Mary, Mary, Why You Buggin’?
Apparently, America is not producing enough domestic scolds and has had to start importing them from Slovenia. Yes, Mary Grabar, everyone’s favorite humorless right-wing academic, is back, and her granny-panties are, as always, in a twist.
“University classrooms are starting to look a lot like Oprah,” she says to our confusion. Does she mean black? Expensively dressed? Constantly fluctuating in size? No, she means that they’re filled with “emotive, postmodern bunkum”.
Let’s skip my usual rant about how the only thing these people seem to actually know about postmodernism is that they hate it, and head straight for the buffet.
I suppose I should not have been surprised that Oprah Winfrey gave the commencement address at Stanford University.
When you’re a professional outrage manufacturer, you’re not surprised at anything, especially unsurprising things like a famous person giving a commencement speech at a prominent school. Your job is not to be surprised, but to be offended.
My college classroom, if I follow the dominant pedagogical directives, should resemble Oprah’s emotive coffee klatches.
Mary, of course, is a professor of literature, and as we all know, emotion has nothing to do with art.
And it’s something that I sense my students have come to expect, already versed as they are in the mantra of “I feel” and “that’s your opinion.”
It is unacceptable in Grabardemia to feel something about literature, or to claim that someone else’s opinion might not necessarily be valid, but it is perfectly acceptable to make sweeping generalizations based on what you “sense” your students have come to expect.
The hands are quick to pop up when I pose a question like “Did you like the poem?” or “What did you think of the Misfit?” But when it comes time to closely interpret a couple of lines from Paradise Lost, most of the students (those who have brought the book) do not deign even to look at the page. Few bother to note my clarifications or explications.
In other words, when Mary asks her students what they thought of something, they answer readily. But when she tells them what they are supposed to think about something, they don’t pay much attention. What a great teacher she must be!
Course offerings on Oprah appear in college catalogs, while those on Milton disappear.
“Prove”, a good teacher might write in the margins of a paper containing this claim.
I blame it on women
Well of course you do.
specifically those women who, instead of working their ways into the club through rules of evidence, common values, and objective scholarship, have pushed in their alternate “ways of knowing.”
The sorry state of academia is the fault of women who have dared to suggest that traditionally marginalized groups might have something to teach us, instead of following the previously preferred route to academic success, which involves being a man.
In the matriarchal upheaval in the academy, the great works of the canon that draw from our Western tradition, like Milton’s majestic Paradise Lost
Again with Milton. I don’t know how to break it to Mary, but it is entirely possible to study the works of John Milton at a major university. In fact, a quick Amazon search yields several dozen books about Milton published in 2008 alone, many of which appear to be by academics. So it seems like they’re learning about the guy somewhere; maybe in Slovenia, I dunno.
are replaced by crudely rendered emotive investigations into oppression, like Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,”
Ah, yes, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written in the emotive postmodernist year of 1892. “I shiver over it as much as I did when I first read it in manuscript,” wrote effeminate Marxist William Dean Howells; “too terribly good to be printed,” raved genocidal Communist Horace Scudder; “a small literary masterpiece that deserves the widest possible audience”, wrote terrorist-abetting non-man Elaine Hedges. It was left until 2008 for a clear-eyed objective scholar named Mary Grabar to deliver the final verdict: “crudely rendered emotive investigation into oppression”. So saith the author of Dancing with Derrida (unpublished as of this writing).
or any of the “multicultural” offerings in the latest anthology.
There is no need to quote from them, or even name them, because they are all just so terrible.
In addition to eviscerating the canon to add women’s writing, of whatever dubious value (personal letters, diary entries, popular books)
Obviously, personal letters, diary entries and popular books are only to be allowed in the canon when they are written by people like Peter Abelard, Samuel Pepys, and Charles Dickens. You know: men.
the academic feminists’ project was to attack the base of our way of thinking, which they correctly traced back to the notion of a monotheistic God who created a universe with an order based on reason
Well, there you have it, folks: shut down the philosophy departments, shutter the theology classrooms, and convert all the science labs into foosball lounges. Mary Grabar (who was invited to read a chapter of her as-yet-unpublished novel Dancing with Derrida at the 2005 Art and Soul Festival at Baylor University, where the theme was humor) has explained it all for you: our way of thinking is traceable to the (correct!) notion of a monotheistic God who created a universe based on reason. Q.E.D.!
Repeatedly, in the literature and in instructor orientations, I have been enjoined to encourage students in “group work,” to use the classroom to promote a more equitable society, to refrain from telling a student her answer is “wrong,” and to encourage the exploration of feelings through assignments.
There will be no working together in groups, promoting equity, or expressing one’s emotions through literature as long as Mary Grabar is alive. The purpose of education is to promote one dominant group’s interpretation of what art and literature means. That’s a lesson easily learned by someone who grew up in Slovenia under Soviet rule, and simply transferred to a new set of masters.
At departmental meetings as a temporary assistant professor at one of the low-rung state universities in Georgia, I felt smothered by the preponderance of women, all feminist, in attendance.
And that’s why I now teach at the highly prestigious Pajamas University.
The fact that I was served cookies by the department head did not ease the pain of watching an older gentlemanly “man of letters,” a Shakespeare scholar, steamrollered over with the ideas of these women as they assertively proposed and incorporated such nonsense as the study of ladies’ undergarments and rap lyrics into the curriculum.
Not only were they being insufficiently deferential to a man in the room, but they were proposing that the college teach poetry written by NEGROES! Can you imagine? NEGROES!
It makes me wonder if women as a group are simply not as suited to the academic or intellectual life.
I’ll go you one further, Mary old bean: it makes me wonder if women as a group are simply not suited to leaving the home at all, and instead should be shuttered in the kitchen and garret areas where they can alternately make me dinner and pine away until it is time to fulfill their intimate marital duties, as our monotheistic reason-based God intended.
Only a couple of my fifteen students last semester recognized the reference to “judge not that we be not judged” in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address: “It’s somewhere in the Bible, isn’t it?” they asked.
What? That’s the right answer, isn’t it? Is she mad that all of them didn’t know it, or that the ones who did know it didn’t stand up straight-backed and holler “MATTHEW 7:1, SIR!”? Mary seems a lot more worried that her students know where “Judge not, that ye be not judged” comes from than she does that they know what it means; it’s certainly not a piece of Jesus’ advice that she has taken to heart.
Need we say more to demonstrate how far our educational system has deteriorated in the hands of women and weak men?
Oh, Mary, you know how it gets me hot when you use the royal ‘we’. Please say more about how dames and homos have destroyed academia. Please.
I wonder if her students know how much she despises them.
Whoah, I hadn’t gotten around to Paradise Lost. Too long by 50%.
PENIS
Okay, we’ve established here at S,N! that Grabar still teaches at Fairly Crummy Metro-Atlanta State, yes?
Because if that’s still true, I have a bit of unfortunate news for Prof. Grabar: The reason why your students don’t listen to you is because it’s not like they’re in it for the learnin’. FCMAS students are there to get a diploma and get the hell out. Or finish their time at a real school.
Last thing they want is some maladjusted scold to amp up the wingnuttery to level 11.
As for the stories of the Shakespearean scholar being rudely dismissed by the bra-burning radicals…um, no. That just isn’t plausible at a place like FCMAS. Sorry. Far be it for me to accuse Mary Grabar of stretching the truth, of course…I’m sure those horrible tales of Obama supporters mocking her ethnicity were all true, true, true.
She’s a parody, right? Even that picture is a joke.
And she couldn’t keep her job at said low-rung state university in Georgia? Imagine!
I’ll bet she was just a barrel of sunshine at those departmental meetings.
Though I know it’s too much to ask or expect any differently, but I hate it when people get so wrapped up in their own hatred that they have begun to hate themselves. She’s s’damn spiteful that she thinks someone should have barricaded her in the kitchen instead of letting her get that f***ing degree. I’m inclined to agree with that sentiment, but that would mean I agree with her.
To Chet: From what students have said about her teaching skills, I’d say it’s a mutual thing.
(& parenthetically, as I read this post, one thing in particular came to mind: isn’t teaching one of the (very) few fields where women (yes! WOMEN!) have been traditionally accepted, lo, these many years? I realize the Conservative Era that we’ve been blessed to live through doesn’t think much of women, but surely it’s marginally acceptable for them to eek out a living teaching?)
I like this gal’s style.
Me too. That whole make arguments without even attempting to back them up thingy? Brilliant stuff.
Wait, does “monotheistic God” mean that God worships some kind of Super-God? Because that’s just weird.
I think at this point we can easily name one woman who might not be best suited for a career in academe.
Good God… not The Yellow Wallpaper! I swear I had to read that no fewer than two times in high school and three times in college. I’m so fucking sick of that story.
Given that, Mary still doesn’t have a point.
I’m still dizzy from trying to sort out Mary’s use of selective quoting versus her over-use of scare-quotes, but isn’t resisting an ‘egalitarian vision of social order’ a bad thing? I mean, isn’t “egalitarian” one of those universally-agreed-upon “good things”?
(see Mary? Single-quotes for quoting, double-quotes for emphasis. Or switch it up, but be consistent, eh?)
If a male student feels ‘smothered’ by a view of a society where they are on equal footing with others, wouldn’t we call those people “dicks”?
AARGH! My brain has been Grabared! I can’t think clearly, or write, which should properly be called typing, at least in this context, now that I’ve read too much Grabar! Grabargrabargrabar!
All men hate Oprah.
I may come back to nutpick the comments (there are some real winners there, boyhowdy!) but now I have to go massage the Grabar-cramp out of my brain. GRABAR!!!!
Zhak, women are supposed to teach children, where their adorable child-like ways are appropriate. College, however, is much too high minded for silly little ladies to teach well, and thus men must take over the task.
Isn’t a “monotheistic God” a god that believes in one God?
Our rapidly dwindling number of male college students, especially in the humanities, may evidence that this new feminine “social order” is smothering to them.
God forbid women do anything but get married at 14 and have children. If the U.S. had a better than lackluster attitude towards education, perhaps more men would be in college. But I think it deals less with dwindling male numbers and surging female numbers as they realize that the kitchen view isn’t that pretty after all.
You have to wonder what happened along the way for this woman to so completely turn on what little success she’s had. She’s pointing out the very things that she as an apparently godforsaken woman represents.
Additionally, what’s with these people and their complete inability to friggin proofread? K-Lo, sadly, seems to be the norm w/r/t editing in the wingnut world.
No, that would be the meta-God, who must ask the meta-meta-God if the meta-God exists, who must ask the meta-meta-meta-God if the meta-meta-God exists… and so on*.
—
* Gödel, Escher, Bach reference. I have yet to meet someone who’s actually read the whole thing. I read about a quarter of it the first time, and half of it the second time.
Blue Buddha:
I read about half, then just got bored. I have a short attention span sometimes.
Also, when you are 1/2 way through and still have no idea what the point is, that’s generally a sign.
You know, my dad teaches math part-time at a couple of small colleges, one of which has an “open admissions” policy — basically they accept anyone but students have to maintain a certain GPA, so the freshman class is … well, not uniformly great. And some of the classes he teaches are for non-majors, or they’re remedial classes. He’s told me about what students will do when they really don’t give a shit about the class and how frustrating it can get for him. What he hasn’t ever said, that I can think of, is that it’s somehow the fault of “our culture” that a kid who barely graduated high school and is going to major in business or communications or whatever might not care that much about graphing functions. Because that would be stupid.
Egads! Grabar totally justifies her concern at the end of the article. You see, Oprah took her opportunity to address the Stanford graduating class by delivering a commencement speech that was another rendition of her standard theme of “feelings, failure, and finding happiness” — and organized in an associative, fluid manner.
I mean, what happened to the commencement speeches of old?
I got something to put in you
I got something to put in you
At the GRABAR!
GRABAR! GRABAR! woo
I sort of got his point about halfway through: basically it’s about feedback systems and the patterns they produce. It’s the godfather work of fractal theory and design (which didn’t become a household word until about a decade later). However, he just drones on and on and on and on with various examples… sort of like a feedback loop stretching into infinity. Hmmmmm.
Gods fear Metagods
who might decide to smite them
Metagods fear Metametagods
and so on ad infinitum
Can I blame women if American universities still dominate world rankings? When Iraq finally dominates such rankings thanks to all that nice fresh paint can I blame Iraqi women for that?
Yeah. I bet those “low-rung state universities in Georgia” are all just overrun with steamrolling feminists forcing rap lyrics and ladies’ undergarments down the throats of elderly gentleman Shakespeare scholars. Happens all the time down here in the Southland.
Jesse Helm’s zombie-corpse gave the commencement speech at my high school back in 1939, before Montana declared slavery illegal. Afterwards, he dropped by the Blood Clot Bar and ate the brains of black folks, he and the Aryan-white supremacist-biker gang that later became our local school board and town council.
Good times…….good times.
The somewhat-major university I attended in the Southland sure didn’t have many steamrolling feminists. I doubt the ROTC and Greeks would have let them know they weren’t too welcome.
I did harken back to the one really kook of a proffesor that I did have, my undergrad physics prof. He went “around the bend” one day. He was found, late one night, wandering around campus with no shoes and sucking in and out on a harmonica. He went on sabbatical shortly thereafter.
“University classrooms are starting to look a lot like Oprah,” she says to our confusion.
What?! Is there a new car under my seat?!!
Engineering students don’t have to read Paradise Lost.
Is it any good?
That’s one brilliant analysis of one type of pedagogue that one still encounters lurching around college campuses, completely failing to transmit to students any reason to read Milton except because you’re MADE to. I
I love Grabar’s assumption that there is one way, and one way only, to teach — and that success isn’t measured by whether people actually learn.
The hands are quick to pop up when I pose a question like “Did you like the poem?” or “What did you think of the Misfit?” But when it comes time to closely interpret a couple of lines from Paradise Lost, most of the students (those who have brought the book) do not deign even to look at the page. Few bother to note my clarifications or explications.
Okay, I’m as assistant English prof, and I’ve experienced this too. Do I think the problem’s feminism? Uh…no. The problem is that close reading is hard, and it’s a skill that has to be taught; then, if you’re lucky, you can teach them about literary meaning being open instead of straightforward. If you can get the students doing discussion of this multiplicity combined with close reading, well, then you’ve been very, very lucky, because it means you’ve managed to teach them something (and if Graber thinks poststructuralists don’t do close reading, then she’s probably never actually read any Derrida….).
But if you think the problem with students is that they have to be taught, then maybe you need to do something else for a living. Sheesh.
And, btw, when I adjuncted at Barnard–you know, a liberal arts, hoity-toity, women’s college–I taught Homer, Euripides, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, Milton, your basic blah blah Western Lit course, with a few concessions for the crowd: The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, The Princess of Cleves (a great novel, although I really wanted it to be about butchers), Frankenstein, To the Lighthouse, and Their Eyes were Watching God. Sheesh.
OMG! Blasphemy. The graduate is merely the vessel which carries the degree.
I sort of got his point about halfway through: basically it’s about feedback systems and the patterns they produce. It’s the godfather work of fractal theory and design (which didn’t become a household word until about a decade later).
I kinda remember that, yeah. And it did have interesting stuff. I guess I wasn’t approaching it in a very disciplined manner. Also, I guess I don’t really love mathematics for its own sake like some people do.
Engineering students don’t have to read Paradise Lost.
Is it any good?
I actually haven’t read it myself (for shame!), but I’d send you one of the 15 copies (I’m dead serious) that my boss just ordered. They’re sitting in the conference room right now.
Frankenstein
Another example of eviscerating the canon to add women’s writing.
Geez, I think Grabar’s real problem is that she was getting lazy:
IOW, how is she supposed to grade an essay if it isn’t in standard five paragraph form? Surely She’s not expected to actually read it!
Engineering students don’t have to read Paradise Lost.
Is it any good?
It has a great villain.
Ah, I get it now. The problem with all these fucking students is that the teacher has to fucking teach them shit – like literary meaning in fucking books – in a literature class!
Fucking feminists.
This is way down on the list of stupid things here, but how is a President’s inaugural address any more appropriate for discussion in a lit class than women’s undergarments or “rap” lyrics?
Thanks, W.E.B. It was just a joke, though…
The nice thing about engineering is that there are usually only two answers, right and wrong. None of this messing around with emotion, symbolism, intrepretation, metaphors, analogies… Really useless stuff, in my mind. Right and wrong! That’s how the world is supposed to work! Did you bridge stay up? Or fall down? Wait, after last year, that might not be such a great example… Uh… See, your refrigerator works or it doesn’t. Except when the lettuce gets all brown and slimey. Still, you have ice to put in your high fructose laced soda, so that’s a good thing, right?
I’m still incensed over some answers that my high school English teacher marked wrong on some tests we had about the novels we read. It was about symbolism! How could she tell me my intrepretation was wrong and her’s was right?
I tell you, the world just shouldn’t be run like that. Black and white. That’s what I want.
¡ Auuu, lo estúpido! ¡me quema !
Paradise Lost? tl;dr
Misfit? Maybe if Glenn Danzig comes badk; otherwise, nah.
Paradise Lost has some really cool parts with demons and stuff but there’s some really stupid shit about free will and predestination that’s just embarrassing.
How tired I am of that tired old saw that if we teach classes about certain types of things it follows that classes about other types of things must naturally be removed! Particularly Teh Classics. A quick search of any major university course catalog disproves this tired old conservative game.
I have been enjoined… to refrain from telling a student her answer is “wrong,
Well, gee, especially in a course about literature, especially when a teacher might want to interest the student in the material, or inspire a student to be curious to learn more about the material, it seems like a GOOD thing to not tell a student her answer is “wrong.”
Damn that Anne Frank and her diary, butting into the Western Canon.
I studied Milton and the BIble at my state University. I guess I don’t exist.
Meanwhile, of course, Mary is writing short stories about miserable women college English teachers, lusting after her male students and married rednecks.
already versed as they are in the mantra of “I feel” and “that’s your opinion”
You teach literature, comments on fictional stories.
“I feel” and “that’s your opinion” are the warp and woof of your profession.
If you’re looking for a universe with an order based on reason, you’re in the wrong discipline, honey.
Personally I think that American Psycho should be required reading for everyone at or above the third grade level.
Actually, the universe DOES have an order based on reason.
It’s the damn people who inhabit the place that are all screwed up.
I dunno, the idea of a Super God is almost enough to make me not want to be an atheist.
Sooo, Grabar, a women teacher, thinks women are not suited to be teachers. And she believes that art and expression and abstract thought should be held with absolutes of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.
The self loathing tastes like sadness! Do you ever wonder how many times she goes home and dreams of being a male pre-calc teacher?
Slippery slope my friends. If we don’t stop this feminist madness, soon our college students will be studying pelican literature and marrying box turtles and having gay abortions – all while praising Allah, the Atheist God.
Again with Milton.
Ya know what I think? I think Paradise Lost was the only “classic” she was able to get through and fully wrap her brain around in the course of getting her doctorate. I know a guy that’s the same way about The Republic. Every discussion with him will include the line “Well, Plato said…” and then I’ll remind him it’s 2000-fucking-years later. He is a libertarian, and I don’t know if this is relevent or not but it makes me giggle.
Is it any good?
No. Milton’s long-winded and his jokes are boring. Even Mrs. Milton didn’t find them funny.
All men hate Oprah.
I think we’re supposed to. Another libertarian acquaintence uses Oprah to illustrate the dangers of rampant feminism and the demasculization of American Manly Men. I have nothing against Oprah, and he says that’s evidence I’m in the closet. *shrug*
I was raised by a bleeding heart liberal literature PhD mother to love great literature, including great literature by dead white English guys. So I get more than a little pissed off when wingnut troglodytes tell me that me and my kind are out to destroy these things because we suggest that something written in the last 120 years might be worth reading.
The nice thing about engineering is that there are usually only two answers, right and wrong.
I majored in journalism, which is even better. All we have to say is “Well, that’s what he said.”
OT:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200807080003
I’m confused. There’s no way a dude with that much ego and self-love doesn’t have four mirrors in every room. How can he not tell that those illustrations are dead-on, aside from the colors?
… isn’t teaching one of the (very) few fields where women (yes! WOMEN!) have been traditionally accepted, lo, these many years? I realize the Conservative Era that we’ve been blessed to live through doesn’t think much of women, but surely it’s marginally acceptable for them to eke out a living teaching?
Sjofn is correct: According to conservatives, lowly women are perfectly acceptable as “teachers”, aka babysitters, for the pullulating majority of the student population who just need to be kept off the streets and out of the workforce for a dozen years while they’re beaten into enough of an education to let them sign up for high-interest credit cards and subprime mortgages (but never enough that they’ll be able to interpret the fine print on those applications). However, in Grabar’s fantasy world, “educators” — especially at the university level — should be stern taskmasters skilled at inculcating our Brave New World’s Alpha class with the highly sophisticated (or at least jesuitical) arguments necessary to ensure the smooth continuance of Everything That Is for the Best in this Best of All Possible Worlds… a job patently too demanding for the average woman or woman-equivalent, those of us who (unlike brave Mary Grabar!) are unwilling to sack up and insist that our students tell us what we believe our masters want to hear, not what those students may actually have experienced.
And that is the heart, or the pith, of Grabar’s real problem: A great teacher, in the classic sense, trains his or her students how to think. A great “conservative”, in Grabar/NRO/NCLB-world, trains his or her students what to think.
The fact is, I would hit that.
By Grabar’s hammer, you shall be avenged. I’m going to find Oprah’s copy of the Canterbury tales and tear out the Wife of Bath’s tale and the Parson’s Prologue. That way, after the saucy prologue she’ll go straight to the the longest and boring-est and it doesn’t even have any sex and cripes the Parson’s tale sucks ass. Ha ha, that’ll teach Oprah a lesson in feminist pedagogy.
since when, I ask, do colleges ask professors to shape their curriculum according to the content of a commencement speaker’s speech?
If that wer the case, wouldn’t BYU require professors to slaughter kittens in front of students, following Dick Cheney’s example?
Would Mary think the commencement speaker excerpted here has provided more academic rigor in college classrooms/:
And of course, we celebrate your beautiful university. I’ve been to Pepperdine before, when then-Governor Bush delivered your commencement address. But it’s been a while, and I wanted to refresh my memory before coming back, so I did the easiest thing: I went online. (Laughter.) All the updates I needed about Malibu I found on the home page for US Weekly. (Laughter.) Then I went to Pepperdine’s website to learn more about Seaver College, and I found some enticing descriptions of your campus. This is what the website says: “Nestled in the rolling foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains, the Malibu campus commands a majestic view of the Pacific Ocean. Parking is provided on campus.” (Laughter.)
I looked to see who else has addressed Pepperdine’s graduates. It turns out you’ve had many distinguished commencement speakers. I was especially impressed by your speaker from 1992: my mother-in-law, Barbara Bush. (Laughter.)
One piece of advice that I can give you is that it’s generally a good idea to follow the lead of your mother-in-law. (Laughter.) And I saw that my mother-in-law gave the 1992 graduates sound parting wisdom. So then I thought back to my own graduation, and tried to remember the advice that my graduation speaker gave to me. But I couldn’t recall who gave the commencement address at the University of Texas in 1973. Maybe that’s — and I hate to admit it — because I skipped the ceremony. (Laughter.) UT didn’t offer “Convo Credit.” (Laughter.) But I did look it up, and I found out who gave that commencement address. And you can imagine my surprise when I discovered it was some guy named George Bush. (Laughter and applause.) Four years after that speech, I married his son. (Laughter.)
There you have it. Instead of Oprah’s message of self-confience, what a commencement speaker really should do is superficial on-line research, name-dropping, and read back the college’s own PR lines.
Excuse me for asking, but at which Research I university is Mary currently teaching? If not one of those, surely she has a tenure track job at a well-regarded institution and a long history of peer-reviewed articles, conference presentations and publication of books or book length works. Why, oh why are the internets hiding this information from me?! I want more of Mary’s wisdom so that I, too, can realize that my dreams of graduate education and creative expression are just a foolish waste of time.
Now I want to read Paradise Lost again. You know, like I had to in my literature class at a state college not so very long ago. And The Canterbury Tales – in Middle English, no less. Along with The Boccacio. No emotions in either of those. Oh, wait. They were ALL about the touchy-feely….
Another libertarian acquaintence uses Oprah to illustrate the dangers of rampant feminism and the demasculization of American Manly Men. I have nothing against Oprah, and he says that’s evidence I’m in the closet. *shrug*
Awwww, it’s cute when libertarians resent those richer and more successful than them!
@Karl Steele
You totally stole my thunder–the passage you cite is the Grabar problem in microcosm. To be fair, teaching close reading is very difficult and not every English prof, even at top Universities, can do it well. It’s really easy to just talk about a poem and forget about trying to teach the mechanics of close reading–but once you nail it, well, that’s why people suffer poverty to become English professors; it’s awesome to hear students unpack and debate a text, whether we’re reading Milton or rap lyrics. But Grabar practically admits that she’s not teaching close reading at all–she simply expects students to note her “clarifications or explications”; they should simply bow to the brilliance of the literature. Forget about blaming women…I blame Dead Poets’ Society for Mary Grabar!!
With all of her whining about people enjoying “The Yellow Wallpaper” instead of Paradise Lost she’s actually guilty of exactly the thing she accuses her students of: she sees literature only as something that should be “great”, but she allows it no depth or insight (and politics must have nothing to do with literature!) I guess this is that Conservative Projection I’ve heard so much about.
FWIW, the few chances I’ve had to teach Paradise Lost have been absolutely wonderful–college students absolutely love it; it’s the easiest poem to teach in the canon. I fear not for the English majors of tomorrow.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is crap as a short story tho. Not that it shouldn’t be taught, just don’t make me do it…I’m a Renaissance guy anyway. Actually, I’m a Renaissance guy who sometimes teaches classes on rap music, so I must be a Grabar nightmare!
Canterbury Tales… Phhhffft. Why would anyone want to read a book that isn’t even finished! Tell me that!
You hippie LIE-bruls and your high-falutin’ talk about college and book learnin’ and such has nothing to do with life here in the Heartland. You’re so caught up in your pointy-headed smart-guy world that you’re missing the most important things in life.
For example: WE ARE AT WAR! Yeah, I know that you “think” you know what I’m talking about, but trust me, you don’t. You see, we (the USA of AMERICA) have sent teams of spys and troublemakers along with a huge bunch of money and bombs and such into Iran, to try to overthrow their government. This means we support terrorism. President For Life Bush, the jet-pilot hero of the Iraq War, has made it his mission to fight against terrorism and to wage war on countries that support terrorism. Thus, he’s at war with us!! So, he HAS to evesdrop on our phone calls and take away our Constitutional rights and send us to prisons in eastern Europe to have our skins boiled off BECAUSE WE SUPPORT TERRORISM, G*d d*mn it!! I don’t know how this happened (life is complicated, right?), but we’re in a heap of trouble and should just surrender to the black helicopters and march off to the Halliburton holiday camps without making anymore trouble for anyone.
(sigh) I don’t even know how I’m gonna be able to walk out of my basement with my hands above my head, for one thing, I can’t turn the doorknob that way and for another, there’s a couple of rabid pelicans sitting in the tree right next to my house (they’ve had me pinned down here for 4 days now, and show no sign of leaving) and as soon as I exit my house to surrender, those m*ther f*ckers are gonna be on me like greased lightning, sucking my blood and making ME into a zombie-vampire too! I’m d*mned if I do and I’m d*mned if I don’t, but you LIE-bruls just go on talking about college life and how cool it is to be in a saturnity or whatever.
Idiots.
Along with The Boccacio.
You of course mean the bocconcini.
THAT”S what I mean! Cheeses made from the milk of water buffaloes!
Clarity!
Wow… Mary shows up in the comments to the piece, and really shows her stuff.
Oh that’s why there aren’t as many female engineers and tycoons. It’s wiring! Of course, it’s so simple and obvious! They’re just wired differently. That’s why there aren’t many female tycoons! Centuries of sexism, the wage gap, the glass ceiling, all of these things are just chimeras dreamed up to explain women’s faulty wiring at business!
I FEEL, I FEEL, THAT’S ALL YOU EVER TALK ABOUT, MARY!
My lesbian Milton teacher was great, but I couldn’t force myself to read Paradise Lost all that closely. I read it on my own years later. It has its moments, but I wish I had paid more attention in my class. Never take a Milton course spring quarter.
I thought the difference between male and female was more a matter of plumbing than the wiring.
But hey, I’m just an engineer…
Hey now, I just got a gig at the place where Grabar used to teach. It’s better than you think; for one thing, she no longer teaches there.
WF
“The Yellow Wallpaper”?! It was just about the only thing I enjoyed reading in college English courses. Even better, I was able to write compare/contrast papers about “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Robert W. Chambers’ “The Yellow Sign.”
Why do I suspect that Grabar thinks the only real literature is literature that’s painfully dull. “Only through suffering through long, boring megasized blocks of text can we attain enlightenment!”
I apologize if someone has already linked to her ratemyrofessors page.
Sample quote:
Disclosure regarding the university ranking list I posted above: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_and_university_rankings#Academic_Ranking_of_World_Universities
So if women aren’t wired to be tycoons, how the hell did Oprah get to be a multi-gajillionaire with tons of power to change the way the academy operates?
And damn you, Bubba, for making me want cheese and for making me feel like an ass because it’s The Decameron BY Bocaccio. Which just goes to show that women are, in fact, unsuited for the academic life. Not remembering a book I read 10 years ago.
I almost want to take her class just so I can fill out the end-of-term survey: “
Dear Professor GrabarLook here, missy. I don’t know whether to start with your bad hair or your crackpot interpretations of literature, both informed by your crackpot ideology. Also, you’re a trollop and a cunt.”I’ve read Paradise Lost, in High School (my High School was a High School that took steroids, and made us take figurative steroids). Well, not the whole thing in class (we needed the time to read other things, like Hamlet). Its a very interesting read, the intellectual equivalent of karate classes. You can’t read it on your own though. Because I think, in an English class (or a history class) disagreeing with each other is half the fun.
We’re 72 comments in and there’s STILL more stupid to unpack here. How’s that for close reading and interpretation, Mary?
the academic feminists’ project was to attack the base of our way of thinking, which they correctly traced back to the notion of a monotheistic God who created a universe with an order based on reason
While I hate to underestimate the super radical nature of super unhinged feeling-obsessed menstrual radical feminist liberal academic Oprah-feminists, presumably they’re teaching classes about literature, right? Like we haven’t yet gotten to the point where entire lit classes just consist of cunnilingus advice, right?
What I’m driving at here is that they’re teaching points of view apart from the reasonalicious God-who-believes-in-only-one-God because these other points of view are expressed in books and poems. In particular, these other points of view seem to be expressed in books and poems that were written in the last couple of centuries. If Grabar has beef with that, she should take it up with those writers, not the people teaching their work.
Or maybe she thinks everyone will go back to penning Christian epic poems if the damn feminazi college professors refuse to teach their work?
Wow.
Mary Grabar, despite her degree, is no smarter than your average wingnut.
Smarter than Thomas Sowell, no doubt. But easily approaching George Will in intelligence.
Or maybe she thinks everyone will go back to penning Christian epic poems if the damn feminazi college professors refuse to teach their work?
Should have said “modern writers” instead of “everyone” to be more clear. D+. Please come see me during my office hours to discuss revisions — Prof. Grabar.
My favorite from her Rate My Professors Comments: The material is pretty interesting but somehow she makes it boring.
Indeed. What does Oprah know about the world? It’s not as though she succeeded in her life, after overcoming serious obstacles, or went on to use her wealth and influence to help others. It’s not as though her doctoral thesis on “The Meaning of the Pump Handle in George Eliot’s Novels” were moldering away in an academic library, sending out intellectual and logical vibrations.
BTW, I found the rest of Mary’s story, Roosters here.
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/9829.html#comment-629238
The first part of the story is here.
http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/Secure/Content/cb.asp?cbid=5148
g brought it to our attention on this long, long thread.
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/9829.html
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a brilliant story about sexism and madness.
Discuss.
I always find it bizarre when conservatives complain about the ‘western cannon’ being displaced — as if every University in 1667 decided to just start teaching Paradise Lost. Paradise Lost displaced the the works of Seneca, Epictetus, Epicurus, etc. . . It’s a bit like whining that freshmen come to her class without having read Marcus Aurelius, or crying ‘the end is nigh’ because undergraduates matriculate without a functional understanding of Latin.
She suffered under boring teachers to get her degree, and these little snot-noses won’t do the same!
I sense a case of “hazing justification.”
You know, where the future President of the United States burned you with a red-hot wire coathanger, so in turn, you get to burn pledges with a red-hot wire coathanger, all in the hope that you will get ahead in this world, and aspire to be POTUS yourself, where you can dispense with the crude, homemade torture devices and get to use the real stuff.
Grabar!
Grabar, Grabar bo Brabar Banana fanna fo Frabar
Fee fy mo Mrabar, Grabar!
When Grabar talks about teaching O’Connor and Gilman, she’s not talking about teaching literature, she’s talking about teaching first year composition, as a part-time/adjunct/non-tenure-track instructor, most certainly not a professor of literature. And when she conflates the timeline with her classroom experiences and with her history of those sad, feminazi department meetings when she failed the tenure-test before she became a wandering adjunct, teaching wherever she can find the work, she is being dishonest once again: she likely has not been at a department meeting or orientation/instructor training meeting for years. She is not really a member of academia as much as she is a jealous little turd who could never muster the false collegiality necessary for transforming the crappy PhD in Literature (and talk about a useless degree in this academic job market) into a fulltime tenured position as an associate or full professor. She’s a shitty Composition (no disrespect for Comp, the best course in college) teacher at some little place that probably does a lot of good for its students but whose students loathe her (read ratemyprofessor.com), a frustrated literary aesthete, a failure as an academic, a wallflower who never had a rewarding relationship, she’s a loser. If she could only be half-attractive in Malkin’s eerie way or get down with the tranny aesthetic like Pam Atlas, she could find that niche market of angry, confused college republicans (both male and female alike). UNtil then, let’s not talk about her little part-time job as if it was anything more than that.
“the academic feminists’ project was to attack the base of our way of thinking”
Yes, madam, and it is my duty to inform you and the totality of your base, both with regards to your way of thinking and to any and all ancillary matters appertaining thereto, is now the sole possession of us, our heirs and assigns.
Shit.
THAT the totality of your base, etc.
She’s no Jeff Godlstein.
she likely has not been at a department meeting or orientation/instructor training meeting for years.
Too true. The department chair probably wouldn’t recognize her by sight.
jprice vincenz said,
OUCH, that left a mark.
‘Cept I wouldn’t be bustin out with any damn Tranny Jokes around here if’n y’know what’s good for ya…
Just sayin…
mikey
undergraduates matriculate without a functional understanding of Latin.
What Latin do you need besides “ect” and “ad homonym” and “La plus ça change, la plus c’est la même chose”?
What Latin do you need besides
Caveat emptor?
That’s “ad hominem”. Homonyms are, of course, words that sound the same; such as homonym and hominem.
I’m pretty sure this is the Grabar’s website:
http://www.madcowtouristinfo.com/
No. Milton’s long-winded and his jokes are boring. Even Mrs. Milton didn’t find them funny.
Thank you, Professor Jennings.
“At departmental meetings as a temporary assistant professor at one of the low-rung state universities in Georgia, I felt smothered by the preponderance of women”
Clearly she’s well-versed in the mantra of “I feel.” I blame Oprah.
If Paradise Lost is so freakin’ great, how come it hasn’t been made into a movie yet? Are Gerard Depardieau and Keanu Reeves holding the rights or something? Or does it just have a crappy screenplay? Maybe it could be renamed “My Dinner with Satan” and have an international cast of Lapplanders, African Bushmen, and Pauly Shore, with a Wallace Shawn cameo. If Spike Jonze directs, can Bjork do the soundtrack?
/grabarcoronary
A plug for Milton: Paradise Lost is long and hard to understand at times, and Milton’s ideas about women (not to mention free will and more arcane theological stuff) are pretty hard to take … but it is the most sublime poetry. I feel sorry for Mary’s students, who have probably conflated their loathing of Mary with the difficulties of the poem, and who may therefore never be able to appreciate it.
What Latin do you need besides Caveat emptor?
That’s Latin? I thought it was Libertarian.
I hate Milton. And with that sentence, my Hideous Feminist Agenda has been revealed.
I hear the revolution comes with cheese now?
Homonyms are, of course, words that sound the same; such as homonym and hominem.
a-heh, forgot this:
/snark
Remember, the other week Dr. Grabar was shouting about how us virgin-ravishing furniture-stealing liberally librals had destroyed Western Civ because we weren’t allowing the teaching of John Donne any more.
Despite all that, we just did a bit of close reading of a rather anti-feminist poem by Donne at Nothing New, the one that starts out your girlfriend’s face is like a word jumble and ends up with Bible-based dildo jokes, with bestiality allusions and more in between, and no, I’m not making any of that up.
But I really do wish I knew how Dr. Grabar would have taught ‘The Anagram,’ because after all we must be bringing in all kinds of touchy-feely-female-icky-squicky stuff, otherwise there wouldn’t be fifty-odd comments from amateur and professional academics all debating the meaning of “her velvet glass”…
Notwithstanding all this harrumphing about Milton, Mary Grabar’s PhD thesis is entitled _Analogies between Nazi culture and American culture in “Gravity’s Rainbow”, “The Thanatos Syndrome”, and “White Noise”_
I kan haz kanin plz?
a-heh, forgot this:
/snark>
Oh good. I dreaded telling you some of your Latin was really French.
The fact is, I’d like to take a few moments to talk to you liberals about G-d.
Uh — [waves hand frantically] ‘scuse me! ‘scuse me! Pynchon, Percy and DeLillo aren’t in the canon. And “White Noise” is way postmodern besides.
Prof. Grabar’s DUMB!
The “western cannon” was actually displaced by the western breech-loading rifled gun (which is much more efficient and powerful).
Matriculate? Uh-uh, no way. That shit’ll make you go blind.
And what’s up with blaming the academic wimmen? It’s them male professors that have sent the university to hell, what with their tweed jackets and drumming circles and shit.
I dreaded telling you some of your Latin was really French.
It would have ruined my day. 🙂 C’est la vie, as the Latins do say.
C’est la vie, as the Latins do say.
I don’t get it. Latin America’s French?
Courtesy of Milton:
Sabrina fair
Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of Lillies knitting
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair,
Listen for dear honour’s sake,
Goddess of the silver lake,
Listen and save.
Listen and appear to us
In name of great Oceanus,
By the earth-shaking Neptune’s mace,
And Tethys grave majestick pace,
By hoary Nereus wrincled look,
And the Carpathian wisards hook,
By scaly Tritons winding shell,
And old sooth-saying Glaucus spell,
By Leucothea’s lovely hands,
And her son that rules the strands,
By Thetis tinsel-slipper’d feet,
And the Songs of Sirens sweet,
By dead Parthenope’s dear tomb,
And fair Ligea’s golden comb,
Wherwith she sits on diamond rocks
Sleeking her soft alluring locks,
By all the Nymphs that nightly dance
Upon thy streams with wily glance,
Rise, rise, and heave thy rosie head
From thy coral-pav’n bed,
And bridle in thy headlong wave,
Till thou our summons answered have.
Listen and save.
An odd duck, indeed – Puritan opponent of the Stewarts who wrote lush sensual poetry full of pagan references and has a nature goddess show up at the end of one to save the heroine when her manly-man brothers can’t accomplish it with their swords…
What exactly *does* Dr. Grabar think of “Comus and the Revelers,” I wonder? And how does she teach it?
Wow. A self-hating woman. It’s not like that niche hasn’t been filled already.
To think just before this entry I read an interview of the journalist responsible for the Limbaugh love letter disguised as investigative reporting. His defense of Rush’s harsh language: “It’s just his opinion, of course.” But Mary comes along to remind “us” that opinions are invalid. Guess that means – yes – only Republican ones count.
‘Zackly, MzNicky. It couldn’t be hard to find some equally curmudgeonly professor-type person disparaging the influx of flavor-of-the-moment works like those of DeLillo and Pynchon… for having displaced the Western Tradition.
im in ur kanin killin ur d00ds.
</snark>
I didn’t think that tag worked here.
bellatrys said,
July 9, 2008 at 0:49
Remember, the other week Dr. Grabar was shouting about how us virgin-ravishing furniture-stealing liberally librals had destroyed Western Civ because we weren’t allowing the teaching of John Donne any more.
All this reminds me of English 125, the last English course I signed up for.
It didn’t like me, and I didn’t like it back. So it was math and econ for the next three years (well, that small part of the next three years that I actually went to class).
If Paradise Lost is so freakin’ great, how come it hasn’t been made into a movie yet?
Well, he’s no Uwe Boll, but, via imdb, and too, many, commas, John Milton.
While Grabar whines mightlily and continuously, someone who really could write has packed it in. Thomas Disch killed himself July 4. I need to cry some.
C’est la vie
That’s what the old folks say.
More from ‘Comus’ – the Ariel-type character gives the concluding speech:
To the Ocean now I fly,
And those happy climes that ly
Where day never shuts his eye,
Up in the broad fields of the sky:
There I suck the liquid ayr
All amidst the Gardens fair
Of Hesperus, and his daughters three
That sing about the golden tree:
Along the crisped shades and bowres
Revels the spruce and jocond Spring,
The Graces, and the rosie-boosom’d Howres,
Thither all their bounties bring,
That there eternal Summer dwels,
And West winds, with musky wing
About the cedar’n alleys fling
Nard, and Cassia’s balmy smels.
Iris there with humid bow,
Waters the odorous banks that blow
Flowers of more mingled hew
Then her purfl’d scarf can shew,
And drenches with Elysian dew
(List mortals, if your ears be true)
Beds of Hyacinth, and roses
Where young Adonis oft reposes,
Waxing well of his deep wound
In slumber soft, and on the ground
Sadly sits th’ Assyrian Queen;
But far above in spangled sheen
Celestial Cupid her fam’d son advanc’t,
Holds his dear Psyche sweet intranc’t
After her wandring labours long,
Till free consent the gods among
Make her his eternal Bride,
And from her fair unspotted side
Two blissful twins are to be born,
Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn.
But now my task is smoothly don,
I can fly, or I can run
Quickly to the green earths end,
Where the bow’d welkin slow doth bend,
And from thence can soar as soon
To the corners of the Moon.
Mortals that would follow me,
Love vertue, she alone is free,
She can teach ye how to clime
Higher then the Spheary chime;
Or if Vertue feeble were,
Heav’n it self would stoop to her.
In a praise of savin’ it for marriage, he sure does manage to get a lot of sensuality in, including titties…
I did harken back to the one really kook of a proffesor that I did have, my undergrad physics prof. He went “around the bend” one day. He was found, late one night, wandering around campus with no shoes and sucking in and out on a harmonica. He went on sabbatical shortly thereafter.
Do I expose myself as a hopeless innumerate when I say this describes every physics major I’ve ever known? In fact, I assumed part of the PhD training in Physics involved training the student to wear pants during their pre-dawn peregrinations…
Srlsy, though, I consider Doctor-Professor Grabar’s choice for her Muse inapt. Why elevate a radical, terrorist-loving, First-Amendment-absolutist Protestant like Milton when she could honor a fine anti-populist Catholic like, for instance, Alexander Pope? Perhaps we can all chip in to buy her a nicely-bound well-annotated copy of The Dunciad and introduce her to a real classicist!
The Rt Hon DC Wangchuck opined:
“By Grabar’s hammer, you shall be avenged.”
God help me, I’ve been laughing for the last half hour.
The Apostle Paul admonishes us to ‘quit mixing in company .. not even eating with such an unclean [one].’ -1 Cor. 5:9-11; Mark 2:13-17. Although Paul was speaking primarily about Christians who fell into sin, there is no reason to conclude that this inspired Biblical principle cannot be applied to association with cats. Uncleanness in any form is condemned by Jehovah and the fact that the Apostle Paul made no distinction when it came to associating with housecats proves beyond a doubt to the right-thinking worshiper of Jehovah that loyal Christians must avoid all association with all sources of uncleanness. This would logically include animals that either harbor these tendencies or indulge in such practices. Moreover it is a well-known fact that a common practice of pagan males was to have cats bat at their erect penises for luck and not incidental pleasure, a practice which continued at least through the reign of Domitian. In some areas the practice was supplanted by individuals dressed in cat costumes – mockingly called Furrisees by the disapproving – who would collect a fee for the service. As in observant societies throughout the world, the high and the low alike attend the same rituals, and the libertine practitioners of cat drag saw fit to enter and offer money in the local houses of worship, including, to his displeasure, many of those Paul himself held forth at in his travels through the nascent realms of Christianity. Thus it is that we speak of groping peter to pay Paul.
Canterbury Tales… Phhhffft. Why would anyone want to read a book that isn’t even finished! Tell me that!
No, it’s finished. The Pilgrim’s Path is a four day walk, so the first few stories went quickly, and then the Parson’s Tale ate the rest of the time (man that guy’s long winded). I challenge anyone to get through the Parson’s Tale in less than four days. It’s fucking hard, because the entire time you screaming at him not to be such a fucking prig. Which is what was supposed to have happened.
Do I expose myself as a hopeless innumerate when I say this describes every physics major I’ve ever known?
No, I went through several years of Engineer School and saw a lot of the same kind of thing among both faculty and students. I associate it more with the pure-math types than the physicists, though. Maybe it’s regional, the particular specialty the woolly-noggins accumulate in.
That’s what the old folks say.
Robbie Nevil turns fifty this year!
God help me, I’ve been laughing for the last half hour.
Thanx, and as much as I’d like to believe I came up with it on my own, I probably remembered it from this post at Shakesville.
Yur in big trouble, Anne Laurie!
The specter of postmodernism constantly rears its ugly head in our Nation’s Universities. Whether its calling for “understanding” and “compassion” for our Nation’s enemies, silencing the free speech of students and faculty who love their Country or promoting an athiestic worldview. Many of our Nation’s ivy league colleges were originally used for training preachers in sound Bible Doctrine but now actively cheer on our enemies in a time of war by calling the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks “little Eichmans”. No wonder many our Nation’s young people are Obama supporters, their are being indoctrinated by leftwing professors and are no longer taught Patriotic values. Consider the case of Colombia University where students and faculty shouted down Jim Gilcrest and the Minutemen for wanting to preserve their Nation but embraced Mahmoud Ahmadenijad the modern day version of Hitler who wants to see America and Israel destroyed. Is it just me or is something not right with our education system today?
Is it just me or is something not right with our education system today?
Yep.
One of these things just doesn’t belong
Uma Thurman, because she’s the only one who’s dad is a university professor.
temporary assistant professor at one of the low-rung state universities in Georgia,
nice tactic for getting a full-time job in the tight academic job market, insult your employer, online, using your real name.
http://www.conservapedia.com/Professor_values
nice tactic for getting a full-time job in the tight academic job market, insult your employer, online, using your real name.
Self-fulfilling prophecy?
Self-fluffing prophecy?
Self-unfulfilling professory?
Self-fulfilling puffery?
And I thought political correctness was getting bad in this Country. The liberals in Britain are even crazier than our garden variety moonbat.
http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2008/07/british_toddlers_required_to_l.php?comments=show#comments
Jeebus H. Tapdancing McGillicuddy CHRIST, that “Roosters” thing is one of the most gawdawful pieces of writing I have ever laid my eyes on.
I can make some allowances for the possibility that English isn’t her first language, but she writes as if human isn’t her first species.
http://www.conservapedia.com/Professor_values
Conservapedia just ain’t the same since Gay Bowel Syndrome dropped off the top ten.
Well, you see, for that place, it’s a major coup just to be thought of as being on the ladder.
I had actually forgotten about Conservapedia. Holy fuck, is that thing funny.
Many of our Nation’s ivy league colleges were originally used for training preachers in sound Bible Doctrine but now actively cheer on our enemies in a time of war by calling the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks “little Eichmans”.
One University of Colorado professor = “Many of our Nation’s ivy league colleges”
September 2001 = “now”
The wingnut mind at work.
Oh, right. Troll. Don’t feed. I’m a little out of practice, sorry.
“At Northern Kentucky University, language and literature professor Sally Jacobsen incited some of her students to vandalize a pro-life display by Northern Right to Life, the campus pro-life group. Jacobsen herself also participated in the vandalism, which involved destroying rows of white crosses symbolizing the graves of aborted children. Jacobsen justified the vandalism as free speech, stating, “I did, outside of class during the break, invite students to express their freedom-of-speech rights to destroy the display if they wished to.” Jacobsen was unrepentant until given the choice of facing criminal charges of theft, criminal mischief and criminal solicitation or apologizing. Jacobsen chose the latter and also paid Northern Right to Life for damage to the display. Jacobsen was suspended by the university and subsequently retired.[18] ”
Postmodernism at work.
It seems more like an epidemic than an isolated incident.
Self-fulfilling prophecy?
A useful skill for professional victims like Grabar. make yourself unemployable, then blame the “other” for it….
Mary, of course, is a professor of literature, and as we all know, emotion has nothing to do with art.
Unless it’s an Ayn Rand rape scene with a buff Republican quarry worker/architect.
This is the link to the Northern Kentucky University incident.
http://www.lifenews.com/state3207.html
Well Mary, I guess that’s your opinion.
More anti-American professors.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47461
I guess Ms. Grabar is not aware of all academic traditions.
Let’s go a few years back in the memories to one of those beastly east coast liberal arts schools. ENG 301-302 was required for the English major. 301 started with Beowulf and Piers Plowman and ended with Paradise Lost, 302 picked up where we left off with Milton.
ENG 101 was not composition, it was “Forms of Literature,” i.e. exactly what Grabrar is railing against. The course was teaching students how to read and interpret prose, poetry, lyrics, novels, short stories, etc.
I can only envision the fainting spell that would’ve ensued, when in ENG 201 -The Novel, the professor exhorted us to all stand and read aloud from Lolita – “Lolita light of my life, fire of my loins. . . .” The prof did this to make us newbs understand the impact of the written language when read aloud. How horrible. It would cause Grabar to faint, I’m sure.
So “Dan Someone” it seems you owe me an apology.
Walt Whitman was gaii.
Just saying.
Sorry to interrupt.
But I’m seriously considering throwing in the towel.
Before the fucking 2000 recount, I never gave two shits and a whistle about politics. And while I guess I’ve never been a happy person, it seems like I just had more fun back then.
Then came iraq and all the crimes in plain sight of bush/cheney and I was PISSED.
Now? Now I dunno. I’m exhausted. Burned out. Burned on Outrage. Not enough people give a fuck. There’s no stopping, no turning around, no stepping back from the brink.
With a democratic majority in congress we’re going to legally piss on the fourth amendment. For no other reason than money and political expediency. Under the cover of the support of the Democratic Presidential Nominee.
It doesn’t matter what we do. It doesn’t matter how much we care, or who we vote for. Sure, life under Obama will likely be somewhat better than life under bush/cheney, but nobody is going to do the things, hell, they won’t ALLOW the things that actually need to be done to change the suicidal downward plunge.
When you can help, I’m all for picking up a bucket and bailing.
But in this case, I’m rapidly reaching the conclusion that just not giving one rusty red fuck about the whole fucking nightmare might be the best survival strategy.
And when these self-satisfied fat white fucks with their clean fingernails and dirty souls bring the whole thing down around their shoulders with their blindness, selfishness and greed, I’ll gut ’em, stake ’em out and make my yurt out of their soft skins.
Fuckers….
mikey
Take a breath Mikey. You just got a bit too much of the blue pill.
Cheers.
“Gödel, Escher, Bach reference. I have yet to meet someone who’s actually read the whole thing. I read about a quarter of it the first time, and half of it the second time.”
Oooh!! Oooh!! I read the whole thing, I did. [pats self on back prodigiously]
… it was part of a class, though, so I didn’t have much choice, and haven’t touched the damn thing in exactly 20 years. And only really remember the basic idea concerning the incompleteness theorem and not how it was arrived at. [shakes head in shame]
You leftys support affirmative action for those who are underepresented. So how about an affirmative action hiring for conservative professors?
http://www.bepress.com/forum/vol3/iss1/art2/
“#
zeppo said,
July 8, 2008 at 22:40
Engineering students don’t have to read Paradise Lost.
Is it any good?”
Yet MORE examples of feminists taking over the academy!!!!1111!!11!!J
Rojo, *I* have read it in its entirety. Twice. I also liked Hofstadter’s Metamagical Themas.
Also, the proof for the incompleteness theorem centered on Gðdel’s novel diagonalization method.
/math_geekism>
The comments over at pj make me crazy. The only women who can think properly are mary and camille paglia
The fact is, unless every other post and comment here is conservative in nature and challenges the prevailing leftist orthodoxy, this blog is biased toward the left and should have no creditability.
1. Business college professors are almost universally conservatives. I wonder why they discriminate against liberals so much.
2. Conservatism is, in its very essence, antithetical to academic inquiry.
3. Your sources are a joke. Rothman, Lichter, and Nevitte’s work is plagued by theoretical and methodological problems that render their conclusions unsustainable by the available evidence
4. Fuck off and die.
I completely forgot what that video was like. But man, the post title has just become extra awesome after watching it.
Oh me oh my. I hadn’t read all of the response to Erik the Half a Brain’s precious little paper.
To wit:
BWAHAHAHAHA
The fact is, liberals are well known for their hatred of America and bias against reality or hard work and white people and love of muslims and gays.
It makes me wonder if women as a group are simply not as suited to the academic or intellectual life.
Is she offering herself up as Exhibit A?
The fact is, liberal control the academy, brainwashing our brightest and best who did not choose a patriotic school like Regent or Patrick Henry. This is national crisis. If parents knew their money went to brainwash their kids they would defund them, but the liberal media conspiracy covers this up and constinues to praise gays for being gay. What have they done to make a difference, like the Greatest Generation did? Nothing.
Consider the case of Colombia University where students and faculty shouted down Jim Gilcrest and the Minutemen for wanting to preserve their Nation but embraced Mahmoud Ahmadenijad the modern day version of Hitler who wants to see America and Israel destroyed.
Erik, sweetheart, your second wetsuit is so tight that its cutting off the blood supply to the dildo in your ass, and that’s having an effect on your ability to think clearly.
I’m jus’ sayin’…
Ah, the lefts most charming quality. Resorting to childish insults and expletives when faced with an arguement they know they can’t win.
Most college professors are Democrats and liberals, and if you actually bothered to read my link you would see my point.
Why is it that liberals can’t see that are Nation’s colleges and univeristies as an institution are going through a downward spiral both in terms of Patriotic values and quality education?
My point is, students will never get a quality education and be able to come to their own decisions as long as our education professionals present only one side of the political spectrum as “fact.”
You liberals argue for a balance in talk radio via the “fairness doctrine” so why not apply the same standards to our schools? Its only fair don’t you think?
Hwæt! No one reads poesy in Ye Olde Anglish no more!
Is she dissing Flannery O’Connor? If so, I will have none of that!
The comments over at pj make me crazy.
Oh man, I haven’t even started comment-mining. Let’s go take a look:
Whoo! And that’s the first comment!
“So saith the author of Dancing with Derrida (unpublished as of this writing).”
Or indeed, any writing.
The fact is, there should be equal time for a conservative viewpoint at schools every time some looney toones left idea is presented in the classroom — about US History, about economics, about gays, about evolution. We need to mandate this balance in academic or if they don’t defund them, after all, we pay taxes for this filthy lies.
Erik Pontoppidan = Kidnap Pie Pronto
THATS RIGHT, EQUAL TIME FOR THE TRUTH AMIT LIBERAL LIES, YOU GO! I WANT THE LIBERALS TO SHUT UP AND LEAVE AMERICA ALONE OR LEAVE,WE NEED MORE BALANCED OPINIONS IN THE CLASSROOM IF MY TAXES FUNTIT.
IF GOD AND VALUES AND LOVE OF COUNTRY IS NO LONGER TAUGHT NO WONDER THE COMMIES WIN WITHOUT FIRING A SHOT
What kind of name is Mary for a guy?
Anyway, he sure is sexist.
The fact is, I am unnaturally obsessed with buttsex.
Myself and Gary are the only ones with any brains on this blog. If you liberals really cared about fairness and equality than you would see my point. It goes to show that liberals only care about equality when it serves their leftist agenda.
Erik Pontoppidan = Pinko Pantie Prod
Good, now we have three conservatives on this blog. It looks like the playing field is leveled leftys.
The fact is, good, God-fearing, not-at-all-gay Christian college professors who love America and hate lie-berals should be able to teach the children that 2+2=5 and that Ronald Reagan discovered America without fear of being called hateful, hurtful names like “stupid”, and :”ridiculous”, and-and-and “high-school dropout”.
The fact is, I need a nap.
So, Erik,
What do you think is Mary Grabar’s most intelligent and perceptive comment?
I know, there are so many to choose from! It’s so hard!
Do I have to say anything else to make the point about conservatives in academia?
….and this is central to my point.
USA Patriot Power said,
July 9, 2008 at 3:28 (kill)
IF GOD AND VALUES AND LOVE OF COUNTRY IS NO LONGER TAUGHT NO WONDER THE COMMIES WIN WITHOUT FIRING A SHOT
No no. Break the lines like this and you’ll be my favourite troll:
IF GOD AND VALUES AND LOVE OF COUNTRY IS NO LONGER TAUGHT
NO WONDER THE COMMIES WIN WITHOUT FIRING A SHOT
Slovenly, plump Jonah Goldberg came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of cheetos on which a remote control and a Mountain Dew lay crossed.
I’ve had only one conservative professor in my entire time in college, just recently graduating with a degree in criminal justice. My politcal science professor was a down to earth guy who knows a heck of alot about foregin policy. He suggested that the US should nuke the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan in order to take out the Al Queda leadership. I think that would wake the muzzies up, what do you think?
if we don’t teach our college students important values like shooting a gun after a kegstand and how to Magic Marker penises on their sleeping friends’ faces, then the terrists will win because our edjucated men will all be wussified intellectuls. go ussa!
Hey, Erik,
Did you see “Expelled’?
I did. I always get the other side. I just don’t find it very convincing.
And if there were such a thing as a decent, honest conservative, he or she would be heartily embarrassed by conservatives like Mary Grabar and Ben Stein. And Mallard FIllmore and Thomas Sowell. And George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Bill Frist and Rick Santorum and George Allen and so on and so forth. And that honest and decent conservative would speak out and be critical of these asshats speaking for conservativism and making it look bad.
The silence is damning.
If parents knew their money went to brainwash their kids they would defund them, but the liberal media conspiracy covers this up and constinues to praise gays for being gay. What have they done to make a difference, like the Greatest Generation did? Nothing.
The fact is, Alan Turing.
“Did you see “Expelled’?”
I try not to watch hollywood movies. I don’t want any of my money going to the likes of George Clooney or Alec Baldwin.
You’re very well-informed for a conservative.
Thank you, Hossier. I try to increase my knowledge about politics and world events. I hope to get a job as a police officer very soon, my degree and security background should help quite a bit I think.
All the liberal professors you had, what did they do or say that made you think they were liberal?
Could you be specific? Or are you a typical conservative who prefers the safety of vague talking points that you hear over and over on CNN?
(Oops! I meant to say FOX! Everybody knows CNN stands for Communist News Network!)
God knows we need conservative police officers to dilute the rampant liberalism in law enforcement.
My Oral Communications professor admitted he was a liberal and called Donald Rumsfeld evil.
My English professor described himself as a “pretty liberal guy”.
And my Criminal Justice professor said he was “very liberal” and admitted he voted for John Kerry.
BTW, for shits and giggles, I checked to see if Conservapedia had an entry for Alan Turing. They do, and it’s not completely insane, but my suspicions of their motives were confirmed when I checked the history. Here is the original entry, in its entirety.
What deep insights into the workings of the wingnut mind and value system can be inferred from this single sentence!
He suggested that the US should nuke the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan in order to take out the Al Queda leadership. I think that would wake the muzzies up, what do you think?
Let’s waterboard EVERYONE to find out who’s a “muzzie” and who ain’t (my guess is that you’d sign the confession in under 10 seconds), then put them in camps until we can gas them all! If you “conservatives” are so fired up to ape your heros, at least do it right.
Sieg fuckin’ Heil, wetsuit boy.
Ah, I almost forgot. My Law and Society professor hated my guts and took a liberal position on every issue debated such as the second amendment, war and peace and the death penalty to name a few.
My American History professor was an admitted socialist who thinks the Democrats are “too conservative”, and that both major parties are in ‘lockstep with big business.”
Erik Pontoppidan: Don’t make me get all anagram-y on your ass.
My American History professor, ah the memories. I knew he wanted to fail me very badly. He must have been very reluctant when he gave me an A.
Ouch. Okay sophie brown – you win. That comment thread is way to painful to read. But there are two nuggets from Grabar herself:
Remember, this whole thing started as a complaint against Oprah Winfrey.
Oh! I see the Dr. Missus Marita already did. Nevermind.
mikey: I think you may be suffering from excessive pointy-headed intellectualism and troll infestation. I blame Mary Grab-Bar. Let’s get drunk.
I also recall fondly my Restoration Poetry professor. How he hated me. It must have miffed him terribly to have to pass me in his class because I blew him every Wednesday afternoon for a semester. Ah, memories.
That’s good stuff right there.
My criminology professor refered to me as a ‘”facist” for advocating a mandatory three strikes law to deal with prostitution. He asked the class their opinion on how to stop prostitution if you think it should remain illegal. Apparently he only wanted to hear so called “humane” opinions.
Erik Pontoppidan said,
July 9, 2008 at 3:32
Good, now we have three conservatives on this blog. It looks like the playing field is leveled leftys.
Doctor Missus Marita and DN Nation makes two (2) parody trolls. Their sockpuppets are Legion.
Fry dem hos! ‘S hard out there for a pimp.
Good, now we have three conservatives on this blog. It looks like the playing field is leveled leftys.
Doctor Missus Marita and DN Nation makes two (2) parody trolls. Their sockpuppets are Legion.
And Erik Pontoppidan makes three (3). All versions of him.
And Erik Pontoppidan makes three (3). All versions of him.
One of the two sockpuppetmasters will get very drunk one night, and ‘fess up.
I’ve scene it happen before.
NO WONDER THE COMMIES WIN WITHOUT FIRING A SHOT
Hehehehe. Who wants to remind our shouty friend here that the Commies lost nearly 20 years ago? Because, if you listen to him and his buddies, of St. Ronald.
Well, I guess the Commies are doing well now that Bush is borrowing so much money from them!
dude. you eviscerated this person.
I am not a parody troll! I’m a real Doctor Missus!
Also, for Toby’s benefit, I am not a libertarian.
So many things I am accused of. Someone else is bringing the Ruppert! It’s not me!
My criminology professor refered to me as a ‘”facist” for advocating a mandatory three strikes law to deal with prostitution.
You poor thing. Did it cause organ failure?
Curses! She’s eluded me again. I’ll have you yet Grabar!
There can only be one Dr. Mrs! It is an ancient internet tradition, not to be scorned!
Mikey, try not to get too down. Drink. Play with your kids (or your friends’ kids). Drink more (after said kids are safely away).
Love ya, man.
I recognize Oprah and Megan McArdle so I assume Mary is the blonde?
Reading this woman is like torture.
I hereby dub her Abu Grabar.
-GSD
Bankrobber
Break your back to earn your pay, and don’t forget to grovel.
Night folks, I gotta work tomorrow!
I’d like to add (with trademark sincerity) that the level of funny, educated snark on this blog always astounds me.
Fantastic.
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Yeah I read it, all of it, when it first came out. It’s a bit… unfocused.
“how about an affirmative action hiring for conservative professors?”
Whats the matter? Can’t compete in the free market place of ideas? You have to have actually suffered discrimination as a class to qualify for affirmative action. Come back after you’ve spent 400 years enslaved in the post modern salt mines.
I’m not gaii.
Really.
Okay, the last time you did a Mary Grabar post you had her picture up for something like 48 hours before you did a new post. I recall complaining about this at the time.
History appears to be repeating itself. Would it help if I begged?
Okay, I skipped the trolls (but, trolls? there are plenty of conservatives in academia. They’re mostly not in the liberal arts, but even there you can find them). Funx: congrats on getting them enthused about Milton. I never could, but the problem was me, not him. As for Chaucer? That’s my bread and butter. I’m a medievalist–hence, the above crack about ‘who has to know Latin anymore’? Well, me, for one. And the other one about it certainly being finished….well, no. Far from certain.
The reason I’m chiming in here is this:
She is not really a member of academia as much as she is a jealous little turd who could never muster the false collegiality necessary for transforming the crappy PhD in Literature (and talk about a useless degree in this academic job market) into a fulltime tenured position as an associate or full professor.
Look, it sounds like she’s a dipshit, and she’s written an article that’s been written a thousand times before (recently, we medievalists got this same treatment from Charlotte Allen, who attended the big USA conference in Kalamazoo and came away unhappy). But academia’s not really a meritocracy, and the adjunctification of higher education is a crime. I’d no more sneer at a dipshit for being a ‘mere’ adjunct or falling off the tenure track than I would sneer at a Walmart cashier. It’s worse than gauche; it’s politically retrograde.
Forgot to mention: if our dingbat topic of discussion wants to find touchy feely discussions of literature that just can’t do close reading, I’d suggest she look at professional literary criticism of 100 years ago. I read, for example, Virginia Woolf’s intro to Moll Flanders, and, sorry to say, it was ass stupid. She could outwrite anyone, but there, we saw the stupidity of–sorry–untrained litcrit in all its embarrassing glory.
I don’t know. Somehow it disturbs me in a pleasant way.
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Yeah I read it, all of it, when it first came out. It’s a bit… unfocused.
I hate how those Bach Canons do not resolve perfectly, every single time.
And Escher’s wood cuts are a bit sloppy and uncertain.
The pic, I mean. Not the analysis which is way over my head and education-level.
Karl, you’re very gracious. Have you read her fiction?
Mary Grabar
Roosters
And Escher’s wood cuts are a bit sloppy and uncertain.
Because that’s all that is really important.
“Wait, does “monotheistic God” mean that God worships some kind of Super-God? Because that’s just weird.”
…the above crack about ‘who has to know Latin anymore’? Well, me, for one.
I apologize if my crack about not needing to know Latin is the one you mean. I don’t have to know any Latin, and don’t really know any beyond the commonly-used phrases and Latin-based English word roots. But I am a strong believer in the value of a broad education for everyone, whether their career requires it or not. As a former sciences student I found my classmates’ lack of interest in the humanities very disappointing.
If you had a pitch meeting with whatever studio gave wads of money to the dumbasses that made “the Matrix,” and your pitch consisted of:
“Well, the premise is….God worships some kind of Super-God!”
I bet they would totally give you a hundred million dollars.
I was gaii.
And was tortured by the British Government because of it.
…and we’ve got Tom Hanks lined up to play Super-God….
I can’t believe no one has mined this comment yet.
It’s so shiny and pretty, I’d almost feel bad to deface it.
So I get more than a little pissed off when wingnut troglodytes tell me that me and my kind are out to destroy these things because we suggest that something written in the last 120 years might be worth reading.
Grrrr, me too! FFS, I read The Mayor of Casterbridge for the first time at age 14, and have read it several times since, just because I loved it. I still remember huge swaths of the Shakespeare I memorized in junior high because I fucking loved it! I just read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter” for the umpteenth time. I took Latin in high school because I like language and to this day the Latin roots in English fascinate me. But I also love E. Annie Proulx, Iris Murdoch, Jane Smiley and Isabel Allende. I’ll bet Grabar wouldn’t even allow their books in her classroom. Too bad, she doesn’t know what she’s missing.
I can’t believe that numbskull has a doctorate. Did she get it via mail order?
And Mary, my male partner doesn’t like Oprah, but then, I’m not wild about her myself. She seems more than a tad on the shallow side and is addicted to pop psychology, and I gotta tell ya, I don’t give a rat’s ass about her weight . . . plus I blame her for Dr. Phil. So stick your assumptions up yer arse. Just let me add, Mary, that you don’t know shit from Shinola about literature, human nature, feminists, or students, male or female. Idiot.
gah, I don’t know why I let this insignificant chit of a wingnut irritate me this much. Time for bed.
A 61-year-old librarian was ejected from an ostensibly public McCain campaign event at the Denver Center of Performing Arts in Denver, CO on June 7 because she [carried] a hand-lettered sign that read “McCain=Bush.” link The librarian asked why Republicans found the sign offensive when they voted for Bush in the first place.
she wasn’t just ejected by the way, but threatened with arrest if she returned. by the police who were sent by the secret service.
My American History professor, ah the memories. I knew he wanted to fail me very badly. He must have been very reluctant when he gave me an A.
Ah. So you admit that, despite being “liberal”, he was ethical and objective, and graded you fairly.
So …
Getting back to Mary Grabar’s witty and perceptive comments …
… at some point …
and all those very very convincing details about liberal professors.
So … you had four professors who admitted they were more liberal than you … and that proves that there are no conservatives in academia.
Dude. How long were you in school?
Erik Pontropidiwadever: Go back to Africa.
Long closeup on a hand clutching a chocolate chip cookie, with a bite out of it… steamroller sounds grow louder… a single tear falls glistening onto the cookie… slow fade.
Thank you, Eric P. for linking to Consevapedia. Always a laugh riot. Take a look at this one:
http://www.conservapedia.com/Liberal_Style
Fifty-six numbered whines. Note the references; half of them are to conservapedia talk pages. Poor wingnuts! The big, mean liberals keep picking on you!
Erik Pontoppidan said,
July 9, 2008 at 3:45
… my degree and security background …
MALL NINJA!!!!!
gah, I don’t know why I let this insignificant chit of a wingnut irritate me this much.
Candy: I feel your pain. For me, part of it is what we used to call the Aunt Thomasina syndrome: Incompetent female nevertheless achieves some bit of success, pays back her undeserved good fortune by gratefully sucking the dicks of her former oppressors and willingly disparaging the rest of her gender.
I agree that “Abu Grabar” is a good nickname for this tortuous individual.
All I’m saying is Red Dwarf > Shakespeare.
This is just so… standard. It could’ve come from anybody. I expect better from Grabar.
Although I do wish these racist douchebags would just come out and say “Whites are the only race that has ever written anything of value, and men are the only gender.” How else can we interpret what Grabar is saying?
But she and everybody else know that it’s not acceptable to say that the negroes never did anything worth a damn, so she has to dance around what she means and what she really wants to say.
It’s true of all these “Acadamia is going to postmodern hell!” rants. I wish they’d just put their racist views out in the open. then we could all happily ignore them.
“gratefully sucking the dicks of her former oppressors and willingly disparaging the rest of her gender”
That sounds a lot like Joe Lieberman. Maybe swap “gender” for “party” or something.
Whites are the only race that has ever written anything of value, and men are the only gender that has. Refute that, elitists.
Do they realise Milton was foreign secretary in a government that cut the fucking king’s head off?
White mail authors is the only ones I have ever red. HA! Dispite that, lieberal eleitists!!!!!
Yes. For instance, Erik Pontoppidan seems incapable of writing a reasoned and readable paragraph.
I wish they’d just put their racist views out in the open.
Funny how they never hesitate to do so with their sexist views.
I take it back. It’s not funny.
I really don’t see what limiting the canon to white male authors has to do with a rational god, monotheistic or otherwise. Is she some sort of Neoplatonist? Maybe white males are closer to the divine form and the pure essence, while women and darkies are derivative, therefore less connected to the god-mind?
Or perhaps she is just writing to her audience.
Funny how they never hesitate to do so with their sexist views.
Actually, that’s pretty accurate. Over at Pandagon that has been mentioned fairly frequently. It would be interesting if someone could figure out why that is- why are racist views seen as more extreme than sexist views?
Not to mention “The Yellow River” by I.P. Freely.
atheist: cuz teh wimmens are even scarier than teh darkies.
White males are closer to the divine form and the pure essence, while women and darkies are derivative, therefore less connected to the god-mind. That is a fact. And colored folks are stupid and women should get back in the kitchen.
yah, and yoyu liberals are incapable of using facts of logic, must be those touchy feely liberal public schools! Conervatives are smarter, work harder, and use logic and facts, not bias and lies.
dude, “judge not lest ye be judged” isn’t from the bible, it’s from cape fear. de niro said it. i learned that in postmodernist pablum class!
One other thing about liberals and leftists: they are ignorant of the laws of economics. making policies that are tax and spend, punishing the productive class and rewarding the lazy, are disasterous. Read about the ants and the grasshopper.
dude, “judge not lest ye be judged” isn’t from the bible, it’s from cape fear. de niro said it. i learned that in postmodernist pablum class!
No, Lisa SImpson said it in that episode where Marge is a witch. You can take college classes on the Simpsons now, so it is officially part of the canon. On the other hand, Treehouse of Horror episodes are non-canonical, since their plots don’t impinge on the overall arc of the series.
We may need a roundtable to clear this up.
“I.P. Freely!” Ha ha! I get that! See, those first letters really mean I pee. Not that I pee personally. It looks like a first initial thing, with a last name, then if you say it it’s funny! Get it?
Do these directives dominate you all the time, or only when you put on your fluffy skunk costume and bend over a barrel?
.
Oh! And then the yyellow river means — that’s like the pee that Mr Freely just peed out! So it’s yellow! Ha ha! I’m retarded.
Oh shut up PUSAP. You obviously know nothing of the economic laws of freely peeing markets.
There is no such thing as a free pee.
Yer tellin’ me.
Noen: oh, thanks. Thanks a lot.
The red and green feathers shimmered in the sun, and I saw that they were roosters. They looked like the figures lining the gift display of the Café Latte, a place to which I was headed, and I walked there with eyes straight ahead.
I was setting down my heavy bag by a little table in the front when the pink-shirted Harley man passed by on the narrow sidewalk on the other side of the window.
Is that not the saddest prose you’ve ever read? The roosters looked like…statues…of…roosters.
Ahh, she teaches at Clayton State?
For those not in the know: The Clayton County (GA) school system is on the verge of losing its accreditation.
Clayton State is where local high schoolers go if they can’t get into Georgia or Georgia Tech or Georgia State or Georgia Southern or Kennesaw State.
Do the math.
The Clayton County (GA) school system is on the verge of losing its accreditation
How could that be? I hear its faculty is stellar.
And I’ll also add this: I roll by that part of Atlanta about once a month to visit the in-laws. Grabar’s wingnuttery is par for the course in that area of town; I don’t really know why she’s whining about being an outcast.
Because race is a social construct that is not biologically determinable and ultimately meaningless. ie; Is Barack Obama black, half-black, or half-white? Discuss.
While gender, or sex, is biologically determined, has chromosome differentiation, and there are few shades to the equation. ie; very few societies have come up with ways to deal with someone who is both male and female; categorization takes over on a deep level.
In short, sex springs from our very brain structure; race is just a layer we impose for our own ends.
“My American History professor, ah the memories. I knew he wanted to fail me very badly. He must have been very reluctant when he gave me an A.”
OMGZ, the fact that your “liberal professor” gave you an A only further PROVES the vast liberal conspiracy to brainwash the good heterosexual patriots of the USA! More importantly, what does it say about your professor that you could have suspected that he could give you less than an A, even though you spent most of your class time chortling and farting in the back row?
BTW, Mikey,
I completely understand.
I try to soothe myself that in a previous life, I had to worry about the Attila the Hun Show going on in my village… and this was before dental anesthesia.
Cheers me right up.
mikey said,
July 9, 2008 at 2:44
And when these self-satisfied fat white fucks with their clean fingernails and dirty souls bring the whole thing down around their shoulders with their blindness, selfishness and greed, I’ll gut ‘em, stake ‘em out and make my yurt out of their soft skins.
Classsic.
This post is still topmost. I blame liberal professors.
In short, sex springs from our very brain structure; race is just a layer we impose for our own ends.
Ummm… bullshit. Both are fundamentally biological distinctions. Barack Obama does actually have more melatonin than I do. The social construct is the set of biological differences that our culture selects as significant in defining an identity, and the set characteristics that we assign to that identity. Gender roles don’t spring from the brain any more than racial stereotypes do.
Ummm… bullshit.
Gender roles are socially imposed, racial attitudes are socially imposed. But a six month old can tell male from female.
What we make of that… is where the problems come in.
whose dad is
That’s embarrassing. It’s a good thing I don’t teach composition.
Sex and gender are not the same thing.
But the question was, why is sexism more acceptable than racism. If six month olds can tell the difference between male and female it is only because we dress one in blue, the other in pink, and make damned sure that they notice which is which.
Do you really think that differences in genitalia make any more difference to toddlers than variations in skin tone or hair texture?
Holy shit, this is good stuff! Industrial strength! Grabar is right up there with the 100 wackiest lunatics from America’s (or maybe even the world’s) asylums. I can’t believe they let her be on the loose. Somebody do something! This women needs help! Better act fast, before she starts undressing in public while tearing out her hair screaming and drooling.
Barack Obama does actually have more melatonin than I do.
Probably explains how his hopeful demeanor – a good night’s sleep will do that for you.
Erm… melanin.
*blushes*
I’d almost say that the differences in skin tone would far more noticeable to a toddler than differences in gender.
Racism versus sexism you ask?
I suspect it has something to do with the nature of the oppression. With sexism, the worst of it is behind closed doors – you see people didn’t lynch women, well other than witches.
Note: I’m not saying that women haven’t been killed because of their gender alone (other than witches). Clearly many have, and many continue to be (i.e. post-rape), but that’s generally been viewed as unacceptable behavior for quite some time.
How do I explain away the part about witches? Ummm, because shut up, that’s why.
I suspect it has something to do with the nature of the oppression. With sexism, the worst of it is behind closed doors – you see people didn’t lynch women
Yeah. Bingo.
Read about the ants and the grasshopper.
but..b-b-bbut…Aesop didn’t write in English and he was a Greek slave who may have been BLACK!
I know, gender is for nouns.
Go ahead and be pedantic, it’s the thread for it.
I’d almost say that the differences in skin tone would far more noticeable to a toddler than differences in gender.
Only to one who’s been brought up around people of only one color. A toddler brought up around people of all races, from the beginning, would not find it any different than different hair color.
On the topic of Western canon, wasn’t the Bible written by a bunch of Jews and other Middle Easterners? Well at least we’re sure that they were all men.
Argonaut said,
July 9, 2008 at 1:48
The Rt Hon DC Wangchuck opined:
“By Grabar’s hammer, you shall be avenged.”
God help me, I’ve been laughing for the last half hour.
Yup. His Honor wins the thread.
I suspect it has something to do with the nature of the oppression. With sexism, the worst of it is behind closed doors
Nope. That’s the thing: The worst of it is right out there in the open because it IS so commonplace and acceptable.
Howcum teh racist and sexist pigdogs don’t do much hatin on dem black wimmins? They go all gaga over them.
Must be the double negative or something.
The worst of it is right out there in the open because it IS so commonplace and acceptable
For society, yes. The level at which degrading sexism is seen as “appropriate” is shockingly high.
But my point about worst, was meant as the most egregious individual acts, the type of things that it’s easy to turn into a symbol.
Note: I’m not saying that women haven’t been killed because of their gender alone (other than witches)
I may be wrong, but I’m not aware of any witch-burnings — or heretic burnings, which were more frequent (thanks, God-followers!) — having occurred in the last few hundred years or so.
But never fear! There’s violent hatred of women a-plenty always readily available! And there’s SO MUCH of it, it can scarcely be contained behind closed doors! Let’s look at a few of the local newspaper’s headlines for today, shall we? Here we go:
Police ID remains as programmer’s wife
Grandmother beaten, raped in home invasion
Mom of twins missing; boyfriend in custody
You can play along at home! Pick up any newspaper, anywhere, any day. Note the preponderance of stories that feature such instances of violence against women. Note how commonplace, and thus non-outrageous, such preponderance is. Get up, see what’s in the fridge, wonder if there’s anything on TV. Bonus points if you can find a headline that DOESN’T refer to the female victim by her socially gendered role (mom, grandmother, wife). Extra bonus points if missing woman is mom of TWINS!
Time out while I vomit.
Okay.
This is one of the more amusing things I’ll read today.
Apparently the Freeper/Larry Johnson/Hot Air claim that Obama isn’t really an American citizen was too much bullshit for…
…
…
…you’ll never guess…
…I mean, I didn’t think this guy even had a BS detector…
…
…here it comes…
…you ready?…
…
…Thomas Sowell.
That’s right, even Sowell thinks the story’s a load of bull. Sowell!
Although, to be fair, Sowell doesn’t really come out and say how ridiculous his fellow wingnuts are…he’s mostly pissed because people are claiming he’s taken part in the rumor. You know, sorta like how George Carlin, Weird Al, and Andy Rooney get their names attached to all sorts of racist/sexist/droolingly-sub-moronic screeds on the Internets. Those types were always quick to just brush it off, but Sowell has to put his ham-fisted stamp on it:
Such a poet, this DR.!!!!!!!!!!! Sowell.
Point of order.
Most male/male assaults that don’t involve either deadly force or unusual circumstances just plain don’t make the paper much. Check that local paper for instances of THAT and see how few get reported – but they happen.
Here is the most amusing thing I read today.
The head: They paid for cage fight, got gay love
And possibly my favoritest excerpt “it wouldn’t be the first time Arkansas fell for a practical joke.“
DN, don’t confuse Clayton State with the Clayton County school system. (As I said earlier, I’ve just taken a teaching job at CSU, and the school is becoming more solid academically. They got rid of Grabar, for example.)
Kinda OT, but our regional state universities have often been the only way people who weren’t “to the manor born” could afford to go to college, and the vast majority of faculty at those places (Grabar excepted, of course) are as solid in the classroom as the faculty at the Research I institutions. I’m no slouch academically, but even with scholarships there was no way I was going to Yale; on top of that, the Land Grant Institutions were just too big for an undergraduate from a town of 19 people. So I went to a regional state university (in a different state, but with the scholarships I could get and some reciprocity, we made it work), and don’t regret it for a second. Are they always the most intense academically? No, but you might be surprised at the high quality.
OK, stepping off soapbox. I must agree with the other commenters – “By Grabar’s hammer” is made of 100% epic win.
WF
Fuck you WordPress.
Let’s try it again, shall we? http://news.yahoo.com/s/po/20080708/co_po/theypaidforcagefightgotgaylove
And with the tag? Looks fine in preview….
I may be wrong, but I’m not aware of any witch-burnings — or heretic burnings, which were more frequent (thanks, God-followers!) — having occurred in the last few hundred years or so.
Okay, maybe I should have left the witches out of it, they’ve suffered enow.
But, here’s my point:
The cases you raise, well yes they happen. In hideously large numbers. But that type of behavior is viewed by society, generally, as deviant criminal behavior. Even going back a hundred years or so, killing the womenfolk was not socially acceptable behavior.
Lynchings weren’t merely acceptable, they required endorsement from the community.
I’m not trying to say which form of bigotry and discrimination is worse. I’m just trying to explain why society, generally, views racism as more verboten than sexism. And that’s because society sees sexists as ignorant self-centred assholes, while it sees racists as murderous ignorant self-centred assholes.
Most male/male assaults that don’t involve either deadly force or unusual circumstances just plain don’t make the paper much
The same could be said of most male/female assaults.
Not to mention that the examples I gave involved more than assault.
OT and some of you have probably already seen this, but it’s really funny, in a sadly way:
Disaster Tour
I wasn’t.
Well that’s good. My wife is actually a product of CCPS, and many of her high school friends ended up at CSU. To hear her tell it, CSU was just for biding time before going into retail/popping out a little one. Glad to hear it’s on a more upward trajectory.
And I’m with you on your point about regional schools. Time/moolah’s a factor, too. My dad got both his undergrad (Southern Poly) and his graduate (Central Michigan’s outreach) from schools that weren’t big names because he was a grown-ass married man strapped for cash when he got out of the Army. With that being said, though, you can see why we would delight in C-list wingnut columnists prancing about like intellectual titans while they simmer away at County State U.
As a former professional student, I became opinionated about “instructional quality.” The big name places have the big name people whose names are so big mostly owing to their research. The big schools – the land grants especially – generally don’t have the big names teaching much, if at all. You’re going to have a TA who doesn’t speak english very well and/or be in a class of 250 other poor schmoes.
I spent some time at a couple small colleges and found that the Profs. actually did the teaching. With small class sizes. And they were, to a large degree, enthusiastic, dedicated teachers.
In general, I found the “instructional quality” at the small places much better than, say, my actual alma mater, Penn State.
I never had the misfortune to run into Mary Gaybar or anyone even near her level of incompetence and ignorance. Lucky me.
I’m another person who cringes every time I read snide comments about the quality of various colleges. (The exception is the wackadoo “Christian” ones that are part of some televangelist’s media empire.) And it is much to the credit of Clayton State that its students thoroughly dislike Mary Grabar.
Paradise Lost? I found your paradise. It’s in my PANTS!
Even going back a hundred years or so, killing the womenfolk was not socially acceptable behavior.
Largely true. But short of killing them, well women have been viewed as chattel for a very long time. Violence is a whole lot of things besides murder.
Everything I know about Milton I learned from Hollyweird, skool is for suckers.
“Now, what can we say… John Milton’s… Paradise Lost? It’s a long poem, written… a long time ago, and I’m sure…a lot of you have difficulty understanding… exactly what Milton was trying to say.
Certainly we know that he was trying to… describe the struggle between good and evil, right?
Okay.
The most intriguing character, as we all know from our reading, was… Satan. Now, was Milton trying to tell us that being bad was more fun than being good?
Okay.
Don’t write this down, but I find Milton probably… as boring as you find Milton. Mrs. Milton found him boring, too. He’s a little bit long-winded… he doesn’t translate very well into our generation, and his jokes are terrible. But that doesn’t relieve you
from your responsibility for this material.
I’m waiting for reports from some of you.
I’m not joking! This is my job.”
This has shattered my atheism. I have found G*d. How could I have been so gullible?
“Obviously, personal letters, diary entries and popular books are only to be allowed in the canon when they are written by people like Peter Abelard, Samuel Pepys, and Charles Dickens. You know: men.”
This is patently unfair, Leonard. They’re not just “men.”
They’re dead, white, European men.
B-b-b-but I have the proximity excuse!
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
They’re dead, white, European men.
When the revolution comes, will we be able to claim that we were just trying to produce more literature?
They’re dead, white, European men.
Around my campus we refer to them as stale pale males.
Howcum teh racist and sexist pigdogs don’t do much hatin on dem black wimmins?
Did you mean “welfare queens”?
How cum teh racist and sexist pigdogs don’t do much hatin on dem black wimmins?
I subscribe to PeeJ’s double-negative theory. Sometimes you’re so low in the power hierarchy there’s just not much reason to pay attention to you.
Howcum teh racist and sexist pigdogs don’t do much hatin on dem black wimmins
Excuse me?
PeeJ, I think the existence of conservatives would serve just as well for proof: “Pomo education/affirmative action/socialism/the homosex agenda/etc are holding me back! I am helpless to do anything but use my high-paid old-boy-network/legacy sinecure to complain! WOE!”
Peej, is that site for real? I think I’ve lost the ability to tell. I may have to stop joking, saying things ironically, and asking rhetorical questions, because I’ve noticed this happening with nearly everyone else as well. What bugs me is that I’m really bad at lying on purpose, but I can say something that seems (to me) patently ridiculous and have people take me at my word.
Or as in Grabar et alia’s case, they complain in order to nab a sinecure… is it the only event in the wingnut olympics?
Yeah, sure, maybe…
BUT WHAT ABOUT CIRCUMCISION?
[runs away, hides in kitchen cabinet]
mikey
…the last time you did a Mary Grabar post you had her picture up for something like 48 hours before you did a new post.
It is a new Internet tradition! Grabar’s law, or something.
Peej, is that site for real? I think I’ve lost the ability to tell.
If it’s a fake, it’s a really good one. It isn’t very different in style or rhetorical shortcomings from the avalanche of anti-choice lit I used to get from a very Catholic friend.
[runs away, hides in kitchen cabinet]
I am jealous of the expansiveness of your kitchen cabinets. You could probably hide two or three 9/11s in there.
older gentlemanly “man of letters,” a Shakespeare scholar, steamrollered over with the ideas of these women as they assertively proposed and incorporated such nonsense
I dunno, I’m a happily married man, but when I age into being an “older […] ‘man of letters'” (well, since I’m on the math/sci side, rather than the humanities side of the “two cultures”, I guess I have to say “older man of numbers”), I think I’d be mighty right flattered that a bunch of women would even want to “steamroller” over me, wink, wink …
DN, fair enough.
And drop me a line some time (wfmusic AT rocketmail DOT com); my wife and I are moving to Hapeville and don’t know anyone in Atlanta, and we’d like to remedy that.
WF
That goes for anyone else in the Atlanta area as well, folks.
Except for Mary Grabar.
WF
You could probably hide two or three 9/11s in there.
Well, that would be pushing it, but I do have Flight 77 in the cupboard with the tupperware…
mikey
I’m another person who cringes every time I read snide comments about the quality of various colleges
To be fair, the smaller branches of state colleges probably don’t have the available padding in their budgets to be able to carry tenured faculty who aren’t able to pull their weight.
BUT – let’s remember that Mary Grabar isn’t a tenured faculty member at Clayton State. She isn’t even a tenure-track faculty member at Clayton State. She’s a “temporary assistant professor” which, at the 4 universities I’ve been familiar with over more thatn 20 years, really means – someone who’s contracted on a quarterly or semester basis by the class.
i.e, someone who can’t get a permanent job even at (with all due respect) an institution like Clayton State.
Now, I know lots of people who work under this classification in academia. Sometimes they’re artists who don’t have the academic degrees to qualify for a tenture track position, but are still great artists and great teachers of their art. And sometimes their contracts are hefty and renewed again and again. Or some are artists who don’t want to be geographically tied to a college – they tour or take jobs elsewhere. Sometimes contract instructors already have a tenured job at another institution, and love teaching so much they teach a night class or two at another school in their region (My mother-in-law is a prime example).
But when a person is a newly minted young PhD in this position, and especially when they’re embittered like Grabar, then all signs indicate that something seriously wrong has happened with her career path.
It means she hasn’t written or done anything that has come to the attention of those in her field – not her dissertation, not her participation in any meetings or conferences in her field, no papers delivered, no articles written, no service on any panels…..
That’s the stuff people do who actually get INVITED to apply for jobs in academia, in addition to teaching.
Personally, I would LOVE to meet Mary Grabar. More than either of the other two women at the top of the page, in fact. Sure, bright, beautiful, successful people are more attractive from afar – but there is nothing quite as entertaining as a complete nutcase up close.
Oh Peej. What a treasure.
There’s actually no commandment that requires mothers to care for their children. Without a maternal instinct evolved over millions of years, babies would be totally screwed.
there is nothing quite as entertaining as a complete nutcase up close.
Just don’t give her your real name, or your phone number.
There was an Onion article on that a few years ago: “Study: Babies Are Stupid.” It had pictures of infants being left in the road to fend for themselves and ranked baby humans against animals of other species of the same age. Now it seems to have vanished. Damn you internets!!
I wonder if Mikey has Tim Lincecum’s allegedly nasty stuff in his cupboard as well. Because I went to Shea last night expecting a pitching duel but only Mike Pelfrey delivered.
And I love this guy. Jammie Wearing Fool? Not so much.
OT: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/senate_oks_new_wiretapping_law.php
Hope and Change!!!
Great takedown of the whiny Grabar, Mr. Peirce. Still, I agree with her that postmodernism is nothing more than intellectual pretensiousness. Remember Alan Sokal’s hilarious hoax on “Social Text” magazine? In the words of Gary Kamiya:
Sokal, a good liberal himself but a man of hard science, explained himself in “Lingua Franca” magazine:
I love the Sokal hoax, but the people it skewered were the editors of Social Text, and not a whole whatever-it-is that people mean by postmodernism.
Still, a whole variety of people could have said “terrible move your editors!” rather than what followed.
“terrible move your editors!”
They could also have said something that made sense, but six of one et cetera.
I’ve read a bunch of the above comments, but haven’t seen a mention of Grabar’s tic-locution “emotive”! Mary Mary is so alienated from newfangled & pussified liberal popular culture that to her waxy, hairy ears “emotive” sounds apt…But to those of us native to the English language of the USA in 2008, it sounds like what it is: a clumsy attempt at a slander…Goddamn, she’s a butt-ugly writer!
(right left right right…left right left left…)
So… when did Godot say that he’d be back? No, wait. Not Godot. Seb?
whatever-it-is that people mean by postmodernism
Richard Dawkins defined postmodernism as the philosophy engaged in by intellectual impostors with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint their pages with respectful yellow highlighter.
Well, it lacks the picture, but :
http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~arobic/funny/babies.html
Richard Dawkins defined postmodernism as the philosophy engaged in by intellectual impostors with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint their pages with respectful yellow highlighter.
In other words, “every celebrity and would-be-celebrity academic but me.”
Richard Dawkins defined postmodernism
He’s funny and mean, but his definition of postmodernism is simply “charlatans”, a definition not exclusive to postmodernism. Similarly I don’t believe everyone who identifies as a postmodernist – or is identified by others as a postmodernist – is a charlatan.
Sigh. Just as conservatives only ever cite the “content of their character” line when talking about MLK, foes of postmodernism only ever cite the Sokal hoax when discussing it.
Sorry, but one smart-ass hoaxster doesn’t invalidate multiple fields of philosophical inquiry, and not understanding what something means doesn’t mean it’s nonsense (see “Blind and Dumb Criticism” by sinister postmodernist Roland Barthes).
Is Jean-Francois Lyotard, whose “The Differend” is one of the most revelatory, brilliant books I’ve ever read, an “intellectual impostor”? What about the sensitive, hugely intelligent Julia Kristeva? What about the restlessly skeptical, combative, and erudite Stanley Fish? If Barthes was an intellectual impostor, the word “intellectual” has no meaning. Is Ignatiev’s interpretation of race, Virilio’s notion of society perpetually at war, Debord’s scathing analysis of consumerism and spectacle, nothing but “intellectual pretensiousness [sic]”? Did Richard Rorty, one of the most insightful, astute thinkers the 20th century produced, have “nothing to say”? And Jacques Derrida, the object of Mary Grabar’s scorn, is even today considered so groundbreakingly intelligent that even a lot of his detractors say they have a hard time coming to terms with the rigorous implications of what he had to say. If you’ve read all those people, and you come away thinking “Ah, what a bunch of dumb-ass poseurs”, well, we just don’t have much to say to each other.
And if you haven’t read them — if all you’ve read are people like Sokal and Dawkins, who despise them and are just looking to score points at their expense — then how can you really make a judgment?
What about the restlessly skeptical, combative, and erudite Stanley Fish?
He is an irritant.
For what it’s worth the greatest class I ever took was from a professor cited for something ridiculous in Sokal’s hoax essay.
Indeed. You can string together a bunch of terms from a field like, say, evolutionary biology, put them in a form that makes grammatical sense, and pass it off as a meaningful statement (although evolutionary biologists will point out that it’s either obvious or nonsensical). You can certainly do it with math; most of the time you can shut biologists up through pre-emptive math or statitstics intimidation, and math and statistics are highly rigorous disciplines. It just means that people don’t know what you’re talking about.
I knew a guy who claimed he got funding to study the results of human sperm fusing with a human egg, though the grant proposal was considerably less clearly phrased. He certainly had a framed check.
I dunno, Bubba — Fish makes perfect sense to me there. Justification is always an external game, a power game: by asking someone to self-justify, you are predicating a worldview where their activities must be justified (which gives you defining power) and where that justification must be made to you (which gives you nullifying power). Fish is precisely saying that justification is a hollow, arbitrary definitional game, and it’s one that distracts from the utility of what you’re doing and, unsurprisingly, feeds someone else’s sense of entitlement over your activities. I’m reminded of Joseph Brodsky’s trial for parasitism, when he was asked “Who included you in the ranks of poets?”, to which he responded, “Nobody. Who included me in the ranks of human beings?”
I agree with her that postmodernism is nothing more than intellectual pretensiousness
I don’t think she wrote a dissertation on DeLillo and Pynchon with the intent of deflating postmodernism’s pretension. Her abstract suggests that she saw in postmodern novels an insight that liberalism = consumerism = fascism.
As for the regional-college thing, I just wanted to say that it’s a low blow to say that her wrongheadedness is to be expected from someone teaching at a suck-ass college. Her suck-assedness exists independently of her affiliation. Yes, she clearly thinks that she deserves better but she’s been held back because Big Academia has no respect for her conservative views. No, Mary, it’s not sinister forces arrayed against you; it might have something to do with your palpable sense of unending grievance and loathing. No one wants to work with someone like that. Except for maybe Mike Adams, who _is_ that in fleshly form.
I knew a guy who claimed he got funding to study the results of human sperm fusing with a human egg, though the grant proposal was considerably less clearly phrased. He certainly had a framed check.
I have some ideas for studying the effects of aqueous solutions of Humulus lupulus flowers and fermented Hordeum vulgare on the human excretory system.
Except for maybe Mike Adams, who _is_ that in fleshly form.
I was just thinking Mary should live with Mike. Then they wouldn’t be spoiling two houses.
Pierce: And if you haven’t read them — if all you’ve read are people like Sokal and Dawkins, who despise them and are just looking to score points at their expense — then how can you really make a judgment?
I’m no expert on the subject, but I think I have a layman’s grasp of it. I’ll take the risk of quoting Dawkins again:
Well, I guess if you don’t want to criticize the actual ideas these people had, you can always just quote some other guy making extremely vague statements about them.
I dunno. By ACTUALLY READING THEM?
Grabar?
Hmmmm. Reminds me of this.
Question: When is it time for a new Sadly, No! post?
Answer: When you’re pushing 400 comments and it’s devolved into an a discussion of “Postmodernism: Teh Ghey or Teh Roxxxor?”
300-plus comments and still going strong. I’ll bet her conservative readership never discussed/commented on her feelings/ideas to this length. Although it would probably send her to an early drink this afternoon, it’s a shame that someone doesn’t alert her to all this action so she can add her two cents’ worth.
For me, part of it is what we used to call the Aunt Thomasina syndrome: Incompetent female nevertheless achieves some bit of success, pays back her undeserved good fortune by gratefully sucking the dicks of her former oppressors and willingly disparaging the rest of her gender.
MzNicky, at least we can acquit Grabar of the Paglia/Coulter (toxic fulminating) level of Aunt-Thomasina-hood. Grabar is patently incompetent at doing what she wants to be paid for, but she’s
not smart enoughinsufficiently self-aware to have chosen “How incompetent and hateful are all women in academia!” as a deliberate career strategy. Annoying as she is, Grabar, like her fictional forebearer, is just another victim of the patriarchy. Our serious enemies are people like Paglia who’ve decided that they’re not smart / creative / ambitious enough to carve out the livelihood they want unless they go over to the enemy — the women who actually make their livings telling the Men in Power that (all the other) silly little bee-yotches just don’t have What It Takes to make it in this man’s world. There’s always a market for such self-hating women, self-hating “liberal politicians” (Joe Lieberman), self-hating gays (Roy Cohn, Ted Haggard), and self-hating African-Americans (Justice Thomas, Professor Sowell), because every successful “king” wants a few court jesters and amusing cripples at hand to compliment said king’s Seriousness, Vigor, and general Power.As for the question of why sexism is more socially acceptable than racism, I think a good part of the problem is that people who aren’t comfortable with “difference” can mostly arrange their lives so that they don’t have any stressful contact with the differently-pigmented, but very few people can be certain that they aren’t about to be “assaulted” by the actions, the opinions, or the mere existence of That Other Gender. Dubya Bush, for instance, doesn’t have to acknowledge non-white persons except as the humblest of personal servants (his gardeners, Alberto Gonzales, Condolezza Rice) but he *still* has to deal with any amount of bad attitude from Bar Bush, his apples-too-close-to-the-tree daughters, even Laura. At the end of the day, all of us have or had a mother, and very few of us didn’t feel at least once or twice that our mother was just a huge godsdamned tedious annoying embarrassing dangerous pain in the kidneys…
Answer: When you’re pushing 400 comments and it’s devolved into an a discussion of “Postmodernism: Teh Ghey or Teh Roxxxor?
I think it is all the “White male canon: Under seige or outdated?” talk. Very 90’s retro vibe we’ve got going. Say peeps, what do you think will happen to communism now that the Soviet Union has collapsed?
Justification is always an external game
I really disagree with this. Rea in the CT post had a very funny comment:
As long as we’re just quoting things at each other, R. Barthes:
publish an article … if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions
And yet this is how articles published in even hard-sciences academic journals get selected in the first place. “Knowledge” begins with the gatekeeper.
Hey! Check out the Obama slogan that makes the “Will it still be called the White House?” sound like Oscar Wilde:
http://wcbstv.com/local/Obama.OJ.Slogan.2.766823.html
You can, of course, judge philosophy according to ‘common sense’; the trouble is that while ‘common sense’ and ‘feeling’ understand nothing about philosophy, philosophy, on the other hand, understands them perfectly.
This is bullshit. I’ve read some Barthes and liked it but how anyone could take a sentence like that seriously is beyond me.
I believe I understand what it’s intended to mean, so I’ll take a stab at it and I think the sense of the passage as a whole and you can enlighten me if I’m wrong: dopes don’t get smart people but smart people get dopes.
Say peeps, what do you think will happen to communism now that the Soviet Union has collapsed?
Can you repeat that? I had MTV turned way up because that James “Laid” video was on….
All right, new thread, already. Don’t say I never got you bastards anything.
That’s not what he’s saying at all. He’s saying that there’s this bogus received wisdom, a tool of the dominant culture, that poses as a ‘natural’ intelligence we all have called “common sense” or “feeling”. And it doesn’t understand such pretentious harmful nonsense as Marxism or postmodernism or what-have-you. But Marxism, etc., understands that game all too well and sees right through it. You can ignore philosophy by the use of this rigged game, but philosophy will not ignore the game: rather, it will expose it. The key is that Barthes doesn’t believe these people really are dopes at all — “I believe you to be more wily than lacking in culture”.
We see your point, & raise you one you’re-full-of-shit.
Call.
Much as I may care about fairness & equality, I care at least as much about REALITY – you might want to try some sometime. Not quite as much fun as being a mental Stormtrooper for the latest Hero-Of-Our-Times, but a hell of a lot handier on the increasingly not-so-rare occaisions when Mr. Shit & Mr. Fan shake hands & say howdy … just trust me on that one. It’s quite non-trivial. Figuring that out via trial-&-error has an unfortunately high probability of leading to death or permanent injury.
Indeed, why stop there? Equal time for Nazis & Satanists in the curriculum too … & Hollow-Earthers, & Alien-Abductees, & Moonies, & Zoroastrians, & Raelians, & animists … see, you might want to consider the rather important thing with all the “looney toones” ideas being that they have this nasty tendency to be borne out in a strange mysterious kingdom called The Real World – unlike Trickle-Down Theory, Intelligent Design, or the weird Disney/Spielberg version of US History that ruled supreme until very recently, & still does hold sway in all too many minds. Unfortunately, bad ideas always create bad results, like witch-burnings, or pointless invasions of other nations under false pretenses that wind up bankrupting the invaders, or a lot of possibly well-meaning people voting for a total failure as President, because he seems like a nice guy with whom they can identify.
As events prove over & over, merely getting a lot of folks to agree with you does not mean either you or they are correct. Heliocentrism was originally just another crackpot theory. So too was evolution. All the evidence proves they’re correct – not whether people think they’re fun or neat or sexy.
You fail at it — it is finding real-world examples to justify your ideology.
Fuck! The level of profanity in here is appallingly fucking low. Assholes.
Also, I go out for long motorcycle ridce and some excellent banh mi for several hours and what’s going on when I get back? SAME FUCKING GRABAR POST. Is the 48-hour Grabar thread a new intertoobish tradition?
Also, poopie.
Oh sure, just to make me look like an idiot, eh?
That’s not what he’s saying at all.
Okay so weasels in the dominant culture use dopey tools that are rendered useless by our awesome tools. Tools. Heh. I don’t feel too far off.
We’ll take the Zoroastrians and the animists, but WE DON’T WANT THE IRISH!
Also, pedestrian, if we have another Sadly, Nothering I’ll help you with at least a pint of that research…
That’s the problem with Townhall. It doesn’t come with a running Sadly, No! commentary by default, which makes it really hard to read and urges one to comment and point out every mistake of the author, which task takes several hours and is later ignored by said author. I really want to read and enjoy Townhall, as the fine beacon of conservative thought that it is, and luckily, I am able to on occasion when this liberal fascist blog digests it for me. Liberal fascist.
Anyway, I feel compelled to point out a minor error in your reasoning here:
“…our way of thinking is traceable to the (correct!) notion of a monotheistic God…”
What Professor Grabar (how did she even get a doctorate? Who gave her one?) actually said was that it’s correctly traceable, not that the notion itself is correct. As in, they trace it to that notion and they’re right about the tracing, she says. But this is a minor point in an otherwise superb piece. You guys are awesome.
What Professor Grabar (how did she even get a doctorate? Who gave her one?)
I suspect mail order or internet.
Grabar was endoctorated (not indoctrinated! Heavens no!) by… U. of Georgia.
Grabar was endoctorated (not indoctrinated! Heavens no!) by… U. of Georgia.
Atlanta-area joke: What does a UGA grad call a Georgia Tech grad six months after graduation?
Boss.
Pierce: Well, I guess if you don’t want to criticize the actual ideas these people had, you can always just quote some other guy making extremely vague statements about them.
I dunno. By ACTUALLY READING THEM?
I presume the editors of “Social Text” actually read Sokal’s essay before publishing it in their prestigious journal. It didn’t seem to do them much good.
Let’s not fight, Mr. Pierce. We’re all satire fans here, which means we delight in afflicting the comfortable (thereby also yielding the unintended though not unsatisfying result of comforting the afflicted). But sometimes the comfortable, the establishment viewpoint, the pompous wind-baggery is on our side of the ideological divide. We must mock it before our enemies do.
Everything I know about Paradise Lost, I learned from the classroom scene in Animal House.
My father taught for years in the English program at Clayton, and was even head for a while. I practically grew up on that campus. Sadly I believe he retired long before he could have a hand in firing this idiot. And tenure or no tenure, he would done whatever was in his power, I assure you.
Oh, and Clayton students are not always the greatest, but professors do not, as a rule, badmouth their students in a public forum. We complain all the time, actually, but no one I know would write a letter to the editor saying “my students are idiots.” It’s a bit unprofessional, and generally frowned upon.
8IdEPm http://guI2vS0jBrn7M3Apkdef81n.com
I love this site nn model forum
:[[
Have you seen any good films recently? http://sijuletudiqi.de.tl 3d pulley models thats a decent one, certainly out of both of them, it is the woman looking remarkably happy in her surroundings!
I really like swimming http://ytofearea.de.tl ls nymphet teenies i want to get my wet pussy licked so bad right now this one really isnt that good but its good enough ut i like face sitting a sucking not licking and fingering
I was made redundant two months ago http://dogeheguquno.de.tl illegal model galleries Tawny kept back for good reason .. amazing blowjob sucking him solid .. dude gets treatment as he watches his cock slide between her perky tits .. Tawny then goes for ride his cock growing harder inside her .. looking adorable as she bends over desk dude amps it up as her twat aches for more .. Tawny begs for harder fucking and he opts for her ass which is so tight he pulls out and cums over her gorgeous face
—–Specialized Karen Millen outlets.We sell HI-Q Karen Millen Dresses and so on in favour of sale.Buy discount Karen Millen dresses,enjoy lowest price and fastest shipping.
asdfdsf
I really like swimming
I’m afraid that number’s ex-directory
s for items, they still like to look their best, however. For that reason, name brands continue to be sought [url=http://www.scfi.fr/polo.asp]ralph lauren femme[/url]
by such individuals. Many retailers charge premium prices for high quality name brand items. When people want to save money on appealing footwear, they might consider finding ways to purchase cheap Ralph Lauren polo shoes.Locating such deals may begin with a search on the Internet. The Internet has become a popular way to find bargains on in-demand items, including apparel and footwear. Most people begin this search by using their favorite search engine. They might type in the brands for which they seek and then visit the links that are provided.In fact, many of the links direct customers to distributor or auction sites. Distributor sites provide information about items that are available for sale; they also provide information about the sellers and for how much the wares are [url=http://www.mediation-eau.fr/sachermes.html]kelly hermes[/url]
being sold. If a customer wants to order this shoe brand through such a website, he or she may complete the transaction online. That transaction is then sent directly to [url=http://www.sorgenia.fr/longchamps.html]sac longchamp pas cher[/url]
the seller. Once the order is complete, it is then mailed to the customer’s house.Likewise, some links send people to auction sites. These websites allow people to bid on items as they become available. Whoever bids the highest before the sale’s closing can then purchase that good. The seller then obtains the buyer’s shipping information and the order is sent out to that [url=http://www.scfi.fr/chemise.asp]burberry pas cher femme[/url]
individual.However, some individuals do not like to shop online. They would rather browse at stores and actually try on their apparel choices. For that reason, when they want to save money on footwear, they might take notice of sales that occur in [url=http://www.scfi.fr/polo.asp]ralph lauren femme[/url]
their communities. Most sales fliers are put in the Sunday edition of most major newspapers. On that day, a person can buy a newspaper and then browse the sales that will take place that week.Retailers offer sales throughout the year. However, certain times of the year call for them to hold bigger sales than at other times. For example, when people get ready to go back to school in August and September, stores often lower the prices on their shoe selections. Some shoppers may find bargains at which these goods are sold at well below their normal prices.Similarly, Christmas tends to be a popular shopping season for footwear. Many stores take advantage of the busy shopping season to debut their newest fashion lines for winter and the upcoming spring seasons. As with back-to-school shopping, customers might find bargains on appealing shoe varieties for their families.Cheap Ralph Lauren polo shoes can be obtained in a range of ways. Online shopping tends to be popular [url=http://www.icold-cigb.net/polo.html]ralph lauren femme[/url]
with individuals who want to find the lowest price possible on this particular item. Other people like to shop their local retailers so that they may try on their apparel. They may reserve their shopping times to busy retail seasons, like Christmas and back-to-school sales.About 7malls.com:7malls.com deals with a plethora of cheap [url=http://www.scfi.fr/polo.asp]polo ralph lauren pas cher[/url]
Ralph Lauren Polo Shoes ,brands accessories and has a immensely diversified collection in their online store. The prices are some of the most discounted rates offered in the online stores arena. They have discount all brands products .For more information please [url=http://www.isbformation.fr/hermes.html]sac hermes kelly[/url]
visit:enWe will have a look at a portion of the more features which can be personal for any The company Nimbus 10. This can be to produce all the assistive hearing aid device simply because relaxing as they can be. Locating the bird’s property property, right after they show up not to mention where exactly they’re going to satisfy, are very stuff a fantastic sportsman recognizes.?Women of all ages during the nurses particular field have been carrying professional clogs for longer than A decade’s. Other than performing, try out various cardio-exercises similar to riding as well as skating. Following the hot months, you are able to change the summer months boots or shoes for those winter season shoes and boots. As soon as they ca
Where are you calling from? loli teen little jeune I love watching Sasha like this: only focussed on her own pleasure, only excessive swearing and absolutely love those loud orgasms!