Saturday, April 03, 2004
Long, Rambling, Post (I've Had Neither Caffeine Nor Nicotine Today)
Oh, David Horowitz, you dumb bastard. It's a shame people are paying any attention to you. It's a bigger shame that those people are in the House of Representatives.
This is an interesting article -- David and his ilk will probably take it as evidence of Liberal Bias, but I think it's simply another example of the Times' "establishment" bias. When not doing an investigative or a reporting job, the Times style is (in very Classically Dramatic structure) to present a status quo, introduce a rabble-rouser or attempted reformer, then feature defense from the status quo for a while, and after defending the hell out of the whatever established system is under attack, end on a sort of but maybe he will succeed??? rhetorical note, to drive a little fear into the hearts of Times readers on their way to work for said establishment.
Now -- Horowitz's claims are baseless, his arguments meaningless, but everyone basically agrees that Professors are liberal bastards. Does anyone ever look at why that is? Besides a well-organized Liberal Conspiracy that managed to infiltrate every college and university in the nation from the bottom up but even after controlling the thoughts and education of our nation's youth for 30 years still can't manage to win a congressional election...
Let's look at this logically. There are some people in America today who have a great deal of power despite being in the private sector and being basically unelected. Are these people liberals? I'll give you a hint: No. They are not. Why? Because all the liberals went into academia instead of making billions of dollars and becoming Oil tycoons.
Anti-intellectualism is the strongest driving force behind Horowitz's ability to sell his snake oil, but I'm not making the claim that Conservatives are absent from teaching positions at colleges because they are stupider.
In fact -- conservatives are not absent from teaching positions at colleges -- has Mr. Horowitz ever been to a business school? No -- he focuses his energy on berating the Humanities and Liberal Arts departments. Let's think about that, shall we? The Liberal Arts.
Look -- if you're a young conservative culture warrior kid, don't fucking go into the Cultural Studies department and complain of bias against you. The department you pick is going to dictate the kind of professor you get, and what will be read. Conservatives love the martyr complex (see: that movie where Jesus pecks out some dude's eye for suggesting that maybe the Romans were equally responsible for his death, after all, Pontius Pilate was removed from his position in a few years for excessive brutality and cruelty, he was not a conflicted, weak-willed guy), and will take any chance possible to rail against the Liberal Establishment holding them down. They will use highly-charged civil rights terms because they know it gets a rise from us.
But though they rage and fulminate, they miss the greater point.
As I mentioned earlier -- they're in fucking charge. Academia is filled with liberals because it's the absolute last place in public life where a guy can be a liberal and actually reach people.
Let's say you're that young conservative kid from a few paragraphs ago. You have a lot of money with which to go to college, and you're actually a smart kid, so you can pick any school. Say you pick my school, New York University, which has a reputation (completely unearned) as being one of the most liberal in the country. Well, you're smart and rich, so this school is absolutely perfect for you. Maybe you can date one of the Olsen Twins. Now, when it comes time to pick your major and its subsequent career paths, you have some choices: do you want something that will make you a lot of money, or do you want to be a student for the next 12 years, and then teach until you die?
If you are a conservative, the option where you make a lot of money and get a lot of power will seem more attractive to you, because you have no Liberal qualms about "selling out" or being "part of the problem with this country" or being "a soulless, bloodsucking monster." So, you leave academia behind, and because it's a closed, insular system of academic criticism circle-jerks and meaningless rivalries, it never bothers you again as you become CFO of a company that manufactures mp3-players to be attached to AK-47s. Then one day you read a mass emailing by David Horowitz in which he paints a terrifying picture of your child under attack from Liberal Professors and their reign of unimaginable terror and their great power over the easily molded minds of today's youth. So you lobby your Republican congressmen and Horowitz's fucking manifesto is passed as a non-binding resolution in the House, because you have the real fucking power, not some Comparative Literature professor in Indiana, no matter how many times he assigns kids from Peoria to read Theo Adorno!!!! |
This is an interesting article -- David and his ilk will probably take it as evidence of Liberal Bias, but I think it's simply another example of the Times' "establishment" bias. When not doing an investigative or a reporting job, the Times style is (in very Classically Dramatic structure) to present a status quo, introduce a rabble-rouser or attempted reformer, then feature defense from the status quo for a while, and after defending the hell out of the whatever established system is under attack, end on a sort of but maybe he will succeed??? rhetorical note, to drive a little fear into the hearts of Times readers on their way to work for said establishment.
Now -- Horowitz's claims are baseless, his arguments meaningless, but everyone basically agrees that Professors are liberal bastards. Does anyone ever look at why that is? Besides a well-organized Liberal Conspiracy that managed to infiltrate every college and university in the nation from the bottom up but even after controlling the thoughts and education of our nation's youth for 30 years still can't manage to win a congressional election...
Let's look at this logically. There are some people in America today who have a great deal of power despite being in the private sector and being basically unelected. Are these people liberals? I'll give you a hint: No. They are not. Why? Because all the liberals went into academia instead of making billions of dollars and becoming Oil tycoons.
Anti-intellectualism is the strongest driving force behind Horowitz's ability to sell his snake oil, but I'm not making the claim that Conservatives are absent from teaching positions at colleges because they are stupider.
In fact -- conservatives are not absent from teaching positions at colleges -- has Mr. Horowitz ever been to a business school? No -- he focuses his energy on berating the Humanities and Liberal Arts departments. Let's think about that, shall we? The Liberal Arts.
Look -- if you're a young conservative culture warrior kid, don't fucking go into the Cultural Studies department and complain of bias against you. The department you pick is going to dictate the kind of professor you get, and what will be read. Conservatives love the martyr complex (see: that movie where Jesus pecks out some dude's eye for suggesting that maybe the Romans were equally responsible for his death, after all, Pontius Pilate was removed from his position in a few years for excessive brutality and cruelty, he was not a conflicted, weak-willed guy), and will take any chance possible to rail against the Liberal Establishment holding them down. They will use highly-charged civil rights terms because they know it gets a rise from us.
But though they rage and fulminate, they miss the greater point.
As I mentioned earlier -- they're in fucking charge. Academia is filled with liberals because it's the absolute last place in public life where a guy can be a liberal and actually reach people.
Let's say you're that young conservative kid from a few paragraphs ago. You have a lot of money with which to go to college, and you're actually a smart kid, so you can pick any school. Say you pick my school, New York University, which has a reputation (completely unearned) as being one of the most liberal in the country. Well, you're smart and rich, so this school is absolutely perfect for you. Maybe you can date one of the Olsen Twins. Now, when it comes time to pick your major and its subsequent career paths, you have some choices: do you want something that will make you a lot of money, or do you want to be a student for the next 12 years, and then teach until you die?
If you are a conservative, the option where you make a lot of money and get a lot of power will seem more attractive to you, because you have no Liberal qualms about "selling out" or being "part of the problem with this country" or being "a soulless, bloodsucking monster." So, you leave academia behind, and because it's a closed, insular system of academic criticism circle-jerks and meaningless rivalries, it never bothers you again as you become CFO of a company that manufactures mp3-players to be attached to AK-47s. Then one day you read a mass emailing by David Horowitz in which he paints a terrifying picture of your child under attack from Liberal Professors and their reign of unimaginable terror and their great power over the easily molded minds of today's youth. So you lobby your Republican congressmen and Horowitz's fucking manifesto is passed as a non-binding resolution in the House, because you have the real fucking power, not some Comparative Literature professor in Indiana, no matter how many times he assigns kids from Peoria to read Theo Adorno!!!! |
