as Mr. Ed.
Here’s to the hope that Anonymous/Wikileaks, etc., flood the public with un-redacted information, and give a reason to gang up on something a little more dangerous than an anonymous professor complaining about the intellectual and economic restraints of the modern day professor:
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/17/professors_in_homeless_shelters_it_is_time_to_talk_seriously_about_adjuncts/
I think that the the Professor protests too little!
https://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/modest.html
Above please find the full text of “A Modest Proposal”
by Jonathon Swift, published in 1729–three hunded, almost, years before the term ‘social-engineering’ entered our lexicon. And we think we have evolved.
According to many scholars, the Swift essay represents the most brilliant example of sustained irony in the history of the English language. (per article found on Wikipedia.) That is prehaps satire’s finest hour. Of course, we have found send-ups and parody in many forms– movies, novels, stage plays, among the best.
I cast my vote for modern works to be movies “Network” and “The Hospital” However, as excellent as they stand, to me they are more bawdy and flamboyant while yet displaying cerebral, biting humor. Paddy Chyefsky knew his way around American idiom and was prescient regard decadent American society.
Well hecky darn! Another dropped comment down the rabbit hole. And I worked at it so hard, too. What is wrong with these people? They are no fun at all. It was a satire on O’bummer’s golf outings. Probably wasn’t that good anyway but it was fun. I do love holding a president’s feet to the fire for close inspection. Barack practices ‘small ball’ concepts.
Fits his personality.
Later…as the spirit moves–lol
Hopefully your post showed up. It might be the one further down. If there are links, etc., they go thru moderation, I believe – but they show up. Thanks for your efforts – can’t wait to read!
Classic liberal, neoliberal perspective, or progressive? I’d say MHB is clearly in the camp of classic liberal philosophy (as in inherent rights of the individual including self determination) and progressive minded in the truest sense. All that remains are the artificial constructs of the Establishment (including political labels), which academe is great at rationalizing – perhaps epitomized best by Brzezinski. Hopefully, Professor Tweed also sees the Matrix for what it truly is as there is little time to waste with the global technocratic (and technotronic) iron curtain rapidly descending.
Reblogged this on The PPJ Gazette.
In the interest of humor, I will drop one more thing here. I remember one world history professor. He was a fairly young hot shot out of Duke University. He loved giving out failing grades, his curve was very tight. He also liked dating some of the younger coeds on campus.
One day a girl asked him in regard to all of the failing grades, doesn’t it worry you not to have any friends. The professor said my dear lady you fail to distinguish between friends and acquaintances!!
One day I noticed that his little red Triumph convertible had remained in the parking lot for sometime. I asked someone about it. They said the word is somebody filled his gas tank with sugar!! About a week later he showed up with a new ride.
This piece brought back some very old memories. My academic adviser used to tell me, you are missing the boat if you don’t major in philosophy or psychology, pointing out that my test scores weren’t exactly off the charts. He did say however that the 98 percentile in psychology and philosophy was intriguing in that many 4.0 type students don’t have a 98% average in any subject. I kept telling him I can’t worry about philosophy right now, I need to find a job and pay back student loans.
I always managed higher test scores in this area however, much higher than my actual major. I remember the psych teacher once handing me a test score and announcing to the class it was the highest score. She was what we would call an eastern elitist basically and she was looking at me as if to say, how can this be.
“Professor Tweed,” I insulted and responded incompetently to your article on Professor Grundy, the race-baiting witch. The 4th of July celebration rendered me temporarily incapable of spotting your Deep Sarcasm.
I take back my offensive remarks, and offer you a heartfelt “touché.”
Cool. More anonymous speech from someone who appears to be afraid to speak under their own name. How does this help anything?
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