I Is Too An English Teacher!
This is a good week for me.
My favorite Townhall columnist is back. And by “favorite,” I mean “would you look at the incoherent frothings-at-the-mouth that have come pouring out of Mary Grabar this time.”
I have to let you know that I’ve read this Grabar column about fifteen times already, and I’m still not sure I know what the hell she’s talking about. This is world-class wingnuttery, folks; I put this column next to a Kaye Grogan piece and the next thing I knew, Grogan’s writing started looking like an essay by Isaiah Berlin. But we’ll see if we can make it through this romp down sanity’s back forty intact, shall we?
Osama bin Laden was cornered by U.S. forces in his cave. He was reported to have been surrounded by 17 virgins whom he blew up along with himself, while shouting “Allahu, Akbar!”
In response, massive rallies were held in Washington.
In front of the Capitol, Cindy Sheehan addressed the crowd through a megaphone: “Did we really need over 3,000 deaths to make this happen? We could have sent cupcakes with sprinkles over to show our goodwill. Who knows? Osama could still be alive. We know that bullies are bullies because they haven’t been shown enough love. WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER!”
The ACLU sent a statement about the U.S. government’s lack of due process.
Oh, goody. We are ten sentences in, and I’ve already got enough strawmen to fill a barn.
I keep going back to that last sentence, though….it’s such a masterpiece of legal WTFery that I can’t stop thinking about it. What does she think the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution has to do with suicide? Or the Fourteenth? How would it even apply to a non-citizen not on U.S. soil? They let this woman grade Freshman composition papers? Is this supposed to be satire? How can I move on with my life, after having been exposed to the truly horrifying inner workings of another person’s mind? Seriously….the Fifth Amendment? WTF?
Luckily, the rest of the column is even more freakishly insane, so I can get myself to stop thinking about this just by moving on to the next few paragraphs:
Ward Churchill, penning a book under contract with Beaufort Books, “If I Could Do It,” in a tower in the redwood forest of California, began leaking out a draft. A cable tower had been set up for him, for an office, and he received special tree-sitting privileges accorded to a little-known Native American tribe, recently discovered by a leading scholar at an ethnic studies department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His missive in manuscript began, “The chickens have already come home to roost. Now the chicken hawks believe that they have captured the enemy? But who is the real enemy? The contractors and mercenaries of an imperialist government. . .” The statement was read to the crowd of graduate students by an English professor.
Remember, guys: this woman has a degree in English.
I keep reading that bit, praying that whatever it is she did to the English language there, someone will finally come along and put it out of its misery. It hasn’t happened yet. The book is under a contract? It’s under a contract with other books? In a forest? There are books under a contract in a forest? Ward Churchill lives in a tower? Does it hurt when you leak out a draft? You need to have privileges to sit in a tree? They’ve discovered another Native American culture? Missives come in manuscript? What graduate students? Where did they come from? Why is there an English professor and a crowd of graduate students in a forest under a contract with books?
I know this is supposed to be satire (I think), but help me out here: you wacky youngfolks with your drugs and stuff – is this what you mean by a “bad trip”? Because right now, the floor and walls are being all tilty around me, and my grasp on what I once considered “reality” is starting to slip away.
An effigy of General Petreaus was burned by protestors [sic] who wore Islamic garb and prisoner garb in sympathy with their brethren while singing, “We are the world.”
One young woman carrying a sign that read, “Bombs can kill terrorists, but only love can kill terrorism,” said, “Well, so what? They’ve captured one man. So does this mean the end to terrorism?”
“ Yeah,” said her companion, a young man in dreadlocks, “I mean, this is only one guy. So he’s made some bad choices. Is that any reason to put his body on national television? I mean, he has a right to privacy too, man.”
A bearded man in a purple sequined tutu then jumped in: “Yeah, and at what expense? We’ve lost all our civil liberties. Bob and I can’t even get married.”
A sixty-ish grizzled man in a tie-dye t-shirt waved his fists and shouted, “We ended the Vietnam War and we will end this one too!”
I’m beginning to wonder if this wackjob has ever met any other human beings before in her life, or if she is one of those unfortunate souls who must live in a hermetically sealed bubble to compensate for a malfunctioning immune system. It’s like watching a crazy person having a conversation with themselves on a streetcorner; she really thinks that she is seriously engaging with the ideas of her opponents, but none of these people exist anywhere outside of her own sad little mind. For all we joke about being gay feminist abortionist vegan communists, she apparently thinks that anyone opposed to the war actually is a gay feminist abortionist vegan communist.
But across the globe, even bigger news was hitting. A man was said to be walking in sandals and speaking about “beating swords into plowshares.” He has also been luring young Palestinian children who had been chanting anti-Christian slogans away from their family televisions. He has invited them to him, saying, “Come unto me all ye children.” Amazingly, hardened children stopped mid-chant and skipped toward this man who held out his arms to them. They listened to his gentle words and ran off to play in peace and harmony, even approaching Israeli playmates.
Forgiveness, reconciliation, and kindness are reported on a massive, diplomatic scale. World leaders are dropping private ambitions and have confessed their bribe-taking and corruption. They have repented. Families have come together. Husbands are in love their wives and have no desire to hook up with Paris Hilton wannabe’s. Young women have become modest and young men have become gentlemen. All respect their elders and each other, and honor their parents.
I don’t even know what to say to this. It’s like she was writing next week’s column in one window on her computer and editing this week’s column in another window, and somehow the text from the two got smashed up together. She got her evilaborto-hippie-scum on her Jesu-suffer-the-little-children while simultaneously getting her Jesu-suffer-the-little-children in her evil aborto-hippie-scum. We therefore get treated to two great tastes that make absolutely no sense whatsoever together.
And I’m not even going to touch the apostrophe abuse or the bit about families coming together. And every one of you should be ashamed for having even thought it.
When asked about this worldwide development, a member of Moveon.org, an extremely tattooed young man (with “Peace” and “Love” imprinted in gothic script up and down each arm and the word “godly” similarly inscribed around his neck) said, “What the f*&%! It’s got to be some kind of conspiracy, man. You know Cheney’s pulling the puppet strings on the dude preaching peace and love. Yeah, he comes in and wants to take credit for all the work we’ve done. It’s just like the Civil Rights movement. Just like they put Condoleezza Rice out there. But we know she’s just the kitchen slave for the Republican party.”
At that point a large woman with short, spiked hair and beefy arms came up to the young man and grabbed him by the throat, right where the word “godly” was tattooed.
“Down with the patriarchy!” she shouted into his face like a drill sergeant. “What the f*&% makes you think you’re godly? It’s the goddess that rules! Don’t you know that Earth is the mother of us all?”
At that point a contingent of females clad in bright pink charged a group of dreadlocked young men in black. Eight casualties were reported. The spiky haired woman was reported to have said, “We don’t need the men anyways. Our sisters in science will learn to clone.”
I think I feel bad for her at this point. This reads less and less like an angry screed, and more and more like a desperate cry for help. I don’t think I have ever encountered another human being who oozed so much terror at the thought of being confronted by people who think differently. I still feel all floaty andtilty, though, and not in a good way, so my sympathy is limited.
In fact, I propose a new verb be entered into common usage:
Grabar (vi): To ramble incoherently on a topic about which you know nothing, esp. in a manner possibly offensive to listeners, most often while in a state of extreme intoxication or other cognitive impairment. “Dude, you so totally grabared at the party yesterday that my girlfriend doesn’t want me hanging out with you anymore.”
The column isn’t finished yet, but I think I’ll let you discover the joys of Grabaring for yourself. I’m going to go sit over here in the corner and watch my hand….if I move it fast enough, I can see lots of hands, all following each other, and it’s pretty cool….
Pre-emptive wingnut meme alert: the Government Press Office of Israel has just declared based on no publicly presented evidence that “The September 2000 death of Palestinian child Mohammed Al Dura in the Gaza Strip was staged by a Gaza cameraman” [as opposed to the common interpretation that he was shot by IDF forces firing on the position], therefore it must be true, because someone in the Israeli military suggested the position could have been fired on by Palestinians. Also, the network who filmed it was French!!!
Talking into a fan is also loads of fun…
I wish I had the nerve to visit Clownhall more often. It seems Mary G. lives in a world of editorial cartoon imagery. Bad right wing editorial cartoon imagery. So bad the editorial cartoonist has to label everyone involved, or maybe draw big arrows w/ what the drawings are clearly indicated inside.
Doesn’t mention the robe the guy ‘walking in sandals” (?) would be wearing, either, or his long hair & beard. Might confuse the rubes.
If it makes you feel any better, Jillian, I don’t think she’s a native english speaker. It doesn’t make me feel any better, but maybe it will someone else.
Eastern Europeans should stick to pathos, and leave the comedy to folks who don’t consider sadness something to be savored.
Oh, jeesiz, the Obama is a moooooslim thing:
What a horrid, stupid person Grabarse is.
Somebody get this Grabar woman on the phone. I want to talk to her. If it’s not 100% hilarious, I’ll give you your bits back.
I want to ask her if she can draw. If she can actually give us cartoon versions of the cartoon versions of the world she sees around her, it would all be very good.
This particular enchanted land is a fascinating enchanted land, and I’m honored to be here with you. Please keep your hands inside the car at all times.
I want to see the cartoons!!
mikey
They listened to his gentle words and ran off to play in peace and harmony, even approaching Israeli playmates.
Until they ran into the wall, of course.
One young woman carrying a sign that read, “Bombs can kill terrorists, but only love can kill terrorism.”
Which one of you is the young woman?
Maybe Grabar thought The Onion’s political cartoons were actually clever satires of the liberal predations on our great nation:
http://www.theonion.com/content/cartoon/oct-01-2007
I had to shotgun two beers after reading her sh*t. Again, these people have to…
nevermind.
Wow, who knew that Jesus could solve all the Palestinians’ problems? Christians are never violent, I guess.
They listened to his gentle words and ran off to play in peace and harmony, even approaching Israeli playmates.
Who shot them.
Which one of you is the young woman?
Oh. That would be me.
Pretty hot, eh?
mikey
Did townhall edit out, for lack of space, the introductory sentence where she explains that she’s suffering from an inadvertant hit of LSD?
Here’s a question.
Why does any of this mean anything at all?
None of it, I repeat, none of it, resembles reality. Osama’s still alive, nobody cares about Ward Churchill, everything in this is the deranged fantasy life of a deranged person to no seeming fucking point.
Jillian? Walk away. You have unearthed the wingnut text that is indeed not worth making fun of. Not because “the poor individual is sick and doesn’t know what she’s saying.” But because it exposes us to the awful gamma radiation of just stupid amateurism. You’re right: she thinks it’s satire.
Isn’t that possible? That there’s a level at which it’s just not worth our time? That’s my theory. You did a brave thing, exposing the cerebrum to the awful emanations. But there’s nothing there. Everybody move on.
The commenters are up in arms about “communists,” as in any one who disagrees w/ them or Bush or the “war on terror” is one.
“Have you hugged your soldier today?” they ask.
“Why, no, he died in an unnecessary war, the result of Bush’s inability to determine the proper way to deal w/ an organized gang of well-financed religious lunatics.”
Really, it amazed me that she can’t see the discontinuity over worshiping a person who creates peace with gentle words, but hates peace activist. But then I realized she believes that only God is allowed to create peace. Jesus is able to reach the children only because he has supernatural powers. Otherwise those little savages would never realize that love and peace are better than hate and war.
Remember, guys: this woman has a degree in English
It must be honorary.
do serious people read clownhall but just skip over the total insanity, thinking that for every grabar ramble there is a bracing bit of truth on the way from j-pod?
and are those people any better than someone who takes grabar seriously?
I read it, and I still can’t comprehend what was she writing….it was like…and then she wrote….and it kind of….and the she typed….
CHRIST! It’s like she’s produced a horrifying new screenplay: The Night of The StrawMan!
see, it only seems senseless, but if you put on your 3-D Alan Keyes Decoder Glasses and read it OH MY GOD MY EYES!!
it amazed me that she can’t see the discontinuity over worshiping a person who creates peace with gentle words,
I don’t get her. She makes fun of her straw-leftists who advocate for peace, yet she contrasts them with….a peaceful Jesus? What’s she saying? I mean, she’s certainly not showing Jesus with an M-16 shooting down Islamofascists, but what the heck? Is she’s saying talking about peace is OK when he does it but not when someone else does it????
Oh, and as an academic nerd, this may be a bit of inside baseball, but isn’t this the saddest biographical note ever?
Mary Grabar graduated from the University of Georgia with a Ph.D. in English and currently teaches at a university in Atlanta.
I mean, please.
cleter might be on to something. what if this jumble of words is meant for someone to pick out the first letter in every (nth) word? What if these are marching orders, much like our administration was afraid that Osama’s videos held coded messages? What if this is all a cleverly and carefully arranged piece of communication to a specific Jack Bauer type individual?
Okay, strike all that. Occam’s razor probably reigns supreme. We ARE talking about clownhall.
Bringing out the blue pencil:
Evidence, please…where’s the logic?…cliche…not funny…grammar?…heard that one before…run-on sentence…stupid cliche…punctuation?…this could be a lot shorter…try sticking to reality…syntax?…foul stereotype…not really your forte…old as the hills…please re-submit…(et cetera).
Is there a shortage of editors in wingnutistan?
The commentators are a scream, they are heading towards LGF levels of madness, taking two at random:
I know I am going out on a limb here. But several posters have mentioned that muslim men are frequently seen being accompanied by young boys who they use in place of females to relieve their tensions. From the size of the iranian midget I would guess they still see him as a boy and I wonder which of the mad mullahs is using I needa a dinner jacket to relieve their tensions. Since apparently all muslims men have this proclivity to enjoy male bonding it seems the whole society is in denial about the true sexuality. So when i’m a nutjob claims there are no homos in iran he is merely doing what the koran commands and that is lying to all non muslims.
&
Nov 08- Hitlary elected Prez.
Jan 09 – First action taken by Mistress Hillary(form of address preferred to madame Pres.) Bring troops home from Iraq and Afgahnistan.
May 11- Emboldened by what they call American cowardice, the jihadists financed by Ahmagiantdickhead obliterate Israel using nukes.
Sept 11/11- Terrorists celebrate 10th anniversary of 9/11 with coordinated series of dirty bomb attacks across the US.
Sept 12/11 Mistress Hillary capitulates to Iranians who declare newly formed caliphate of North America.
Is townhall now becoming the HQ of teh stupid
It’s a damn shame there’s still no way to properly express mocking laughter via the internets, because these folks are in dire need of that sort of falling down laughter mere electronic type simply fails to reproduce. You ever see that Daffy Duck cartoon where he’s Robin Hood and Porky Pig (as Friar T-t-t-t-tuck) spends the entire toon rolling on the floor in laughter? That’s what I’m talking about.
g, there used to be a joke that if one were to drive through the UGA campus with one’s window rolled down, someone would throw a diploma the one’s window. I live in Athens, though, and I can tell you it ain’t true. You got to stop the car, first.
Nevermind the content. Isn’t anyone else horrified at just how terrible the composition itself is? Its like she just picked a random tense out of a hat every time she wrote a verb. “Future perfect continuous wins again!” I can’t get any sense of temporal consistency at all.
I can’t even make fun of the content because I can’t even get to it. Its like hacking your way through a jungle with a machete and having someone ask you if you saw the parrot. Its like, “there was a parrot in that mess?”
Does she really teach composition? That was a joke right? It had to be. There is no way this person could be paid to grade compositions. That’s blowing my mind way more than any of her deranged dreams about strawmen and hyperboles that exist nowhere but in the wet dreams of wingnuts.
Remember, guys: this woman has a degree in English.
yeah, from here.
And I’m not even going to touch the apostrophe abuse or the bit about families coming together. And every one of you should be ashamed for having even thought it.
Hah — Guilty!
She “teaches at a university” – what that means is that she works on staff in the HR department at Emory and conducts their Intro to Microsoft Word workshops for Admin Ass’t II’s.
Or perhaps she is the Admin Ass’t II in the Physical Plant division and she does the scheduling of the Laborer III’s for the state certification in Fork-Lift Operation.
I would like to thank Sadly, No! for introducing me to the splendor that is Townhall.
This piece has all the garbled vividness, tangled incoherence, and bone-deep stupidity you’d expect from a right-wing daydream. It’s like mixing hallucinogens, downers, and general paranoia. And I love the slow-motion brawl in the comments section.
Great stuff.
It’s like Jack Chick on stupid.
“The column isn’t finished yet, but I think I’ll let you discover the joys of Grabaring for yourself.”
I mean this is the nicest way possible, but eff you. This is like the Psycho Tunnel of Surreality in the Willy Wonka movie. The one with Gene WIlder. Only without the Gene Wilder.
Or better yet, http://www.timecube.com
Which, I find, is becoming more and more relevant to the modern wingnut.
She’s an English professor? I am truly flabbergasted…
Dang, y’all.
I fed the geriatric Rottweiler some beef bones last night and he’s been farting up a storm all day. He just about burned the eyberows off us a few minutes ago, until I put him outside.
Heh, that timecube site is fun.
If you scroll the sidebar really fast, all the fonts and colors and diagrams create a merry-go-round of insanity.
Whoops! don’t stand up too fast, now.
From the website of “a university in Atlanta”:
The major in English invites students to reflect on words and how they work.
Though not, apparently, on what they mean.
It actually reminded me of a bit of those set-piece passages in William Burroughs’ novels where whole civilizations disintigrate into orgies of violence and deviant behavior.
Of course Burroughs was pasting together random fragments of text while on drugs — I hesitate to guess what this loon’s excuse might be.
I fed the geriatric Rottweiler some beef bones last night and he’s been farting up a storm all day. He just about burned the eyberows off us a few minutes ago, until I put him outside.
Maybe somebody let Jonah get into the beef bones, and the resulting fume assault killed enough of Grabar’s few remaining neurons to result in this extraordinary piece.
This gem from her website is just too fun not to pass up.
http://marygrabar.com
“Chapter 1 of my novel, Dancing with Derrida.
An up-and-coming feminist professor of rhetoric who conducts research by stripping at the Classic City gentlemen’s club, Tight Ends. The sexual revolutionist/moving company entrepeneur who takes his disco dance moves to the contra/Cajun dance circuit. A romantic cowboy who loves literature and his ex-fiancee. His director at the University of Athens, one of the last of the old guard, who takes his stand in the classroom for God, country, family, and the power of poetry. This is the first chapter of my novel looking for an agent and/or publisher.”
Here’s a tip Mary, make sure you have NO TYPOS in your first two sentences. (Its entrepreneur, babe). And second. Make sure the link to the actual chapter, you know, actually WORKS.
On second thought. Thank God for sparing me that. I might have actually read it, and seriously, the synopsis was quite enough as it was. I don’t think I could have taken the “fleshed out” version of the adventures of a disco dancing sexual revolutionist on the Contra circuit.
(unless it contained the phrase “up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-B-A!”)
dude, i’m so fucking grabared right now i forgot to capitalize “i’m” and i think that shes totally fucking spot on (which is a turn of phrase i on;y use when totally grabared.( And I think youre a total fuicwit that knowss nothink about englisjh. so, what im saying is fuck you and your fucking tranny girlfriend, you obviously dont know about the reverse triangle theory. numbnuts! Yeah!
Slovenia
The place of my birth. Where my heartstrings pull. Click on various links for pictures, history, and music.
music to pull her heart strings
Does her dean know of her rampant backslash abuse?
by teh way nylund, i think its ABBA not BABA.
I solved it!
“After watching The View and following the inane statements made on the program,” writes Townhall’s Mary Grabar, “I’ve come to the conclusion that it really is true what Aristotle, Saint Paul, and John Milton said: Women, without male guidance, are illogical, frivolous, and incapable of making any decisions beyond what to make for dinner. Which reminds me: I need to ask hubby if he would rather have lasagna or canelloni tonight.”
While I don’t find this true of women in general, I suspect it might be true of Mary. Me thinks someone let her near a typewriter without proper male guidance.
Maybe we should offer to pay her way to Saudi Arabia where they share her view that a woman without a male companion is indeed a bad bad thing. She should be safe as long as the Saudi moral police don’t read her novel about the contra dancing feminist stripper. Considering she’s still looking for a publisher for that one, I think she’ll should be ok.
better link
she makes althouse look good.
Grabar: Families have come together.
Agent: That’s a helluva act. Whadda you call it?
Grabar:The Aristocrats!
Don’t you find it interesting though? Counterintuitive it may be, this is what much of the right’s deep-core base believe the left looks like. Of course, they’ve met few lefties, or get all their information on then second-hand and reheated from abuse stories about ‘political correctness gone wild’ urban myths, but there you have it.
Grabar is trying to hold up a mirror to us. What a shame that it’s a one of those wonky jobs from the carnival that makes you look all distorted and monstrous.
Acknowledge the math below or go to hell.
Teaching that a Cube has ‘6 sides’ with
no top & bottom, induces an evil curse
that pervades all academic institutions.
You have opposite brains to think
opposite, but Big Brother icepick
academic lobotomy has destroyed
your mentality to think opposite of
the evil singularity you are taught.
Adam and Eve were created at the same time,
but sexless. A rib was removed from eve and
a hole left to make a woman of her. The rib
was stuck on Adam to make a man of him –
and Eve is still trying to get her rib back.
I am not allowed to lecture at the word animal
academic institutions, for they fear my wisdom
will expose and indict the pedant hirelings as
betrayers of dumb-ass students – the dung heads
who allow their freedom of speech to be
suppressed without a whimper, unbelieveable.
Word animals will feel the wrath of Cubic curse.
My wisdom so antiquates known knowledge, that
a psychiatrist examining my behavior, eccentric
by his academic single corner knowledge, knows
no course other than to judge me schizoprenic. In
today’s society of greed, men of word illusion are
elected to lead and wise men are condemned. You
must establish a Chair of Wisdom to empower
Wise Men over the stupid intelligentsia, or perish.
Academia is an accreditation of real
stupidity – deadly to all humanity.
Educators own your mind and fills it with garbage, that will soon destroy humanity.
Who is more deluded, Dr. Gene “Time Cube” Ray, or Dr. Mary Grabar?
I see someone found her web site. She claims to have a PhD from the University of Georgia. The published work section is great, in a Grabarian sort of way.
Oh, and as of 2005 she is not a professor, but a part-time lecturer at a Georgia college, which I found via Google. It is, however, a respectable if not well-known university. I cannot find her name on the web sites of these places that verify her academic status.
Conservatives are all over the “fake but accurate” thing, except what they do is is not accurate. They are desparate for another Vietnam with people spitting at the troops or Code Pink marching with some crazed banner – they can’t find it so they just make it up.
One problem with “fake but accurate” is that if it is accurate you shouldn’t need the fake, you should be able to find *real* evidence.
95% of the time, when I read about liberals ranting on conservative sites, what I am actually reading is invented text. Someone claims without quoting, someone misquotes, someone paraphrases (poorly) or someone just goes batshit insane like they did with Lesley and write an entire diatribe in the voice (except not really) of the enemy.
I can’t begin to count how often I’ve read things like “we commies love Iran and hope that the terrorists win blah blah blah” — except they are all written by insane conservatives.
The liberals in the reality-based community aren’t evil enough for them so they just invent new ones. This is just an extreme example of what you see all the time, in blogs, blog comments, op-eds and speeches on the Senate floor.
The sexual revolutionist/moving company entrepeneur [sic] who takes his disco dance moves to the contra/Cajun dance circuit.
Wow. Just the other day I was thinking to myself, “You know, there aren’t enough books out there dealing with moving companies and Cajun dancing.”
This is a good one by Professor Doctor Grabarse too, where she again seems to be going in two directions at once.
If you’d like to read some of Dancing With Derrida, to which the link no longer works, http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/5703.html#comment-187389 your search is over. This link doesn’t embed, but it’s good.
Wow. That’s the prose equivalent of a Jack Chick comic.
Random…..
or its a friend of a friend that overheard something that us lefties said. My favorite is always the hippy quote, thrown around by GR and his acquaintances. Even though I have been fairly left wing (in a dour, socialist, Scottish way) for most of my life, i have never even met a hippy, in fact, I wouldn’t know where to look for one.
moves to the contra/Cajun dance circuit
what the fu*k is the contra dance circuit? Do they dance for five minutes, then torture some commies?
Mr. DNA made me think immediately of:
RIMMER: I tried to be liked, god knows I tried. I regaled you with
amusing stories of when I was treasurer of the Hammond Organ Owners’
Society. You never laugh! I offer to talk you through my photo
collection of 20th century telegraph poles. You’ve always got some
excuse! None of you like morris dancing! Would that break your
hearts, every once in a while: the four of us getting our knees in the
air — the jingle of bells, the clonk of wood on wood? But no, every
time I suggest it you all pretend to be ill.
There is a very simple explanation for this. Mary Grabar didn’t write this column, her Id wrote it. It seems that her disease has advanced to where there is no persona, no ego left at all. All that’s left are flowers in the attic.
Snoopy did this better:
I mean, if you’re going to be a hack, go all the way.
Cheers, SomeGuy.
Now I’m earwormed with “Arnold Rimmer”.
“It’s Mary Mary Mary Grabar
Her point she’ll constantly belabor
She don’t want hippies for for a neighbor…:”
I’m too idle to go any further so I’ll leave the rest to the endlessly fertile Sadly Nosian distributed intelligence.
Bonus points for getting in contra/cajun dancing.
And what do points mean?
Prizes!
Dr. Mary Grabar teaches at Clayton
http://a-s.clayton.edu/grabar/homepage.htm
ENGL 2131 – AMERICAN LITERATURE I
SYLLABUS FALL 2006
To pass this courses, students will:
* Enhance and demonstrate critical thinking skills in interpretation and research.
* Demonstrate successful writing skills as part of the communication outcomes for the general education curriculum.
* Acquire a knowledge base regarding the development of literature in various cultures including American, British, and the world at large through reading representative works.
* Recognize universal human concerns and themes in literature.
* Gain understanding of gender, cultural, and ethnic diversity.
I’m sure that she is a perfectly adequate worker bee who can follow instructions. No great writers will ever come from her classes though.
This is a good one by Professor Doctor Grabarse too, where she again seems to be going in two directions at once.
I dunno M. Bouffant, that piece actually makes sense. She doesn’t like atheists who mock religion and also doesn’t like religious folk who are too orthodox or sheep-like. She wants to champion religious folk, (Christians actually), who are actually curious, and read.
She says things I don’t agree with, but that column is nowhere near as bizzarre as the subject of this post. Maybe she actually was on LSD when she wrote it?
Wingnut satire is only funny when it’s unintentional, which is 99.9% of the time.
As the nation discovered with The Half-Hour News Hour, wingnuts trying to be amusingly insightful is an experience more akin to stabbing oneself in the legs with a rusty fork.
M. Bouffant said:
Who is more deluded, Dr. Gene “Time Cube” Ray, or Dr. Mary Grabar?
Oh Dr Gene of course. He is insane but in his own way makes a certain sense. Mary doesn’t make any sense at all, not even in her own world. I like Dr Gene’s re-telling of Adam and Eve and his Time Cube isn’t completely wrong. If you think about it he is right. With every 360 rotation of the Earth there are four points that experience one full day. Therefore every day contains four simultaneous days. You just group them together and someone must have suggested group theory to him as he mentions it on his page. He rejects it but, oh well.
Schizophrenics can be highly intelligent and often are, that isn’t the part that is diseased. At least he is interesting, Mary is not. She’s just a stupid pendant.
I think that Clayton State, where Grabar held her position as Temporary Assistant English Professor, has kicked her to the curb. Her bio page has been scrubbed. So now I think “she are not a English professor no more.”
Satire? Satire is at least supposed to be well written. Whoever gave this…thing…a degree, let alone in English, should be fired. If she is indeed charged with the sacred job of teaching, it is little wonder we have become the fattest, laziest, stupidest people on earth.
Conservatives are all over the “fake but accurate” thing, except what they do is is not accurate. They are desparate for another Vietnam with people spitting at the troops or Code Pink marching with some crazed banner – they can’t find it so they just make it up.
But it works. All they want to do is frighten “decent liberals” away from the anti-war movement, force the Daily Kos to ban debates on the Israeli Palestinian conflict and Ron Paul, make it impossible for groups like Code Pink ever to get mainstream support.
Voila, Democrats in Congress can vote a million resolutions in the Senate condemning Moveon and “decent liberals” will still vote for them.
The wingnuts may seem ridiculous but “decent liberals” are so easy to scare they really don’t have to be very much more. They just have to manage a credible “boo” every now and then.
Did her lack of English comprehension make her miss the whole “turn the other cheek” bit that guy in sandals was talking about?
That’s when it really went off the rails for me (yeah, I know, what rails?). Jillian’s right, this is a ‘what two ideas mesh most poorly” competition entry.
Chapter 1 of my novel, Dancing with D̶e̶r̶r̶i̶d̶a̶ Dementia.
Fixed.
You know, if you go to the Department of Languages and Literature page of the Clayton State University website, you will find this headline:
Our First English B.A.’s Graduates
I’m not exactly sure what the sentence itself is supposed to mean, but I think the deeper meaning we can derive from it is that some schools may not have to lower their academic standards all that much if they want to hire someone like Grabar.
Also, Mary is not listed as part-time faculty on the department’s Faculty page.
Graber on current English teaching:
“Most parents sending their children off to college […], are not aware of the extent to which most English professors hate literature or how diligently they work to destroy the written word. ”
How very true.
I see she lives in Stone Mountain. That explains everything.
Maybe she got some bad student evals after her last course. just sayin’
I’ve never understood the rightwinf obsession with hippies. I can’t think of anything less threatening politically. Middle class hedonists are not going to overthrow the government.
I offer to talk you through my photo collection of 20th century telegraph poles
The next best thing
…one of the last of the old guard, who takes his stand in the classroom for God, country, family, and the power of poetry…
Taking a stand for the power of poetry? I didn’t realize that.. I mean… who knew… umm, whaaa?
“We’re taking it to the fucking streets, people! Who’s with me???”
Oh lord. My father was at one point the head of English (or whatever they were calling it at the time, given that is was always merged with other things) at Clayton State, and taught there for around 30 years. I practically grew up on that campus. He retired a few years back. I can’t imagine he would have tolerated this woman very long if they were there at the same time. Clayton originated as a junior college and became 4 year sometime late 80s early 90s, and only recently started offering a B.A. in English. It’s always attracted more than its fair share of Real True Christians, given as it’s the go to school for the modestly academically inclined from the southern suburbs of Atlanta. She would have easily found students who thought like her. There are normal, ordinary students and decent scholars who work there, but Harvard it is not.
As for adjuncts – the pay for adjuncts is miserable at that place, as it is at most state schools. You take who can get and hope for the best. If Clayton fired her, she must have been, well, as bad as we imagine.
Y’know, Jillian, I read the first four paragraphs on the S,N! front page, and got as far as the line “the rest of the column is even more freakishly insane” and once again doubted that it could be so.
once again, I was proved wrong.
HO-LEEE SHAYIT, was I proved wrong.
Pitifully enough, I’ve read (willingly, yet) something just as bad as Ms. Grabar’s work, which managed to garner a glowing review from the author’s English professor, who must be as academically challenged as Ms. Grabar herself.
Those who can’t do, teach, I guess.
I see she lives in Stone Mountain. That explains everything.
Ah, the “writer” I referred to in my last comment is from Teh Southland as well.
Christ, what is it about the South? Did I ruin any writing skill I might have had by moving down here? Is it the water? Didn’t the South used to create decent writers? Is it the Southern Baptists, maybe? Creationism? Is destroying the English language as a form of communication their way of “disproving” language evolution? Am I analyzing this too deeply? Do I need more coffee?
I’m not sure whether to thank Jillian or curse her name forever. From now on, every time I see another piece by Noonan (either one, actually) or Goldberg or Grogan, a tiny piece of my brain will be thinking, “Well, this is horrible dreck put together by the kind of mind that adds two and two and comes up with purple, but it could be worse! At least it’s not Mary Grabar.”
I’ve never understood the rightwinf obsession with hippies. I can’t think of anything less threatening politically. Middle class hedonists are not going to overthrow the government.
I chalk it up to a kind of deep insecurity of right-wingers. They seem to think that US society is so fragile that the tiniest rebellion could make it all crash down around them, or something. Its really, really wierd.
Ohhhh, that Mary Grabar! Now the pic’s there, it all makes sense. Well, kind of.
And I’d much rather go Morris dancing with Rimmer than ever have to talk to this Grabar creature. At least Rimmer looks good tied up and wearing a loincloth.
An effigy of Ahmadinejad was burned by protestors [sic] who went headless in sympathy with their brethren while singing, “Bomb Iran.”
One young woman carrying a sign that read, “Kill all the terrorists” said, “Religion of Peace? Bull. The only peaceful Muslim is a dead one.”
“ Yeah,” said her companion, a young man in surplus army greens, “I mean, not all terrorists are Muslim, but all Muslims are terrorists.”
A clean-shaven man in a gray pinstriped suit then jumped in: “Yeah, and they don’t even like to hang out in men’s restrooms with me.”
A sixty-ish grizzled man wearing plastic dogtags yelled, “We won the Vietnam War and we will win this one too!”
/Grabaring in reverse
My favorite “sentence”:
//He has also been luring young Palestinian children who had been chanting anti-Christian slogans away from their family televisions.//
I hear that if you read that out loud 3 times, an evil monster pops out of your medicine cabinet and kills your girl-friend.
But seriously, I wonder when the voices in the heads of the Grabarians and their confederates will transition from mere insane and hilarious ramblings on the internets, to acting out their deluded and paranoid fantasies in the real world. Do they know the difference?
But seriously, I wonder when the voices in the heads of the Grabarians and their confederates will transition from mere insane and hilarious ramblings on the internets, to acting out their deluded and paranoid fantasies in the real world. Do they know the difference?
Sadly, No!
* Using “garb” twice in one sentence is a coup worthy of Black Sabbath.
* How could they put his body on television if he blew himself up?
* If there’s one thing more fun than conservatives championing Jesus while simultaneously condemning living people who share the beliefs of Jesus, it’s conservatives attacking an imaginary reaction to the death of Osama bin-Laden while our actual leaders ignore Osama bin-Laden.
She’s an English professor? I am truly flabbergasted…she is not a professor, but a part-time lecturer at a Georgia college….Clayton State, where Grabar held her position as Temporary Assistant English Professor, has kicked her to the curb. Her bio page has been scrubbed. So now I think “she are not a English professor no more.”
She never was a professor. Like many academics, she is a part-time lecturer, meaning someone who fills an annually renewable contract. And is paid for the classes she teaches. Not a member of the full-time faculty. Not on track for tenure. Not a “professor” which in addition to being an honorary title is also a job classification.
Meaning, of course, that Grabar’s PhD. work, despite the fact that she got the “union card”, wasn’t of the quality that would get her an actual professor’s job in academia. I’m sure, reading her, that her publication record doesn’t help, either.
I think a while ago I read somewhere her sour-grapes column on academia and decrying the fact that talented and brilliant scholars such as herself face discrimination in employment due to conservative views…..and shitty writing.
* How could they put his body on television if he blew himself up?
You can kind of stack the chunks of leftover flesh, although if it’s one of those fancy flat screens you’re not gonna get a lot on there.
So by opposing peace, not turning the other cheek and not loving your enemies we’re going to bring back somebody who embodies just those values? Is this somekind war = peace deal? Does this Grabar person teach 1984 as an utopian or dystopian novel?
Meaning, of course, that Grabar’s PhD. work, despite the fact that she got the “union card”, wasn’t of the quality that would get her an actual professor’s job in academia.
Well, it *is* possible that she opted out of an academic career. I’m damn near done with my Ph.D, and that’s exactly what I’m thinking of doing (there are some great things about the academic lifestyle, but there are also serious drawbacks as well that are not immediately apparent to people who are first entering grad school).
However, English majors don’t tend to have the private-sector options available to those with Ph.Ds in many other fields, so there is that . . .
I’m sure, reading her, that her publication record doesn’t help, either.
Yeah, trying to pass off your Clownhall columns as “publications” in anything close to an academic sense is a dead giveaway to a hiring committee that the person in question has, er, other interests that take precedence over academic research and publishing.
Forgiveness, reconciliation, and kindness are reported on a massive, diplomatic scale.
WTF?
And, btw, thanks. Now I feel all dirty.
Yeah, the “diplomatic scale” thing confused me too.
Looks like she took the brown acid. Day-um.
She’s an English major?
Cool.
So, which Starbucks do I find her mangling the orders at, again?
Ward Churchill, penning a book under contract with Beaufort Books, “If I Could Do It,” in a tower in the redwood forest of California, began leaking out a draft. A cable tower had been set up for him, for an office, and he received special tree-sitting privileges accorded to a little-known Native American tribe, recently discovered by a leading scholar at an ethnic studies department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
There is a Bulwer-Lytton Lifetime Achievement Award in this woman’s future.
She forgot to mention patchouli. It’s all about the patchouli.
I think her biggest crime against sanity is having her novel hero take his “disco moves” to the “contra dance circuit”.
‘Cause nothing livens up the Blackthorn Reel or the Christmas Hornpipe like disco, baby!
Or does she mean Iran-contra/Cajun dancing?
To be fair to this babbling old shitbag, standards of literacy in general are currently at about their lowest ebb in the history of the English language as far as I can see, and not just among the wingnuttery (particularly commas, hey did you know you can use commas as a substitute for any other punctuation mark, I know, sounds crazy doesn’t it, but it’s true, just try it for yourself!). To earn a crust I spend all day reading the unedited “work” of professional journalists and academics, and I can say without any exaggeration whatsoever that 95% of them couldn’t pass a 14-year-old’s English exam.
Without meaning to brown-nose, I’m consistently amazed at the number of posts on this site that one can read through before encountering a serious error.
The contra-Cajuns were, of course, the backlash against the Cajun revolution (led by Paul “Property is Theft” Prudhomme, who seized power in a bloodless coup de main). They were chiefly opposed to the redistribution of wealth to the poboys. Minister of Finance Justin Wilson’s refusal to guar-ohn-tee external debt resulted in foreign support of the contra-Cajuns, who returned to power after severely blackening their enemy.
You teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.
To be fair to this babbling old shitbag,
This is comedy distilled.
Holy crap. WTF is right.
What really amazes me is how she moves from ridiculous straw men vilifying the left for not supporting killing enough to ridiculous straw men vilifying the left for not supporting peace and understanding. I think you’re right about her merging pieces.
There’s no intellectual consistency at all, of course. It’s just an infantile “liberals are so bad they love bin Laden and hate Jesus!” accusation expanded to article length.
Granted, Althouse, Reynolds and Hewitt do some teachin’, so obviously not every school’s standards are high, but how the hell could anyone give this woman a position?
This is the first chapter of my novel looking for an agent and/or publisher.”
Yeah, well…yeah. If I was the first chapter of your novel, I’d be looking for an agent too.
If I was the first chapter of your novel, I’d be looking for an agent too.
Yeah. An agent of change.
An agent of intolerance.
Or perhaps, just a big bucket of agent orange…
mikey
I think we have founs the first beat poet of the Neocon movement. It helps to play the bongos while you read this
I am glad the screenwriter of Path to 9/11 was able to find work at Townhall.
DId she write Glitter, too?
Off to WingnutIMDB!!!!
I love this blog. It is always great fun to ridicule the lunacy of the right. But please, I beg you, never expose me to this imbecile ever again. This one was just too much. And y’know, The scariest thing about it is that someone, somewhere out there found it spot on– and hilarious. Someone hold me.
Is that her in the photo? What are the symbols behind her? They scare me. (I almost typed cymbals)
As there seems to be some confusion, I give you the diplomatic scale…
http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/6289/diplomaticscalevv4.jpg
(S,N seems to feel we’re not grown up enough to link images. They may be right, but it’s still a bummer.)
Oops! It do link! It do!
Mine sincerest apologetics!
i think she means that jesus will return when obama, i mean osama is captured… the rapture!
i imagine a vengeful jesus in full battle dress, walking the earth dispensing vigilante justice one double aught blast at a time. first to go: chickenhawks, then the rude. cut in line? rapture!
If only we could turn all those strawmen into clean-burning fuel. Free energy for everyone!
All they want to do is frighten “decent liberals” away from the anti-war movement, force the Daily Kos to ban debates on the Israeli Palestinian conflict and Ron Paul, make it impossible for groups like Code Pink ever to get mainstream support.
One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just isn’t the same.
I can’t be the only person who read this sentence, failed to see the comma, and thought: well now, that’s certainly a novel approach to reinterpreting the New Testament.
I gotta say something about adjuncts. There seem to be several kinds of adjuncts with Ph.D.s (not every adjunct has one)
1. Fresh Ph.Ds who need that first job for their CV. Adjuncting for them is like getting a tryout in the minor leagues to see if that have what it takes to move up to the majors.
2. Those with jobs elsewhere who like to teach and/or need a little pocket money. I did this a couple times in the mid 90s. If you enjoy teaching it’s better than the night shift at McDonalds!
3. Those who are making a mid-life career switch. That’s where I am now. I left my non-academic job (with a nice paycheck, sigh) to play in academia again. My first book is coming out in 08, my first article later this year and I am hoping to God I can avoid the next group…..
4. Those who have the degree but can’t hit major league pitching. They’re like the career AAA level baseball player who stays in Louisville or Columbus their whole life.
I suspect Dr Grabar has moved from group 1 to group 4. She’ll always think it’s because of her politics but it’s really because she’s just not good enough.
“Dr” Mike would understand (see world o crap)
Woodrowfan:
That’s about right. All the far right types who wanted university jobs and think it’s their politics that kept them out — well, in a way, but not in the way they think. Scholarship is fundamentally about doubt, about subtlety, and about nuance. It’s about questioning everything we think we know, and about seeing the complexity of the world. The authoritarians we mistakenly call “conservatives” in this country don’t do doubt, nuance, or subtlety. They don’t ask questions and they don’t think the world is at all complex. This mindset tends to lead to shoddy scholarship and uninspired teaching. Not that those are absolute disqualifications for academic jobs, but they sure don’t help.
Today at TownHall.com, Phyllis Schlafley has an article about how English courses have degraded since her time, what with all the non-white authors and “deconstructionism” and looking at alternative media and what have you. Methinks she’s been in contact with Ms. Grabar.
Out of curiosity, I surfed on over to Columbia University to see what their offerings were like. The big splash at Columbia College’s site (http://www.college.columbia.edu/)? “Core Curriculum: Bringing Classics to Life.” “Contemporary Civilization” provides students with a comprehensive survey of Western Philosophy from Aristotle to Foucalt.
[…] Nor does it warn that, should you major in English, you run a significant risk of growing up to be Mary Grabar. No, instead, Phyllis focuses on the most dreadful prospect of all: majoring in English will turn […]
Ew. She’s fantasizing about hardened children. She’s not a teacher, is she?
He has also been luring young Palestinian children who had been chanting anti-Christian slogans away from their family televisions.
Hang on, a lot of Palestinians are Christian, aren’t they? Or at least were, until their land was occupied and so on and so forth.
An up-and-coming feminist professor of rhetoric who conducts research by stripping at the Classic City gentlemen’s club
Doesn’t she post at Unfogged now and then?
I realize I’m a bit late to the party, but Chapter One of Dancing With Derrida is still available to us. Thank all that is holy.
Interesting: we need not resort to archive.org; as noted in a comment linked upthread, the astonishing document is still available directly via her site; its apparent absence is due to a capitalization issue in her own link.
[…] people she links to are messing up my mind. One of the latest links by Jillian is to a column by Mary Grabar. I read it and I just don’t get it. I understand it’s supposed to be satire, but even […]
lobbey, contradancing is a form of folkdance where participants are in two lines facing one another. it sounded sinister to me for years (my parents got really into it when i was in junior high) but i promise you, oliver north is not involved. it is a lot like squaredancing, and also pretty fun. here is a directory of dance groups.
this concludes your dance nerd minute for the day.
My god…I just read that sample chapter. A PhD wrote that? I wrote better than that in 4th grade.
I am in shock, really, at how crappy that is. She has no style, no depth and makes every amateur Community College Creative Writing class mistake possible.
“The woman was six feet tall and pale. Her whiteness was emphasized by black hair framing a face with cheekbones high and wide and lips painted scarlet. She had an exotic look about her despite the eyeglasses and hair in a tight bun. A tweed suit hugged a shapely form that towered on long legs above stiletto heels.
With an expression befitting Milton’s pensive nun…”
That’s the beginning of Chapter 1, for all you who do not care to investigate that link (and I understand; there be dragons) yet still want more proof of how poorly she writes. The column above is no anomaly; she really ought to be unpublishable, not because of her views, but because she is a terrible, untalented hack.
Anyone care to rewrite that opener? I want to see how many people here could do a better job than Grabar can.
Once again, she got a PhD?!? Talk about degree devaluation…
Dear Qetesh the Abyssinian:
Hang on, a lot of Palestinians are Christian, aren’t they? Or at least were, until their land was occupied and so on and so forth.
Christian population has declined from 15% in 1950 to 2% today. Though some of that may be due to strains of Israel-Palestinian conflict, wouldn’t that affect Muslims as well? Another pressure on them is anti-Christian activity coming from the Muslim side. http://www.christianpost.com/article/20061112/22861.htm
[…] those who are not Grabarheads, may I direct you here and […]
Graybar misrepresents herself almost as much as she misrepresents the views of those she attacks. She is not a professor but an adjunct or part time instructor at a two year college. She held a one year position at Clayton State University but the administration refused to renew her contract on the grounds that she discriminated against African-American students in her grading.
I teach at that university and came to know her when she was there as an adjunct and on that one year appointment. She was disliked by all of her colleagues and most of her students not for her conservatism but for her dogmatism, bitterness, and her inability to defend anything she wrote or said with an argument. I dismantled her silly letters to me again and again, refuting the factual claims, pointing out the lack of argument, and logical fallacies when she actually attempted an argument.
It is a sad comment on how utterly stupid the right has become in America and that is not a good development for a democracy. We need intelligent people on all sides not wingnuts and bigots like Mary Grabar.
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