Comments on: What happens if you find out you’re wrong?

By: Nimrod Gently

Nimrod Gently — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:53:42 +0000

“Nah, I’m just kidding, of course I didn’t act like a FUCKING HUMAN BEING.”

By: Anna in Cairo

Anna in Cairo — Sun, 06 Jun 2004 16:55:48 +0000

Well I highly recommend the classics. I just read Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” this weekend and found it really good. Oh, I guess that does not count.

By: FlipYrWhig

FlipYrWhig — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 07:12:10 +0000

Amardeep: Adams’s new column complains that “many of today?s English professors use Shakespeare only to talk about gay and trans-gendered issues. If you don?t believe me, pick up a copy of the Pelican Shakespeare version of ‘As You Like It.’”

Those damn liberals, turning stories about gender-bending into excuses to talk about… gender-bending!

He’s going to be pretty agitated to find out that people talk about _Robinson Crusoe_, a novel about the relationship between a white newcomer and a dark-skinned native whom he likes to order around, in terms of (ssh!) race and empire-building.

By: Amardeep

Amardeep — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 01:40:13 +0000

The oddest part is where he mentions ‘As You Like It’ in his original summer reading list column.

The plot of the play: a woman dresses up as a man and gets her (forbidden) lover to court ‘her’ while in drag.

It’s odd that he didn’t notice the obvious homoerotic overtones. (I also wrote a post on this before I found your site)

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 12:07:26 +0000

These guys would last about two posts on rec.org.mensa before they collapsed under the weight of the ridicule, and that would just be the people who supported their point.

Anyone who thinks that there are trolls on blog comments doesn’t have a newsreader.

Actually, it isn’t so much that they are vapid idiots, it’s that they really expect to be taken seriously. The pompous purveyors of propaganda really believe that they are spreading the “truth” from their Olympian heights.

[When do I get to talk about having to drudge through the snow barefoot for a timesharing ASR-33 on Darpanet. Yep, been around that long.]

By: bellatrys

bellatrys — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 07:29:35 +0000

And Jane “men make the poems about fickle women” Austen.

And um, what about that “Alcibaides is SOOO hot! whoo!” Socrates?

And yeah, selective editing + posting = dumb in a world of Google and easy fact checking and hostile but humorous adveraries.

You know what it is? They’ve all gotten *flabby*.

It’s being able to talk without anyone to give you guff right back. These snotty teachers like Instapundit, they’ve gotten flabby flabby flabby from being able to pontificate at helpless students all these years (and judging from my own experience, hapless colleagues in the coffee shop too, nya nyah I got tenure” fashion.) And Rush Limbutt, so quick to the cut-off button when there’s an articulate caller, and all his little clones. And Jonah and Rich at the Corner, talking away in the void of magazine-land, to hear their heads roar as my great-granma used to say.

And the consequence is, they’re outmatched and at a loss by us who grew up on usenet and all the other forums where ninja rhetoric and the art of the combat nitpick are practiced for zesty fun into the wee hours…

Verbal Zorros, slashing away their trousers, that’s us.

By: FlipYrWhig

FlipYrWhig — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 06:14:17 +0000

Cornell is the “nearest university English department” to Ithaca, NY. He didn’t look on the website for Ithaca College, though.

Homosexuality and feminism have no place in English literature. People should stick to the acknowledged greats, like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson!

By: BGN

BGN — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 04:59:29 +0000

Oh yes, the old “they don’t teach the classics any more” schtick. And it really has gotten old by now, almost as old if not as good as Watergate jokes. What next, “Disco sucks”?

What is with these right-wing defenders of the classics and the canon that they never do their homework?

By: Uncle Mike

Uncle Mike — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 22:52:01 +0000

Where were all these classes on homosexuality when I was in college??

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 22:25:02 +0000

So he wants people to read ENGLISH classics. So exclude any part of the cannon not written in English. And keep dirty books by Wilde out and also Charlotte Bronte for being such a feminazi. I’m sure he has some idea of what he wants, but I think if HE bothered to read the classics he’d find all kinds of nastiness.

By: s.z.

s.z. — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 20:18:29 +0000

Why wouldn’t “the nearest university English Department” be the one the one at UNC where Mike teaches? Or is he afraid that the brutes there would beat the crap out of him (again) if he messed around with their CVs?

By: Pete M.

Pete M. — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 17:30:35 +0000

So, naturally, I apologized. No, I’m just kidding. Instead of apologizing, I decided to search the webpage of the nearest university English department to see what I could find.

Jeez. That really seems to sum up a lot of what Mike does.