This will be an especially personal post, but as it brings into sharp relief many of the ideas I’ve spent years writing about here, I figured it’s worth sharing.
As many of you know, a few evenings ago I received the following email from one of my old creative writing professors:
Jeff,
Would you mind taking my name off your “about” page on Proteinwisdom? I’ve always liked you and your fiction, and your and [name redacted] impetus to make that conference happen, at that moment in time, did a great deal to speed this program along. I was also simply grateful to have you in the program when you came along, because you were–and are–a very smart and intellectual fiction writer, a rare commodity still, to this day. But I am more and more alarmed by the writings in this website of yours, and I do not want to be associated with it.
Brian Kiteley
Here’s the context of that mention on my “about” page: “Some of the writers Jeff studied under are Rikki Ducornet, Beth Nugent, Brian Kiteley, and Brian Evenson.
My reply was terse:
Are you asking that I pretend I never studied under you?
And what, precisely, are you so “alarmed” by?
Me, I’m increasingly alarmed by the number of academics — in particular, those who teach writing — who find speech alarming. But then I guess I’m old fashioned that way.
Thanks, Brian.
As I first noted after receiving the email and thinking on it a bit:
This is, in effect, a repudiation of everything I’ve done here. And yes, it hurt me very much.
I checked over my recent entries, and I saw a discussion on the expansion of the commerce clause by Scalia; a discussion of “process” and how it dovetails with the content of thought; a bit on language; a repudiation of the idea of cultural evolution as a move toward some progressive singularity; a discussion of the potential longterm political ramifications — particularly, the growth of a client class — that could arise in the wake of a law that nationalizes healthcare; a short fiction; a Leif Garrett post; and a couple of Corey Haim dispatches from the after life.
No doubt people like SEK will see such a note as befitting a person so foul as me. They will rejoice that others in academia see me as they do. Me, I see the email as a rebuke to everything I try to stand for — especially, that last ditch effort to engage in debate as one of a number of would-be public intellectuals.
Instead, what I write is evidently a cause for “alarm”; it represents some sort of worrisome disease of the mind and the soul that good righteous academic folk must necessarily distance themselves from — to the point that even someone who praises me for my intellect fears the taint of my name and words.
Presumably, academics like Mr Kiteley will continue to associate themselves with intellectualism. “Pragmatic” conservatives will continue to push GOP talking points, and secure their places as influential voices on the right. For my part, I am a pariah on both sides of the divide.
Since receiving that email, I’ve been mulling all this over, and today I decided to contact Brian Kiteley directly; after all, I’ve been to his house, we’ve had drinks together, and we’d always gotten along just fine — and though I hadn’t spoken to him in years, I figured the best way to discuss this would be as close to face-to-face as I could manage.
So I dialed him up and he answered. When I told him who was calling, he let out a forced “laugh” — I presume to show his bemused exasperation with my gall at having contacted him — and, when pressed, he called me a “jerk”.
His position seems to be that allowing Darleen’s comic to stand — the President raping lady liberty “is not a political cartoon and you know it,” he told me — was sick and irresponsible, the abetting of a civil evil that is far worse than, say, drawing Bush as Hitler, or insinuating an American President manufactured a war and sent men and woman off to die so he could exand his portfolio.
When I countered that I thought we were taught to believe that the best way to answer speech is with more speech (I also noted that I found the specific question of how exactly the cartoon was “racist” an interesting one, and that I found the rather heated discussion on that point intellectually useful), he reacted as if I couldn’t possibly believe such idealistic tripe. Finally, he cut me off, told me that I have his phone number and that he doesn’t have mine, and that we should keep it that way (whatever that means). And he hung up.
In between all this , his argument seemed to be that joking about owning guns and the President raping liberty is playing into the hands of the “extreme right wing”-types, many of whom presumably still live in the hills and marshes of “the deep south” and want to do the President real physical harm. When I pointed out that those same types likely wouldn’t frequent a “Goldstein”-run blog, he agreed, at least momentarily, before returning to the theme of the danger my ideas represent: this idea of a (soft) “civil war” revolted him, even though it was clear that I was speaking of a kind of culture war in which the power of the federal government is challenged by states based on concentrations of voters — a kind of libertarian idea for how those who believe in smaller government and the Constitutional directives for states rights over and beyond the ever-growing reach of federal government bureaucracies can bring an effective challenge. In fact, I pointed out that we are seeing that dynamic at work in the lawsuits states are threatening over Obamacare — precisely the reason I reintroduced that original 2005 post as (perhaps) prescient.
Let me now say this: when Brian first wrote me, I was hurt. Now, I’m just angry. And indignant. This idea — coming from a fiction writer, a creative writing program director, and a university professor who instructs on creative endeavors — that a political cartoon or comic he found distasteful should have been removed by me as potentially incendiary and harmful, flies in the face of everything we have ever been taught about free expression, art, political speech, and the exchange of ideas (often heated) in the public square. It is the reverse of tolerance masquerading as a claim to the moral high ground.
It is an Orwellian world in which we live when fucking novelists want to distance themselves from those who criticize the government. Were Kiteley’s disgust over the comic purely aesthetic, I could at least entertain his point. But that isn’t the case: instead, Kiteley objects to the content, and sees Darleen’s cartoon as the online equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded movie theater.
When I noted that people were free to comment on the site and voice their opposition, Kiteley told me of my propensity for stifling opposition — which would come as a surprise to the commenters who visited to call Darleen a racist, etc. Or to the number of people on the left — from Nishi, to SEK, to Jeralyn Merritt — I’ve invited to guest post here over the years.
This is our modern academy, distilled to this singular objective correlative. And make no mistake: the university where Kiteley teaches is NOT on the far left, by university standards.
And yet here we have an example of a novelist — a person trafficking in the most personal of ideas and expressions — demanding a form of political censorship that, when it is reversed, and the object of derision is, say, a black-faced Joe Lieberman or Michael Steele, doesn’t demand the same kind of cultural white washing.
Perhaps his next book of writing exercises should include a chapter on “banned topics.” Just to be on the safe side.
Shame on Brian Kiteley. I mean, if a novelist is so bothered by pointed speech that he’d support political censorship, is it really any wonder that our institutions of higher learning have become cauldrons of conformity and anti-intellectual groupthink — or that students leave them with a healthy fear of ever giving offense?
I’m a jerk? Perhaps. Truth be told, I’ve been called worse.
But at least I don’t pretend to champion creative expression and individuality of thought, then turn around and agitate for the silencing of speech I don’t like.
I’d rather make my living, such as it as, as an indigent jerk than as a tenured hypocrite growing fat off platitudes about free speech that I don’t actually believe.
****
update: For all those visiting progressives who can’t seem to locate the thesis of this post (hint: it isn’t about the First Amendment), allow me to help:
Me, I’m increasingly alarmed by the number of academics — in particular, those who teach writing — who find speech alarming. But then I guess I’m old fashioned that way.
I’d gone back and bolded it and everything, but people were still having problems finding it, so there you go.
You’re welcome.
Frankly I find it galling that Mr Kiteley would write and ask me to alter my personal history. If he didn’t want to “associate” with me, he shouldn’t have emailed. Because before then, I wasn’t “associating” with him, nor was he tied in any way to my site. He appeared in a list of writers I’d studied under. An historical and autobiographical fact, and no more.
Kiteley’s pretense of “alarm” leads me to believe that it isn’t ME he is worried about; rather, he seems alarmed by the possibility of some of his fellow travelers seeing his name on my site and not being able to make important intellectual distinctions. And he wouldn’t want them questioning his ideological bona fides and purity.
The irony is rich, if you know where to dig.
*****
Online master’s programs can enhance your education greatly.
The truth doesn’t care who tells it.
I’m sorry that this is something that has happened IRL to you, but I find it fascinating.
Kiteley is a coward and a jerk, and makes me question why I encourage my kids to (someday) go to college. For THAT bullshit?
Swordfish. Sideways.
I suppose it is not possible to negatively depict the President and his campaign to “remake America” by ramming though legislation (oh look, Prof. Kitely, rape imagery!!!) despite the support of only 37% of the public without being accused of racism by the left and the squishy “moderates”.
I have to ask, can any negative depiction of Barack Obama avoid that?
“Damn.”
ALL college professors are dickheads. It’s been proven scientifically!
Yes, even the engineers. Trust me.
I asked that same question of him, Spiny. And I even tied it back to intentionalism, to forestall the notion that Darleen is responsible for knowing the history of blacks and race imagery in this country (to my recollection, no green women were ever involved in the supposed intertexts her comic “necessarily” references, but I’ll have to check my notes).
So far, the answer is a resounding, ear-drum shattering, NO!!!
“…he reacted as if I couldn’t possibly believe such idealistic tripe.”
And yet, he seems to believe “…that joking about guns and the President raping liberty is playing into the hands of the “extreme right wing” types, many of whom presumably still live in the hills and marshes of “the deep south” and want to do the President real physical harm”?
What sort of world is this he lives in? Would he believe his weird insistence on the sanctity of life will entail killing betimes, for the sake of preserving that special living quality the biotic thingys possess?
Maybe Kitely got tired out over the years.
I mean, so no speech is adequate. No violence is allowed (whether it may be adequate is unknown). So what’s left? Roll over and die of nullity?
“I have to ask, can any negative depiction of Barack Obama avoid that?”
At this point, I would have to say No.
Jeff, there is a touch of sadness that this happens. I’ll avoid all the cliches that could be used here, and simply say: 1) I liked Darleen’s cartoon, and think it is good that people talk about it, and 2) I agree and support you on this. No “if”s, “and”s or “but”s. You have my support. You have my respect.
Is it indelicate (I don’t want to offend Kiteley’s sensibilities) to debate whether Obama is in fact raping our liberties? Isn’t that worthy of public and private discourse? I though dissent was patriotic. I’m a fool for believing all that stuff about free speech and free thought that the left LOVES to talk about but rarely supports in real time.
Indelicate? The Dems and their friends on the fringe left (and the fringe right for that matter) had no qualms about accusing George W Bush of “raping our liberties”.
My sympathies – I am going round and round with some of my book-blog friends, and in the comments sections of various Open Salon blogs, trying to be a reasonable person, and to have a rational discussion about the Tea Parties, and that no, we are not functionally illiterate/red-neck/relative-humping/racists … to no avail. It’s getting pretty upsetting, especially after a book-blog friend, who is an incredibly supportive fan of my own writing – casually used the ‘teabagger’ slur in a forum where we are both active. She’s done a lot for me, but I keep my book-writing and my political stuff very separate; she doesn’t know that I am very involved in Tea Party activities, and I don’t know how or if I should tell her how offensive and hurtful I found it. And for a relatively small matter, I am still quite upset about it all.
I used to think bloggers who talked about a ‘cold civil war’ were exaggerating – now, I’m beginning to think that not only are they not exaggerating, but we’ll be lucky if that’s all it is.
Jeff, it seems to me that you have not only been called worse, it was by better people!
Here’s the deal (as I see it, anyway): Darleen’s cartoon was certainly provocative, and it was supposed to be, just as was Micheal Ramirez’ “Obama Ackbar” cartoon. Was it racist? Only to those who go looking for racism in everything and always manage to find it.
Any reciprocity function subtending a sense of justice seems to have abandoned your critics
DarleenJeff. Such a condition is ordinarily understood in a state of war and is generally unexpected in civic discourse. Where are we then?I suppose political cartoonists who wish to depict Barack Obama in a negative light should not depict him at all, but replace his image in the cartoon with an asterisk or something.
The little president man we have is a special needs one. You can’t just say what you think.
Jeez.
He’s not a novelist. He’s a functionary with a hobby. And he’s a nervous low-level functionary, or he wouldn’t consider himself subject to loyalty tests.
It’s kinda sad. The bug guy book was all right.
Condolences.
Sounds to me like the English Department’s been giving him shit about it. Or he could just really not like your political perspective and find it unpleasant to have his name on it.
In any case, fuck him. It’s your curriculum vitae.
As I said in the other thread, I wonder what his thoughts were during the Bush assasination pornathon of the aughts. He’s a hypocrite, which is the same thing as being a liar. You, may or not be a jerk (your words, definitely not mine), which is honest. You’re the far better man. Far better…
For what its worth, I’m sorry Jeff.
But, the fact that you’re one of the few voices left that sees the difference between standing up for free speech and ‘somewhat free’ speech regardless of if it offends must count for something these days.
BTW, I completely forgot to donate at all this past winter since I was waiting for the subscription to start and frankly I’ve just been busy with real life matters. Is the subscription base going to start any time soon, or should I avail myself the opportunity to hit your tip jar again?
Kiteley must take witnesses to Darleen’s cartoon as something akin to the Moslems who chose to riot when apprised of the Danish cartoonists Muhammad graffiti. Which, speaking of cartoons, Kiteley has issues there.
“[T]his idea of a (soft) “civil war” revolted him”, and yet he does everything in his power to embody it. Again, strange choice.
You should not be angry, or indignant.
Give the gulf between your views and his, I cannot fault his reasoning from wishing to simply have nothing to do with the likes of you.
I do not understand why you’d wish to have anything to do with the likes of him… and I think this is rapidly becoming apparent to an increasing number of people, precisely in accordance with the type of ‘soft civil war’ of which you were writing of.
Take that dude who had to apologize for calling Stupak a ‘babykiller’. Either it was an irresponsible emotional outburst, or an attention seeking political stunt, or he actually meant it.
They (the Stupak supporters) would call it one of the former 2. His apology I think lends a lot of weight to that. If he had meant it, he should not have apologized. I think he was right and when I say Stupak has now contributed in part to the deaths of millions of infants, I very much mean it – he is a baby killer.
I would not let a baby killer into my home. I would not buy him a drink. I think he’s a reprehensable and repugnant little creature for whom this country would be better off without.
Given the wide gulf in our views of basic human decency and values it makes sense to me that I should not wish to associate with him, and if we are to believe they believe what they claim to believe about us, it makes perfect sense they should not want to associate with us.
To me it has nothing to do with freedom of speech, which I fully support, but freedom of association. Although I support freedom of speech and their right to say such repugnant things as they do, that does not mean I withhold my judgement of what they’re saying for the repugnant, vile, stupid things they are, which I cannot in good concious support in any way, and do not wish to associate myself with. It is not a freedom of speech issue to ask you whether you would want any polite association with a man who’s views offended you in the manner yours offend him.
Any more then I’d ‘put politics aside’ and have a pleasant conversation about the weather with a damn German Nazi, I increasingly don’t see how conservatives and socialists within this country can be expected to do so, in light of what horrific evils they believe each other to be perpetrating. At least not me. These people are actively seeking to destroy all I’ve ever believed in that is good. They’ve given me existentialist crises. There is a fundemental moral disconnect that places us on opposite sides of where we each demarcate good from evil. I’ve had it with them to the point where the prospect of violence does not disgust me, but rather seems proper.
And I really don’t see why they shouldn’t regard me the same, because given half a chance, I will tear down everything they stand for and dance on the remains.
Jeff – you know very well what they believe. Better than I.
Starting from that assumption…. are they wrong about you?
Gaff–
Thanks. The subscription thing might hurt some regulars, so I’ve put it on the back burner. I tried Amazon, but my state fucked that up. Blogads won’t answer my emails. So I’m surviving on donations. I usually run a fundraiser at the beginning of each month. I’ll probably just continue that for the time being.
Hypocrite or comfortably numb? You make the call. I say — both.
Alright Jeff, I will keep an eye out for the next fundraising post if I forget to tip again.
Sorry to hear it Jeff. In my experience this sort of thing always feels worse when it comes from those we like and respect.
Entropy —
His having once been a professor of mine has no connection to what I write here. And what I am indignant about is that he’d presume to ask me to rewrite history by removing him from the list of people I studied under.
I am also indignant that he directs a creative writing program — because I now know that selection into the program will depend, in some ways at least, on how well a candidate is able to hide his political views.
And there are ways to suss that out without asking political questions. As my essays on what you think you are doing when you interpret should help make clear.
Mr Kitely,
You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there grinning
You got a lotta nerve
To say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on
The side that’s winning
You say I let you down
You know it’s not like that
If you’re so hurt
Why then don’t you show it
You say you lost your faith
But that’s not where it’s at
You had no faith to lose
And you know it
I know the reason
That you talk behind my back
I used to be among the crowd
You’re in with
Do you take me for such a fool
To think I’d make contact
With the one who tries to hide
What he don’t know to begin with
You see me on the street
You always act surprised
You say, “How are you?” “Good luck”
But you don’t mean it
When you know as well as me
You’d rather see me paralyzed
Why don’t you just come out once
And scream it
No, I do not feel that good
When I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief
Perhaps I’d rob them
And now I know you’re dissatisfied
With your position and your place
Don’t you understand
It’s not my problem
I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You’d know what a drag it is
To see you
I think a lot of people expect others to value their opinions more than they’re worth, and Kiteley seems to be one of those. I also think his opinion on this matter is born of emotion, not reason, and therefore isn’t even worth the proverbial two cents.
Awesome, steph. I can still remember the first time I heard that song. Who’d have thought a meek dude from the Iron Range could be so cutting?
My sympathies, Jeff.
One of the things that Mr. Kitely seems to have missed is that the very provocative nature of Darleen’s cartoon jump started an animated discussion. If the cartoon had been given the Jeff G. editorial boot, that discussion would not have taken place. We wouldn’t have had the opportunity to to see the various attempts to trash intentionalism by creating out of whole cloth entirely unrelated outrages like “soft peddling rape” or “racism’ or, in Mr. Kitely’s case, an overblown fear that such indecorous drawings might provoke some wild eyed hicktard from the Appalachian Mountains to drive a cement truck full of fertilizer into the president’s motorcade or some such.
Mr. Kitely misses the big picture even though he hangs it around his neck like voodoo charm. Provocation is perceived by the viewer within the lens of their own world views. My reaction to “Piss Christ” was entirely different, as a Christian, than was some Greenwich Village Marxist sculptor. Let the dialogue commence. Are certain topics “settled science” that cannot be faced in any sort of provocative way?
This in a nutshell, is the danger of overarching political correctness. It’s one thing to express outrage at a representation of a political point of view. Certainly this pegged my outrage meter. By declaring off limits certain representations of a political nature we condemn ourselves to dialogue akin to chattering monkeys.
I wonder how Mr. Kitely felt about the “Mohammad cartoons.” I suspect I know the answer. It’s the difference between facing an opinion and averting ones face with the expectation that everybody should be rotating away.
To lose respect for someone you once looked up to is bad enough, but knowing that he is out there making things worse is just a kick in the teeth.
My sympathies, Jeff. Illegitimi non carborundum.
Sometimes “Outlaw” doesn’t feel so good.
Too bad your old mentor has chosen to be a tool of power… grieve the loss
I always thought of Mr. Kitely as sort of the man behind the Protein Wisdom curtain, if only cause of how tightly he’s been associated with not just the bloggings generally but the rape metaphors specifically. Losing his association will be disorienting I think until some new kernel forms about which this site can coalesce.
We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
By declaring off limits certain representations of a political nature we condemn ourselves to dialogue akin to chattering monkeys.
In seriousness (not rhetorical because it may sound that way), what is it to be declared off limits?
Off limits as in banned criminal speech?
Or socially intolerated? But if so, how so?
As Dr. Bruce Banner used to say:
Better to be angry than be hurt.
–
Two names are pertinent here:
H.G. Wells
George Bernard Shaw
Novelist and playwright, both self-proclaimed “liberal fascists,” and both would have done exactly the same thing to you were they in Kiteley’s position.
Only perhaps moreso. Shaw would have been delighted to see you gassed by a “humane gas.”
For the good of humanity, of course.
Maybe Kiteley got tired out over the years.
No. I used to get along with lefties too, but the Iraq war and the vitriol that ensued over BusHitler has widened the chasm, and they’re cutting their ties to the chusma just as we stock up on canned soup.
and that no, we are not functionally illiterate/red-neck/relative-humping/racists … to no avail.
The truth is no defense when people need you to be all that they despise. If the Tea Partiers are not in fact racistsexisthomophobes, then the left will be forced to consider our point of view as legitimate.
Which is not nearly as satisfying as sitting atop a high horse and spitting on the low-lifes. Moral preening releases lots of endorphins into the brain, dontcha know.
Jeff, I am sorry you had to go through that. I am not going to pretend to know what you are feeling, but for me it is especially upsetting when people I respect, am close to, and admire betray me (it does not happen that often but it has happened). It is an emotional solar plexus blow.
But ultimately it says more about Brian Kitely than about you (and it is not a good thing Professor Kitely). You may be prickley at times, but you are honest. The Darleen cartoon was not racist (I also don’t recall anyone doing a reader poll on the subject) and was intended to make a specific point. I personally like some of her photoshops more (the Sopranos one remains a classic) but it was an appropriate cartoon for a blog and the “outrage” over the lady liberty one is mostly faux outrage.
And the tea
baggerspartiers being toothless hillbillies (okay, I am guessing what Professor Kitely thinks of them), wait until all the “benefits” of this legislation start raining down and we will find there are a lot of hillbillies with doctorates and stethascopes around their necks (no that was not a death threat just an observation some of the equipment those hillbillies use).I am still saddened on how few people get outraged over the reaction to the Danish cartoons. Or to Dutch filmmakers who get killed or who have fatwas issued against them. No one from the left seems to care about that (even Christopher Hitchens seems more concerned with pointing out how Christianists are idiots than taking on that direct assault to free speech). Perhaps Professor Kitely can reflect on that and realize he is on the wrong side of history on this issue.
Who knows… perhaps it will shame him into considering, for real, the purpose of speech and the vital necessity that it be free.
I don’t think that we understand anymore (for a general value of “we”) what the reason for free speech ever was. We’ve enjoyed it and taken it for granted. Who thinks about how it relates to anything real? Who thinks about the alternatives? It’s just pretty words that few people actually believe.
Oh, everyone gets the idea that they want their own speech to be free, but that’s because (as we all know) we’re *right*. People who are wrong? That’s different, isn’t it?
It’s not, of course, but who is prepared to explain *why*?
Well, Entropy, keep in mind that Mr. Kitely declared any personal association to Jeff (even one so innocuous as a “studied under” mention) as untenable due to his perception of something that Jeff should have, in effect, banned. The outrage is 2-3 times removed from the act. Jeff’s tolerance of said provocation, even though the cartoon was solidly grounded in a political point of view, albeit intensely, requires disassociation by not banning the provocation.
Guilt by editorial association.
In Kitley world some provocations need to be banned, without discussion or hearing. It’s very much an Amish shunning thing. The only thing missing is Mr. Kitely standing in front of Jeff and turning his back. I think Jeff should be both sad and angry about someone making that kind of judgment.
I’ll admit it surprised me that neither SEK or Kitely offered any such critique. Because surely the idea behind the cartoon isn’t so forbidden or profane, is it?
Or is that exactly their true concern?
For myself, I thought the cartoon was far too much sledgehammer and not nearly enough scalpel. But, when you go against the consent of the governed as shown by polling (insert rape metaphor here) and force them to do things they don’t want like purchase insurance or face a fine (insert loss of liberty metaphor here), hey, guess what?, people are going to express their displeasure as they personally see fit (insert combined rape of liberty metaphor here).
Pearl-clutching is not a reasonable reaction to something truly obscene; it’s a weapon to be used against “the enemy” in the court of public opinion.
I live for the day when I can sit on TV and say to a male interviewer, “Oh, stop clutching your pearls, Nancy!”
I’m sorry, bh, but I will no longer be able to associate with you.
[turns back]
This is what academia has become.
We are going to need a revived Un-American Activities Committee before this is over.
Wonder if he started a letter writing campaign over the movie “Loose Change”?
perhaps it will shame him into considering, for real, the purpose of speech and the vital necessity that it be free.
I highly doubt it. If he’s taken the step of asking Jeff to disassociate with him, he’s already crossed the chasm. Those who selectively clutch their pearls, Nancy were never dedicated to free speech unless it was their own and unless they were Speaking Truth to Power.
Now we’re the punks challenging the system and they’re The Man, and they relish their turn at the whip. Most self-styled intellectuals have an inner fascist that’s dying to get out.
dicentra has it. (OK, Eric Hoffer had it first, but anyway…)
So many self-styled “intellectuals” are all too happy to become totalitarian stooges, from Goebbels to Chomsky.
This is the strange and disappointing thing about the liberal/left today; it used to, supposedly, be about rebellion, etc. Now they’re the worst kind of statist, conformist drones, willing to silence anything they considered upsetting. But maybe they were always like that, they just never had a chance to create their own Reich.
If the little president man hadn’t raped our little country to begin with none of this would’ve happened.
This is all on him.
So was the President, by the same “editorial”association, guilty of tacitly endorsing violence in “inner city ghetto mobs” by sitting in Rev Wright’s house of “white government of the US invented Aids to kill us black folk” for 20 years and donating to it? Or does so called hate speech only perk up the ears of white racists due to genetics or something? As happy would say I’m confuzled.
Something that always surprises me when liberals get their outrage on is how all of them apparently grew up in 1880’s Georgia. Pick a racist trope and they’re intimately familiar with it.
Seriously, who the hell are these people hanging out with?
Woodrow Wilson?
Peta Wilson?
Robert Byrd?
Like Frum, Brian Kiteley is soon be every libtard’s favorite quisling.
And, like clockwork, Darleen’s cartoon was used as an example on NPR today.
I am outraged.
I am surprised this didn’t happen sooner. To me it seems pretty simple that this guy is a pussy who can’t tell all of his other friends to get a life.
He can’t soar with the fucking eagles when all he can do is honk like a goose.
When I read about professors like Kiteley, I begin to think that tenure ought to be abolished. Why should leftists get lifetime employment?
That disconnect from the economic realities of the world leads to the arrogance we’ve seen academic leftists exhibit.
Heck, I say keep the cartoon at the top for weeks for months.
I wonder what the perfessor feels about the Mohammed cartoons of late unpleasantness.
Cordially…
Pamela Geller said it best: Truth is the new hate speech.
Know-it-all elites like Kiteley need to be shown the door when we get 67 NO votes in 2012.
Hopefully with Sarah Palin as Commander in Chief.
Just for my own education, is Kiteley arguing that this cartoon will incite right-wing elements to a civil war, and therefore it is sick and irresponsible of Jeff to have let it remain on his site? And Kiteley is so concerned with this looming violence, that he seeks to distance himself from mere association with Jeff so he won’t have the taint of treason on his trousers?
Is Kiteley so frightened by his leftist compatriots that he believes they will mistake him for a secret right-winger? That they’ll oust him from the fold, because he hasn’t established his leftist bonafides through deed and thought sufficiently to be recognized as an entity distinct from Jeff?
Wouldn’t this indicate that Kiteley is more afraid of the left than the potential “civil war-like” violence of the right?
Something that always surprises me when liberals get their outrage on is how all of them apparently grew up in 1880’s Georgia. Pick a racist trope and they’re intimately familiar with it.
Seriously, who the hell are these people hanging out with?
Well that’s just it. The left is perpetually seeking to discredit the intellectual basis of conservativism by some phantom affect it has on the lowest common denominator. It is a rather perverse sort of posturing seeing as how leftism in action seems to manifest itself in lunatic behavior among the ranks of the educated in addition to fostering all manner of violence among their benighted pets who are not. I mean, where are our tenured terrorists? And why must they so desperately strain to link bad behavior to conservative thought when so often the evidence to the contrary is so glaringly obvious? This is a perpetual battle with the left, though it is made a little more awkward to stand one’s ground when what people are defending is a rather moronic cartoon.
#58: Did you just yayayaaah-roll us?
You have to admit that Eduard “Tro lo lo lo lo” Khil is catchy, in a pathetic drab Soviet way.
You have to admit that Eduard “Tro lo lo lo lo” Khil is catchy, in a pathetic drab Soviet way.
In Soviet Russia, song sings YOU!
Jeff G.
Prof. Kitely doesn’t realize distancing himself from you or your “type” won’t save him, should our country continue down this road.
I can already see Kitely groveling at the foot of his masters, loudly proclaiming his fault while begging for a chance at rehabilitation.
This administration is creating fear among citizens. I think you’ve witnessed one manifestation of that fear.
That’s weird, I thought that free speech was still a right in this country.
Mr. Kitely needs to be reminded:
IF YOU ONLY HAVE PRICIPLES WHEN PRINCIPLES ARE IN YOUR FAVOR, THEN YOU DON’T REALLY HAVE PRINCIPLES!
IF YOU SUPPORT “FREE SPEECH” FOR THOSE THAT YOU AGREE WITH, BUT WOULD CENSOR THOSE WITH WHOM YOU DISAGREE, THEN YOU REALLY DON’T BELIEVE IN FREE SPEECH!
Why is that so hard to understand for the closed-minded apparachiki of the left?
Because they are hypocrites, and afraid of any real debate that would bring their flimsy
philosophy crashing down around their ears.
He’s not a novelist. He’s a functionary with a hobby. And he’s a nervous low-level functionary, or he wouldn’t consider himself subject to loyalty tests.
OUCH, well done, psycho.
The dude’s an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill. (Always loved that line, even from the 300 lb paratrooper) Problem is, you got kicked out of that club a long time ago, for not toeing the line. Fuck ’em
Jeff, fuck this crap. You deal with real drama.
I’m picturing Nancy Pelosi in black leather carrying a bullwhip, Ilsa the Nazi She-Wolf style.
I don’t feel well at this moment… o_O
Looks like our old friend Scotty Boyshorts has twisted this whole incident all out of whack. Big surprise. Nice of him to leave a pingback to let us know…
Spiny,
Well, at least your imagination didn’t go as far as Nancy going Robert Mapplethorpe with the bullwhip.
“Indelicate? The Dems and their friends on the fringe left (and the fringe right for that matter) had no qualms about accusing George W Bush of “raping our liberties”.”
*raises hand* I did. And all the Dems who didn’t are assholes too.
“Seriously, who the hell are these people hanging out with?”
Black people?
In what way is Mr. Kitely doing anything to damage free speech? As far as I know he did not suggest that Darleen’s cartoon should be illegal. He said it was racist and offensive and did not want to be associated with. That’s…pretty much how free speech has always worked in this country.
So, Chris, you’re an idiot. Okey-dokey.
Trollhammered™.
I was going to write something like “you can always put me on your “about” page. But I also realize that such a repudiation hurts. The fact is that “liberal values” were always values of liberal communities and were never meant to serve as an umbrella right-wingers like you. That was just as true in John Locke’s and John Stuart Mill’s time as it is now. You were never protected by those values and you were mistaken and naive if you thought you were.
Go hang out with this guy, there Chris.
Really? With your black friends how many racist tropes have you discussed? 1, 5, 10, 200?
Hey, it’s Ric Caric everybody!
Jeff, my sympathies.
We live in strange times; Some of us are starting to find out that if we do speak the truth, we will get ridiculed and insulted. So there are some who will just continue to hold their tongues. It’s not particularly noble, and many will call those cowards, but it’s hard to fight an entire media culture, academic culture, and entertainment culture.
This is the disparity of free speech in America. For years, the accusations and slander of BOOOOOSH! was accepted. If you find one issue to disagree with Pelosi, Reid, Obama, then you are some kind of negative ‘ist. Free speech is a rotting corpse in this nation.
All I can say is keep up the the good work Jeff. You’re OUTLAW!-ness is an encouragement to all who fear speaking their minds.
Hey look, another errand boy. It’s funny watching them enforce TEH ORTHODOXY.
Anyone who says that cartoon is racist has racism on the brain.
Chris (assuming you’re still here, of course), feel free to fuck off.
Toodles!
Since you’re going to quote me, let’s try another:
That appears to include you.
Because Barack Obama is a black man, can any depiction of him in a negative light not be deemed racist? Is political criticism of him racist, by its very nature?
Oh lookie, a trackback…..
Looks like the political is personal for SEK.
That last one of mine was a special gift for our new friend Chris, if it wasn’t obvious.
Caric, SEKs, Chrissy, RD – a regular moronic convergence.
A singularity of stupid?
A rape by any other race of little president man would still feel every bit as rapey I bet.
I knew you could fuck a little country up but what I didn’t realize was how scalable the process was. This is a big fucking deal.
I don’t think I’ve ever encountered someone for whom writing comes less naturally than Caric. It’s like a constipated man trying desperately to squeeze out a log.
JD and Spiny are cracking me up here.
Perhaps they are the four horsemen of the stupocalypse.
Think they were all in the same basement? Wow, such an intense blast of stupidity brought to us by a triumvirate of tedium.
We just need Willie the Racist Skin Flute player to show up, and a black hole RACISTS will open up and devour the world.
RD, is this Hot Air. For fucks sake, boy. Grow up or get educated. Either one. It doesn’t matter.
In related news, I got a MoveOn.org missive from a distant relative whose name I don’t recognize. The letter and my response are at the pub.
But unlike Jeff’s case, I’m not distressed nor am I upset in the least by it. Gave me the opportunity to craft a response that I can cut and paste later, if needed. Any nastygrams that I receive in kind will only prove my point.
I wonder exactly what depiction of Barcky Chris would find acceptable – black and white striped? Black on one side white on the other? White?
I’d really love for Caric to expand upon his comment at #81. C’mon, Ric, hold forth.
I begin to think that tenure ought to be abolished.
Do that, and the few remaining non-radicals will be immediately purged. You seem to think that there’s a responsible adult somewhere on campus who will fire these mooks.
You would be wrong.
I think the problem is we are not supposed to make any imagines of Teh Won that don’t depict him with a halo and the light shining down upon him from the heavens.
Barry’s got a stripe JD, saw a pic of him on the golf course without his wristwatch on and hoo-doggies, tan-line city.
Why is that so hard to understand for the closed-minded apparachiki of the left?
Because they don’t value liberty or free speech: they only value status and power. The incessant wingnut babbling about freedom and enumerated powers is just so much white noise (I denounce myself) to them.
It seems that Brian Kiteley has transformed into Ric Caric. These are truly strange times we live in—truly strange. It is impossible to see where we go from here.
How is the decision to not associate oneself with another stifle anybody’s speech?
I pointed Chris to a link on the rape of liberty post where he can begin his enlightenment. We’ll see if he bits.
Personally, I think he is too invested in his racial superiority to try and understand truth.
He said it was racist and offensive and did not want to be associated with.
He said he was alarmed, not offended. Alarmed means he thinks there’s something dangerous going on.
Tell me, Chris, if the Tea Partiers are a racist mob, hell-bent on setting the country afire, shouldn’t we be put down like rabid dogs? Will you be the first to call for a “solution” to the problem?
Most of what has been said about the Tea Partiers is a bald-faced lie, told not because it’s true but because it’s politically useful, just as Alinsky prescribed.
The worst atrocities in human history happen when people believe lies. If enough people believe this one, this won’t end well for us.
Why are these concepts so fucking hard for the leftists to grasp?
Why does Chris hold the stereotype in his pointy head that half-black men like to rape green inanimate objects?
Why doesn’t Caric appreciate the irony of a fat greasy stupid white tool of the patriarchy teaching about the womynz and the racisms is funny?
These are but a few of the things I wonder about.
Read much?
Jeff, I am inspired by your impending pariah-hood. Pariahness? Pariahdom? Either way, you are who you are and fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke. We get the joke. We may not agree with the joke, or think it’s all that funny, but we do get it.
I think the Joker had a phrase he used when confronting people like Brian Kiteley; “Why so serious?”
I mean, really. He wants you hide his association with you. Not a very bright fellow. Does he not realize that him asking for you to remove him from your Baconsphere (six degrees of separation and all that) makes it look like he’s hiding something? It looks like the man has no balls. Looks aren’t deceiving in this case.
His actions have only proven his status as an intellectual eunuch.
I can hammer every new name you make up, trolls, and then I won’t have to read you.
I hope you shed tears of despair over that.
“How is the decision to not associate oneself with another stifle anybody’s speech?”
Look deeper Ryan. Think foundational principles and underlying assumptions about what is valuable about our 1st Amendment.
How is the decision to not associate oneself with another stifle anybody’s speech?
Jeff isn’t claiming to be stifled. He’s claming that (and I quote from the post you were supposed to have read and understood before posting):
He’s not lamenting suppression of free speech; he’s lamenting the knee-jerk reactions of those in academia who prize their reputations and social postures over intellectual rigor and actual, you know scholarship.
Which includes engaging those you disagree with in a dialog instead of scraping them off your shoe like so much dog dung.
I am inspired by your impending pariah-hood.
Dude. Pariah!Jeff is an old, old trope, especially among the left, and as of last year, the right, too.
He collects them and hangs them above the mantle as a warning.
It is a great cartoon and a great site. The doofus is not worthy of association with either. But since he has asked, I would DOUBLE UP on the association angle!
Of course not, this is the thinking man’s Hot Air…
Thought you were asked to leave, and stay lost. Thinking is not your strong suit.
How is the decision to not associate oneself with another stifle anybody’s speech?
You appear to miss the part where Kiteley wants to whitewash PAST associations with Jeff. The mere taint of being mentioned by Jeff in an “about me” page apparently gives him the vapors.
Shit, I’d put my association on the masthead now, but that’s me and I can be sort of a bitch.
Doug thinks like me.
“If you find one issue to disagree with Pelosi, Reid, Obama, then you are some kind of negative ‘ist. ”
Funny, I’ve disagreed with all three of them on a variety of issues, and not once have I ever been called a racist.
Maybe because I managed to express my disagreement without playing into racist or misogynistic tropes. (Yes! It’s possible!)
sdferr, removing a cartoon or other comment from a website is not a violation of free speech. Blog moderators are not the government, and they have the right to remove anything from their site. Darleen would have been free to post her crappy drawings on plenty of other right-wing cesspools.
Why won’t Ric come back and flesh out his comment at #81?
Kiteley wants it gone. That is what counts here.
Not at all, RD. You’re wrong as usual. I think it’s morons such as yourself that the proggs have given up all pretense of nuance.
Darleen would have been free to post her crappy drawings on plenty of other right-wing cesspools.
Or replace Obama with Bush and be welcomed anywhere in the leftosphere, in respectable journals of opinion, on the wall of a campus art gallery or anywhere else leftards congregate. Your entire infrastructure is a cesspool.
Jeff isn’t claiming to be stifled. He’s claming that (and I quote from the post you were supposed to have read and understood before posting): I’m increasingly alarmed by the number of academics — in particular, those who teach writing — who find speech alarming. But then I guess I’m old fashioned that way. He’s not lamenting suppression of free speech; he’s lamenting the knee-jerk reactions of those in academia who prize their reputations and social postures over intellectual rigor and actual, you know scholarship.
I think that needs to be elaborated upon.
Because forgive me but honestly I was wondering the same thing the trolls were – how is that stifling his speech?
I see now what I was missing. But it took me a minute. That explains the title of the post.
It’s been so long since I’ve concieved of Liberal Arts universities doing anything else perhaps I need a refresher on what it was they were supposed to be doing.
Chris, fuck yourself. I mean if you can, that is. So, you’re a prude. Why are you harshing my mellow, dude? There was nothing racist about the cartoon. Nothing. If you think there was, you brought it with you. Obama is black. Big fucking deal. That’s not the issue (only to you and your fellow, um, thinkers). Obama is raping the fuck out of liberty. Argue that point, if you are able. White, black, yellow, red, purple, burnt siena, it makes no never mind. Now, quit being daft. Think of your mom.
You and damned near everyone in the country needs a refresher Entropy, so don’t feel lonely.
Why won’t Ric come back and flesh out his comment at #81?
He needs to get in touch with his feminine side first. There must be something in one of those wymmens studies textbooks that cover selective outrage.
Methinks you haven’t been paying attention. Or maybe you’re just wanting to make a veiled accusation about me from my comment even though you’ve never met me or talked to me.
Keep it up Chris, you’re bringing this site down to YouTube levels of trolling.
i think Brian Kiteley would blend right in with east german society circa 1980.
Well, he certainly blends in with politically-correct American society, circa 2010…
The fact is that “liberal values” were always values of liberal communities and were never meant to serve as an umbrella right-wingers like you.
Free speech as long as you don’t disagree with it, eh, Caric?
You’re a real piece of work, you are.
Say, did you ever manage to turn up any black folks in your area? I mean, if I were engaged in “critical race theory” (or whatever the hell it is you claim to study, I can’t be bothered to go back and check) I don’t think I’d choose to live in one of the whitest counties in the United States. The anthropologists I know live (or at least do field work) where their subjects are located. The supercomputing researchers I know live where there are supercomputers. The Egyptologists I know spend lots of time in Egypt. The Sinologists live in, or visit, China. The field biologists spend their time where the species they study are found. Do we begin to see a common theme here?
So why do all the “race experts” like Caric, BillyBoy, and SEK live in neighborhoods that are indistinguishable, demographically, from Disney’s Small Town USA as reenvisioned by the Ku Klux Klan?
Do you even KNOW any black people, Caric?
To be fair, SEK does a neighbor FROM INDIA (as he hastened to point out the last time this came up) so there’s at least some melanin within SHOUTING distance of his place.
Yep, a REAL LIVE INDIAN PROFESSOR. Right there on his friggin’ STREET! Compton got nothin’ on SEK’s hood when it come to da street cred! That SEK homie be off da chain!
Caric would be the first to show me into an oven — if only because he’d be hoping there’d be free cheese sticks waiting for him once he was done.
I just hit the tip jar, in the good professor’s name.
SBP beat me to all my other sentiments, which coincidentally re: most progs I know.
I heard that SEK once admitted in a post title that “He Hated N*ggers with all his heart”.
Context for me, not for thee.
/racist
I mean, here’s a liberal arts prof who shows up on blogs and essentially BRAGS about how the courtesy of exchanging ideas is limited only to those who begin with a certain set of leftist assumptions.
It’s revolting. He’s revolting. What he stands for is revolting.
And yet he is smug about it because he knows he can’t be touched. These people don’t care that the mask has slipped. They now own the means of intellectual production.
Well, not entirely yet. But they are working on it, with the Fairness Doctrine and the movement to use government funds to prop up the dying mainstream press.
They’ll figure out a way to kill certain blogs, as well. FOR FREEDOM!
C’mon, Ric, come back and spell it out for us.
My first visit, and last, though this isn’t any worse than many other blogs I’ve come to through Memeorandum. Hard to believe you’re old enough to have finished college.
Isn’t that Henderson thingie another cowardly sock-puppet?
Caric’s inner-fascist creeped out. Ewwwwww.
Jonah takes down Frum.
I give Jonah credit. He does it in a civil manner, without giving an inch. He has arguments to back up his position. It is one of the best attacks on Frum.
Hard to believe you’re old enough to use a computer. See ya.
My first visit, and last, though this isn’t any worse than many other blogs I’ve come to through Memeorandum. Hard to believe you’re old enough to have finished college.
penilecolony, if you cry loud and long enough, mother will eventually know it’s time to change your diaper.
PenileImplant is a cute wittle drive-by.
Sorry about the hurry in #79–had to go back to helping my wife with her nursing paper.
My first visit, and last, though this isn’t any worse than many other blogs I’ve come to through Memeorandum. Hard to believe you’re old enough to have finished college.
We’re all commenting from an administration building we took over. Later we’ll shout down a speaker on campus wearing papier mache masks! Good times.
Moron.
Jeff,
I’ve got to admit I haven’t been to the site in a while for reason’s I no longer recall. However I certainly enjoy the writing that I took a look at on the front page of the blog. That said the reason I was reminded to come to the site again was the latest episode of South Park, The Story of Scrotie McBoogerballs (or something like that). It reminded me of the posts you used to have about ( I think) intentionalism as regards interpreting literature. The entire episode was satire against people who read stuff into books that isn’t there. You should check it out and write a post.
Maybe because I managed to express my disagreement without playing into racist or misogynistic tropes.
Chris, I know you’re new to pw, but we have been expressing disagreement without using racist or misogynistic tropes for years, but we get called racist anyway.
The Tea Parties hold up signs saying “Taxed Enough Already” and were denounced as racists because they’re protesting against a black president.
Because we’re racist by definition, see, so you can never go wrong with it.
Kinda like the way a black man can get pulled over for Driving While Black rather frequently while his white counterparts get away with speeding far more often.
But that’s not possible, is it, because the left is by definition tolerant and they’d never uphold a double standard.
I’m not going to tell Chris to do anatomically impossible things, because Chris seems to be bringing better arguments to the table than most trolls, and s/he is being reasonably civil.
I, for one, welcome it (until I’m forced to eat my words).
Hey Big E. I seem to remember you.
Sorry, di…I hold no quarter for assholes like chris. He made his MO known right away, though. I’ll give him that.
Perf dady-hate caric has a wife? Who’s the lucky guy?
Marriage is a tool of Teh Patriarchy, no? Caric apparently does not think her capable enough of doing the learnings without his help.
Steyn chimes in on l’affaire Frum hell, wielding Occam’s Razor.
I didn’t know that papers could nurse.
Jeff, I hope you win an Oscar some day, so you can stand up there and say “Most of all, I want to thank Brian Kitely, who has made me what I am today.”
Marriage is a tool of Teh Patriarchy, no? Caric apparently does not think her capable enough of doing the learnings without his help.
I took it as he was showing her how to breast feed!
I really would like Ric to flesh out his thoughts.
Then, as progressives distance themselves from classical liberalism, we’ll know exactly how Ric thinks they are to be treated.
That’s fair, Ric, right?
I would like to way in on the Affair Frum Hell.
I think he was fired for molesting rabbits.
No particular reason. He just looks like the kind of guy who get caught doing that.
frum was fired for milking papers
Jeff – I have referenced pharisees and scribes on this.
Perhaps I should use the analogy of Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Church.
You have called them out, and they are outraged. It isn’t OUTLAW!!!!!
It is heretic, blasphemer.
You have called the established church out and showed how empty they truly are, how corrupt.
Keep it up.
Bh – the words Caric and flesh should never be used in the same sentence. I denounce myself. Must go bleach my mind’s eye.
So this ex teacher of yours is a woman hating anti semite for disliking the cartoon work by a woman and a Jewish former student, so it’s likely he must be part of a crusader centric phallocracy.
I think I’m getting the hopey-changie identity politics thing.
Imagine if you were an excellent professor and conservative. One of your best former students went on to start up something like Daily Kos. Would you disown him? I think not; conservatives tend to live and let live. Leftists on the other hand, cannot live with that.
fyi maybe relevant
link
Good evening one and all,
Am I understanding this correctly please? A gentleman that you have not talked to you for years would like his name removed from an about page on a blog that you state nobody links to anymore?
Man up!
Sheesh, what would happen if someone stopped following you on twitter?
No wonder our side is having trouble winning anything.
That diggity thingie does not appear to get it.
Yet here we have an example of a writer and teacher — a person trafficking in the most personal of ideas and expressions — demanding a form of political censorship that, when the constituent parts are reversed, and the object of derision is, say, a black-faced Joe Lieberman or Michael Steele, somehow doesn’t demand the same kind of urgent cultural white washing.
There was also the picture of the vampire George W. Bush drinking the life-blood out of Lady Liberty/Statue of Liberty.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/clintjcl/54992637/
No protest at that.
This will not end well.
Dicentra,
I used to comment occasionally and check the site all the time. Unfortunately my work purchased some internet filtering software and I was no longer allowed to check the site from work. I still read it at home quite a bit (and it remains as one of my bookmarked sites) but I think I quit reading maybe a year or two ago because Jeff stopped writing very often.
In any case did any of you see the South Park I’m talking about(it debuted on this Wednesday)? I think it was really right up Jeff’s alley. Honestly not the funniest episode ever but it was probably the only pop culture satire of that type of thing I’ve ever seen. If you don’t keep up with South Park it remains one of the best classically liberal TV show I’ve ever seen (right up there with Penn and Tellers Bullshit). The previous weeks Tiger Woods episode was hilarious and a devastating take down of celebrity news and society’s current predilection for turning normal human behavior into a disease.
I’m glad to see Jeff is writing again and I look forward to adding the site back into one of my daily reads.
Rd tells lies, and is a liar.
Patriot is a Moby. Good Allah. What the fuck is up with all of the mendoucheous asshats?
That diggity thingie does not appear to get it.
The RIF bookmobile must have missed his neighborhood.
A small donation sent your way, Jeff. Stay strong.
In an actual Orwellian world, the government would ban the cartoon, or the blog. A professor desiring not to be associated with speech he finds hateful has nothing to do with Orwell. Neither does the exercise of editorial restraint by the owner of a blog or other publication. Your speech is as free as ever it was.
But freedom of speech doesn’t mean that people can’t be pissed off by stuff that’s said, nor that you can’t be shunned by someone who’s come to believe you’re a jerk.
And matt comes by to try and prove “ignorance is bliss.”
Holy Jeebus. It is like these people try to miss the point.
Mattt,
You’ve just placed yourself among the long list of PW trolls who have problems with reading comprehension.
That pantheon of literary illiterates you’re now a part of is distinguished by their singular lack of anything approaching rational thought.
Congrats.
patriot #1:
Please go and sniff your own farts, you sanctimonious little skid mark.
Jeff – I am really going to hold true to what I e-mailed you.
Like now.
Barack Obama … like Mohammad, cannot be depicted.
Haven’t commented here in a long time. Reading this post argues how appallingly close the establishment intelligentsia has come to being literal lapdogs of a cultural narrow-mindedness that smacks of Europe in the early 1930s. Alternatively, Giordano Bruno would find the current atmosphere all too familiar.
or ann coulter in ottawa
In an actual Orwellian world, the government would ban the cartoon, or the blog.
Turns out that “Orwellian” can refer to various aspects of 1984 or Animal Farm; the term is not limited to describing Winston Smith’s fictional universe.
“Orwellian” can merely mean that a label is exactly the opposite of the thing it labels, such as the Ministry of Truth being where they cobbled together lies.
Or when “liberal arts” professors get the vapors over a heretical statement and hasten to distance themselves from the offender, lest they also be condemned a heretic.
Thanks patriot #1.
I just did it.
Now – continue to sniff your own farts. They’re exquisite. Trust me.
He hung up on you. That’s not America. Ask Amy Alkon even. That’s just ill-mannered.
I understanding this correctly please? A gentleman that you have not talked to you for years would like his name removed from an about page on a blog that you state nobody links to anymore?
To answer your question … no.
Mattt can’t find the thesis statement, so he rattles off lessons about free speech, instead. Here, let me help:
“Me, I’m increasingly alarmed by the number of academics — in particular, those who teach writing — who find speech alarming. But then I guess I’m old fashioned that way.”
Also, I noted that I am indignant that this guy would ask me to alter my personal history. If Kiteley didn’t want to associate with me, he shouldn’t have emailed. I wasn’t “associating” with him, nor was he tied in any way to my site.
Which leads me to believe that it isn’t ME he is alarmed by; rather, it’s the possibility that some of his fellow travelers will see his name on my site and begin to worry about his ideological bona fides and purity.
The irony is rich, if you know where to dig.
The trolls are also missing an important aspect of this issue: apparently, someone who hates Jeff’s guts for political reasons contacted the people on his “About” page, and directed them to this blog for the express purpose of turning Jeff’s mentors against him.
What kind of person does that? What kind of person goes out of his way to dig up a person’s past contacts and turns them against him?
it’s the possibility that some of his fellow travelers will see his name on my site and begin to worry about his ideological bona fides and purity.
DingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDing!
Oooh! Pick me! Pick me!
An Alinskyite.
RD still lies. In other news, water is still wet.
Also he’s innumerate I think. If the math of what the little president man is doing on our little country doesn’t equate to rape then what does? Our piece of shit president is taking his dirty socialist pleasure from a little country what wants no part of it.
And no amount of pouting from this Kiteley person is going to make our little country enjoy getting violated by our dirty socialist Chicago street trash Chavez wannabe.
What kind of person does that? What kind of person goes out of his way to dig up a person’s past contacts and turns them against him?
DingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDing
Again, because their taxes are substantially lower now than under Bush.
Since when, RD? And incase you didn’t see, the new
healthcare reformincome redistribution act has tons of new taxes further belying Barry’s “promise” that 95% of the people will see no rise in taxes. Just like the lie “if you like your insurance you can keep it”Maybe you don’t read the papers … Catepiller, John Deere and now ATT have announced the huge losses this bill will bring to them. Every person receiving “unearned (sic)” income (dividends, capital gains including the sale of your own home, rental income, etc) now pays an addition 3.8% tax.
On and on and on …
Oh Goody… California unemployment ROSE to 12.5%. And Barry is out giving speeches in which he pretty wells says he is only President to the people who agree with him.
Add to that his foreign policy chops resemble a snit fit from Baruka Salt.
Hey, RD, ATT is taking a billion dollar non cash charge to cover changes in the tax law.
Where do you think AT&T gets the money to pay those taxes?
Link:http://tinyurl.com/create.php
cap gains taxes are going up cause of Chicago Chavez too… twice, actually…
Maybe RD doesn’t pay taxes so he assumes everyone else is seeing an increase in free shit as well?
I’d bet that RillyDumb has never had a legitimate paying job in his life, actually.
BTW Chris
“crappy drawings” … they are cartoons and, again, I draw better than Ted Rall and Garry Trudeau and many other syndicated ‘toonists with assistants, colorists and technology.
I suspect you find it/them “crappy” due to content which you don’t agree with which says a great deal about you, just as all the hyperventilating SHUTUP crowd on the Liberty thread.
My taxes aren’t lower, much less substantially lower. I do wonder how it feels to be without shame as creatures such as RD. It has to be liberating to a degree to be such a lying piece of shit yet not care one iota.
Same here. But, who could we find to bet against?
You are a sad little man.
SEK has a post up if people are wondering where the morons are flowing from.
SMALLIST!11!!
“Little”? You’d better feel again.
Btw, Kaufman, when I say you have a pedo beard, that’s obviously constructive criticism. Same with when I note you’re thoroughly dishonest.
SEK!! here is the song about the black boots
These are things you can change, SEK. See, that’s what makes it constructive.
serve as an umbrella right-wingers like you.
Marx’s main contribution to the world was this: to create the illusion that there is a form of criticism of a point of view wherein one simply points out that holding that point of view encourages the persistence of the current distribution of economic goods. In other words, you can argue against someone’s point of view P by saying, “But holding P encourages the socioeconomic status quo.” The illusion that this utterance is evidence against P was Marx’s ingenious creation; it required him to play on envies, guilts and fears. He was one of the world’s finest magicians. The illusion persists long after his death. It is a virus, a meme.
So here we have it: The belief P that “free speech rights hold no matter what the speaker’s political view” is one that would help maintain the socioeconomic status quo. Therefore this belief P is false. (It follows that free speech must be reserved only for those of leftist views.)
If that inference seems plausible to you, you have the virus. If it seems sound, you are fully infected and cognitively debilitated. If you find it to be rubbish and you are already well into adulthood, you are immune. The trouble is, if you have the virus it’s hard to rid yourself of it, because any suspicion that the Marxist inference is invalid will itself be attacked via Marxist inference. The virus attacks and quickly kills any attempt of the mind to free itself.
#184 Jeff G.:
It is worse than he not wanting to associate with you. He wants you to remove him from your resume, your Curriculum Vitae. He wants to alter the past.
If that cowardly place-holder looks upon this thread, and finds this comment, then I say to him Bowdlerizer. That is what he asked, that is what he is. His courage flows with the tide of fashion, having no real anchor anywhere.
Milady’s lap-dog shows more spark, is a greater intellectual spit-fire than he is.
And you Jeff? You have just proven to all that the theses you have nailed to the door are correct. The church, the temple of academe is rotten to its core, and when the first strong wind comes…
SEKs beard looks like he superglued manscape clippings to his face.
he’s an east german circa 1980
Thanks for the reply. I’d add, in response to the reply and your update: in the age of Google you certainly are associating yourself with the professor, if you name him in your personal history. The fact that he is one of only three or four professors listed *might* lead some to think that he was more than a teacher, but a mentor, and someone with a small bit of responsibility for shaping your world view. So, I really don’t see the objection to his polite request to remove his name.
And again, I don’t see how the expectation of editorial discretion amounts to censorship. You post the Village Voice pic of GWB as a vampire, suggesting some kind of equivalence? I’m not aware of any entrenched racial sterotypes of Texans being vampires, so I don’t see the equivalence with depicting a black man as a rapist. But just to play along: if offended Bush supporters boycotted the Village Voice and its advertisers, demanding that the editors refrain from posting such material in the future – would they be guilty of censorship as well?
Lastly, in reference to your thesis: you say yourself that the professor seems to equate the cartoon with “yelling fire in a crowded theater.” Maybe he’s wrong about that, but when have responsible people not been alarmed by speech they deem likely to incite tragedy?
Is a pedo beard a beard like a mo-ped?
Surely you remember the Self-Righteous Liberal Outrage over George W. Bush being called a pedophile rapist on lefty sites (Larry Flint’s half-assed “gotcha” story about an under-aged girl in 1971), right? Remember? Naaaaaaah, just kidding, me either. The Sensitive Protectors Of The Offended had nary a tongue-cluck or champagne-soaked monocle after that accusation, and they wouldn’t have even had to get all “subtext-y” on that one!
He’s not “associating” – he is stating fact. Truth.
“when have responsible people not been alarmed by speech they deem likely to incite tragedy?”
Like for instance, the speech in favor accompanying the passage of a law that the people made plain they did not want? Speech like that leading to a tragedy?
Mattty is yet another asshat that cannot distinguish between a specific half-black man and black men as a whole? How do clowns like that make it through the day without a piano falling on their head?
If you yell fire in a crowded theater most people are going to look around for the fire before they do anything precipitous I think what might spill their popcorns.
You post the Village Voice pic of GWB as a vampire, suggesting some kind of equivalence? I’m not aware of any entrenched racial sterotypes of Texans being vampires, so I don’t see the equivalence with depicting a black man as a rapist.
Of course, the beauty of this argument is that NOTHING could be considered an “entrenched racial stereotype” of Texans or white folks (except that they can’t dance or jump, ’cause that shit is funny) – so while NOTHING is forbidden when criticizing Bush (even comparing him to a monkey), just about everything can be forbidden in regards to Obama.
truth is jeff was this turd’s student. that’s his problem. the turd’s complaint is with the stasi who let jeff in.
I don’t go to movie theaters anymore. They raised the ticket price another $4 bucks today.
Maybe he’s wrong about that, but when have responsible people not been alarmed by speech they deem likely to incite tragedy?
Like some uninformed idiot saying that American doctors are currently harvesting healthy organs from kids to make more money?
“’m not aware of any entrenched racial sterotypes of Texans being vampires, so I don’t see the equivalence with depicting a black man as a rapist”
I saw an episode of the Forensic Files on TV last night where they caught a black rapist using DNA.
Why don’t you go bother them for awhile?
The cartoon was about “race?”
I’m done til I get like a senior discount or something. This won’t be for many many moons.
Mostly I just love the popcorns anyway.
You can make popcorn at home, Happy. We do it all the time.
BBR! Been a while since I saw you here (although I haven’t been here much myself of late).
Matt:
Jeff didn’t post the link to GWB as the vampire. I did.
Are you so racist that you cannot see the connection between one President of the USA draining the blood out of liberty and another President of the USA raping liberty?
Are you so racist that you think one POTUS must be protected from any and all criticism because of his birth? A POTUS is a powerless victim?
Yeah, Matt. Keep harping on that.
Seriously. Do that.
Matt wishes “The Man” would stop keeping the most powerful human being on planet Earth down.
heh
It really is funny how the left conjures race in any criticism of Obama. Note that these are the people who do not bat an eye in attacking the racial authenticity of conservative minorities purely on the grounds of their political beliefs. It doesn’t matter if they grew up in poverty as did Clarence Thomas or in Birmingham amidst the racial turmoil of the fifties as did Condi Rice. There’s no limits on what they permit themselves to say or write. Meanwhile, you have a man in Obama whose only authentically black experience growing up was abandonment by his father and while he’s the MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD these cowards use his race as a weapon and shield like men hiding behind a woman’s skirt.
movie popcorns are special though … cause I will tell you why. When I was little like back in high school, my parents bought us a pass every year to the movies in town. Me and my brother and my sister shared it. We could take a guest to any movie whenever we wanted… the theaters were owned by this one guy back then, not a chain, is how that worked.
So mostly I kept the pass and after school me and a friend usually J or D or D or L would go to some movie and eat popcorns and hang out for an hour or so. We’d always go to the same movie every day til it left. But anyway movie popcorns make me happy.
You beat me to it McGeehee.
“All politics is now dress rehearsal for civil war”
Billy Beck.
Excellent post, Jeff.
I never get movie popcorn. Corn leads to thirst, which leads to drinking (most likely) soda which leads to having to go to the bathroom right at the climax of the flick. Usually, it’s a child who needs to go, but guess who has to take them?
Yes. Mom. Me.
So, no popcorn for me.
Carin
see? The Left designates certain “in” groups. If you are right with the Left you cannot be criticized by the outsiders, but outsiders are forbidden from criticizing (mocking, deriding, shaming) those inside the protected group. Thus by any means necessary all apostates from the “in” groups can be dealt with in any manner whatsoever, from depicting Condi Rice as a slave from GWTW by cartoonist Danzinger to Paul Krugman approving of hanging Joe Lieberman in effigy, is a-ok.
Any mocking or parody, though, of “in” group gets denounced even when the appeal to “racist/sexist trope” is so strained it is self-parody.
Remember this?
but if you go to the same movie every day you can go to the bathroom whenever you want and not miss anything!
I’m absolutely convinced that mattt flinches more than a normal human being. And that’s just from his girlfriend.
“Whoops … sorry about that blow to the head there … Say, is he dead?”
Billy Budd
In and out of the age of Google, if I name him as one of my teachers and that’s all I do, that’s all I have done.
I studied fiction writing at DU. While I was there, I studied under 4 teachers. They are the 4 named.
Sure you do. You’re just pretending not to.
I don’t see how a professor of writing would advocate that controversial political speech be answered by “editorial discretion” (read: removal) rather than more speech — or, more pointedly, how any one who fancies himself an academic can not find, in the ensuing discussion raised by the cartoon, a number of interesting intellectual questions.
I don’t see entrenched racial stereotypes. I see, in both, a President shown violating Lady Liberty in some way or other.
Our current President is black. Depicting him as such is not racist. How (or why) Darleen is or isn’t responsible for old tropes she doesn’t intend (or, if you want to argue otherwise, she does intend) to reference is a particularly familiar question to readers of this site.
Offended Bush supporters boycotting the VV aren’t university professors teaching creative writing; and it just so happens that when certain offended Bush supporters objected to Kid Rock playing an inauguration party for the twins, I mocked them mercilessly. Not because they didn’t have a right to complain; but because they were wrong for doing so. Just as Kiteley — who fancies himself an intellectual — is wrong here.
Were he truly alarmed, he’d alert authorities, not preen by way of email.
He can do what he wants. And I can point out that writers who think certain political statements should be removed from view rather than discussed are the kinds of writers who, generally speaking, shouldn’t be teaching in a university, pretending to be intellectually curious or engaged.
#234 Darleen:
Politics as high school.
Rush – Subdivisions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu9Ycq64Gy4
Lyrics:
Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
In between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown
Growing up it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone
Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone
[Chorus:]
(Subdivisions)
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
(Subdivisions)
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out
Any escape might help to smooth the unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless dreams of youth
Drawn like moths we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night
Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight
Somewhere out of a memory of lighted streets on quiet nights…
Jeff – you did not conform – you are cast out. BTW, I got out of high school in 1984. I know this. I got this.
#238 Jeff G.:
I see that I started a hare. Target locked – and then some.
Me I will never not be wealthy in my wildest dreams.
AT&T Inc. will take a $1 billion non-cash accounting charge in the first quarter because of the health care overhaul and may cut benefits it offers to current and retired workers.
The charge is the largest disclosed so far. Earlier this week, AK Steel Corp., Caterpillar Inc., Deere & Co. and Valero Energy announced similar accounting charges, saying the health care law that President Barack Obama signed Tuesday will raise their expenses. On Friday, 3M Co. said it will also take a charge of $85 million to $90 million.
In my wildest dreams I’m a mountain man with nothing but a rifle and a horse.
Rich is relative.
It’s funny how so many semi-employed wingut bloggers who will never be wealthy in their wildest dreams are still so worried about this.
Ah… the basic amorality of the Left … if your neighbor’s house is bigger than yours, well, then fuck him and hope he gets mugged.
#168 Big E
Darleen’s “offensive” cartoon is nowhere near as offensive as any number of South Park gags, and less “racially insensitive” as many I remember, as well.
I wonder how many of the trolls we’ve the last couple of days regularly get the vapors from Cartman and the gang.
newrouter
my sister works for Beckman Coulter … they are going to get slammed by the medical devices tax
and I don’t think the costs passed on to the customers is going to be means tested so only the top 5% are charged
AT&T Inc. will take a $1 billion non-cash accounting charge
But hey, only rich people have to pay phone bills.
AT&T is a Texas company.
Not only has Barcky raised taxes for my household, but he will do so again when he allows Bush’s tax cuts to expire. So, as usual, RD is a fucking liar. In other news, water is wet, and SEK is a disingenuous douchebag and Barrett Brown is a preening prick.
#238 JeffG
You know, Jeff, posts like that are the reason I keep visiting this site.
Very well said.
It’s funny how so many semi-employed wingut bloggers who will never be wealthy in their wildest dreams are still so worried about this.
Spoken like a true parasite. As long as we’re stuck with your presence, we do appreciate that you’re not bright enough to ever go long without the mask dropping.
Not being able to fit under Caric’s umbrella holds no shame.
Aside for the sheer circumference (a measure I see Obamacare using… call me frivolous…)
It’s 98% blubber and gristle… garnished with a patch of jock itch larger than Guadacanal and no less fetid. Matched with a tenured IQ that can never exceed the humidity. (100… for all the “I was told there would be no math” professors)…
you’re not bright enough to ever go long without the mask dropping.
RD is Max Baucus??
this is a groovy aquarium for the little fishies
If you do not stay into your box…
Heretic! Blasphemer!
And here the internet stasi (such as Jeff’s former teacher – the stasi always has many volunteers) says ‘Papers, please’.
OK
“from”
And it is 99.999% not 98%
And the “itch” vs. “jock” quotient is 1,000,000 to .01
my bad… I should give up my day job scoring the Democrats health care bill
The Enlightenment — or whatever the hell it was — was damned hard work. For centuries. But hey, it paid off in establishing a government so successful that everybody could quit with the hard workings: hence the disappearance of Liberal Arts education and all that tedious reading, thinking, jawing, pummeling, etc. Will the moronic afterwash realize they’re going to be in need of the hard work again, gosh darn it? Not until it’s too late to have to start over from scratch, or damned near, with the readings, thinkings, jawings and pummelings. Bugger all.
Something tells me that RD’s phone bill is still being paid by his mommy.
Poof goes RD!
Bingo. He’s a craven coward who would rather face you than those who would stifle freedom.
But, did you really expect more from an academic?
I only read your blog occasionally Jeff, but you are one of the best and most original political bloggers on either side of the divide.
You have responded in exactly the appropriate way and your former instructor is the one who is sick. Funny enough I had this exact same thing happen to me when a decades long dear friend emailed me one day to say he could not longer be my friend because he disagreed with the political positions of my blog.
I had the exact same reaction as you; at first hurt, then anger, then indifference. He eventually apologized and I hope your former teacher comes to his senses and does the same publicly.
In fact I would love to have you come and discuss this at BlogWorld this year along with Mr. Kitely. Given his current state of mind, I doubt he would agree. Maybe he will realize his error before October.
Keep standing up for what you believe in and sharing your insights and humor with us all. The blogosphere and American political discourse is better for it.
sincerely,
Rick Calvert
founder BlogWorld & New Media Expo
The reason Mat “doesn’t get” why Kiteley’s snub is a problem is that in his neck of the woods, these kinds of excommunications and purges are de rigeur.
But guess what, Mat? On these very intartubez is another forum that shows me frolicking happily with various people who are dyed-in-the-wool progressives: some of them even could be considered radicals (but not of the bomb-throwing ilk).
And yet there is nothing they could write that would tempt me to ask them to disassociate my name with theirs. Nothing.
Why?
Because there’s no reason to. None of my current peers (pw and elsewhere) would ever have a problem with those associations, even though those former associates have written things that we here consider to be beyond the pale.
And even if the pw crowd did have a problem with me because of those associations (inevitable joke repsonses that will follow notwithstanding), I’d tell them to stuff it.
And that would be that. I’d still be welcome in their midst, because they’re not intoxicated by their own “de facto” righteousness.
I’m a little tipsy.
I’m freaking drunk, happyfeet. The sad part is that it is on Old Forester Bourbon and Rolling Rock. In the previous economy it would have been on Balvenie Single Malt and Magic Hat. Oh well…
I have a case of Texas wine from Texas my sister brought me at Christmas cause she knows I won’t pay California alcohol taxes if I can help it. Self-abnegation is very America I think, but it’s nice when people bring you wine to where you don’t have to abnegate.
i need a swiss cake roll
For those not watching FOX, another Republican office was just violated by thugs.
swiss cake rolls are very America I think… more and more so, really
i like the rockford files so libertarian. way howard jarvis
I may have just abnegated in my pants. It’s the damn rolling rock!
Can somebody please explain calvert’s comment?
jeez i want a real ford maverick not a hokey az type
FOX just canceled 24 Mr. Drudge says.
Jeff,
If this week weren’t a bummer enough already… Health care deform… the incredible disrespect for the only shining democracy in the infested middle east… Now, a story of cyber-disassociation from the opinionated w/ the wrong opinion? My wise commie aunt once told me to never trust anyone who has drawn conclusions and stops seeking the truth. Many reach a point in life where comfort and assurance inhibit curiosity – this is all that you are witnessing, and should feel sad rather than angry. Also feel relieved that you continue to lap the stagnant.
next on 24: jack bauer makes bibi cry
Calvert is probably just RD, OI.
“Can somebody please explain calvert’s comment?”
Prolly RD.
Inexplicable…
Could be, bh. But my rolling rock and Old Forrester induced inebriation (sp?) couldn’t follow. BTW, without sounding like too much of a fag (not the man sucking another man’s cock fag as that is not a bad thing in my estimation, but a to each their own type of thing) I enjoy your commentary here. Keep it up. Sdferr, too. Although, sometimes I’m not sure what sdferr is saying. I kind of nod along, saying to myself, “Um hmm…Um hmmm…
Lee concurs. RD’s a bitch. Really, he is.
The reason Mat “doesn’t get” why Kiteley’s snub is a problem is that in his neck of the woods, these kinds of excommunications and purges are de rigeur.
Even if it involves nothing more than threats or other methods of instilling fear torture works. Once a subject is broken they rarely regain the will to resist without outside assistance. Likewise, getting someone to inflict torture upon another human being is usually a matter of getting that person across the threshold once. After that they almost never back out.
Same with those who have caved to the will of the collective. Some will never again question the narrative, and others will even go on to become little witch finders and inquisitors.
because the back waters of statism is here it is at: ein folk ein reich, ein furhrur
Thanks, OI. Right back at you. In a super hetero way. Like I’m punching a horse while catching a football as I’m saying this.
If I listened long enough to you,
I’d find a way to believe that it’s all true.
Knowing that you lied, straight-faced, while I cried,
Still I’d look to find a reason to believe.
Someone like you makes it hard to live without somebody else.
Our current President is black. Depicting him as such is not racist.
A momentous tautology.
Why would you punch a horse?
You must be thinking cow.
or donkey
As long as you didn’t initially type out “thuper” bh ;) I’m just a very simple man (not said deprecatingly) that enjoys freedom, liberty and my beautiful wife and wonderful girls, but Jeff’s place here has given me more comfort and knowledge that that man will ever know. I am thankful for commentators such as yourself that help to educate, entertain and “calm” me every day. And, honestly, I have punched a horse before. To make a long story short, she nipped at my 4 year old. My knuckles were purple for a good weak. The horse? Well, let’s just say, I made more of an impression than a tsetse fly. Not much more, but more…
Why would you punch a horse?
Because they remind me of John Kerry.
That is fucking awesome.
When I woke up this morning I never, never, never would have predicted I’d hear a horse-punching anecdote.
Awesome.
I’ve also punched a sheep! I really don’t hate animals. It’s just the situations I’ve been put in.
If you know your old black (RACIST!!!) and white movies, you’ve no doubt seen that pivotal scene where the hopelessly outnumbered protagonists are crouched behind the barricade watching the horde of Zulus (HYPER RACIST!!!!!) or Indi Native Americans (ELEVENTY RACIST~!!!!) or Huns (JINGOIST!!!) etc are surging toward toward them… and somebody says “here they come!!!” and somebody else say “wait for it.”….
Hey, ain’t it grand how life imitiates art?
Funny thing is, these bastards don’t nearly outnumber us. They’ve got a killer PA system, and we’ve given them the keys to the family car…
Way back up there somebody said “The truth doesn’t care who speaks it” or something much like that.
Count me in.
It’s kind of ironic, too, in that now I live in a very urban area with no fauna readily available to dispatch. My neighbors make do, though.
You donkeypunched a horse?!
You’re killing me. A horse and a sheep. Now I’m thinking to myself, if I could pop one animal without repercussion, which would it be?
I’m thinking dolphin. They just seem kinda smirky.
They’re rapey is what they are. Very.
They say stuff like “suck my cock, flipperless-hairyped” and angry things like that.
Bh – Cat. No doubt.
Well, I’ve pet a dolphin, before. Nice animal. It actually gave me a kiss. Platonic, no tounge involved. But, no. The animal, you want to fuck up is a sheep. A big horn that is. Beady eyes and a nasty disposition. They remind me of RD type proggs. Thinks it knows what it is, but is in actuality to dumb to really “know” what it is. Beating its ass, doesn’t change a thing for it. But it sure does give you the satisfaction of, well, beating a dumbass.
Yorkshire terrier. I hate those fuckers.
Unless I’d been drinking tequila with the armadillo, in which case white rhino, Cape buffalo, or Kodiak brown bear.
That’d be in my top 10, JD.
I think you can tell a lot about a person based on what animal they’d punch.
this was like five years ago…
that’s bullshit I think
hippopotami are scary I think I saw it on tv… they all deserve punchings cause they’re mean and fat
dicentra wants to punch an ailanthus altissima I think, but doesn’t cause she might fell it.
What exactly is a flipperless hairyped?
Bh – Koala bears and dogs that get carried around in purses that yap all the fucking time.
I’d punch the shit out of a 8 point + buck. However, they’ve never given me the “reason” to do it. I’ve had opportunity, but not cause. The shit didn’t even look at me cross eyed. Also, a raccoon. Nesting under my front porch and not paying rent? It’d make the perfect progg.
You is, JD.
#303: I’ve got a seemingly endless supply of those that she’s welcome to fell any time she needs to work out some frustration.
I’m lifting my glass towards the monitor at you all.
Good times.
Incoming. (Insty)
I am not hairy. I am well groomed.
I coldcocked a cock. I’m not proud of it.
Insty seems to be getting more pissed off these days. Which, it’s about damn time.
Hippos kill more people per year than any other animal is what I thought I heard from someone on the discovery channel. No more leisurely swims through the Zambezi river for me…
shaving on the toe knuckles JD? kudos
What fills that glass, bh? I hate to pry, but I must. I must.
Toe knuckles bleed. A lot.
Some Johnnie Black, OI.
Our kind of Jerk!
Good show, Jeff.
Nice, bh. The recent economic conditions have forced me to “trim” my alcohol budget. Before, I was drinking either Balvenie Doublewood or Highland Park, but now it is either Buffalo Trace Bourbon or Old Forester Bourbon. I persevere, though.
Is that the actual Chris Muir? If so, then excellent. You, sir, are a treasure.
Sorry, I did not read all the comments preceeding mine but I did go to the oh so politically correct, self promoting, Professor Kiteley’s site and found what I expected…another hack writer on the public tit that attempts to teach writing because his own work will not support him…don’t give it another thought…he is just another incompetent, jealous asshole. And by the way, I am a writer and a graphics designer and if he thinks his wife’s cover design will sell that book, no matter how bad it may be, he is quite mistaken.
I slugged a Rottweiler once. After two or five hard slaps he paid no attention, so I threw what would have been a breaking blow twenty years ago to the back of his head.
He rolled his eyes up from his mouthful of beagle puppy (absolutely catatonic four year old girl holding the leash) made contact for a long second, then dropped the dog.
He sat down and just stared at me while mom collected girl and puppy (lived, but didn’t like being outside the back yard ever again) and then heeled all the way across the culdesac , where I tied the chain dangling off his collar to the trailer hitch on my truck.
I told the Animal Control guy what I’d done, and he said the Rott was probably still dumbfounded. I agreed.
It was like punching a tree stump.
I kicked a Doberman in the head once.
Good night, racists.
G’drace, nightist.
Good night, OI.
Mr. Instapundit instapundited this.
‘Night, OI.
Can somebody please explain calvert’s comment?
Although I realize that it’s prolly useless to explain this to the inebriated, here goes:
BlogWorld & New Media Expo is a yearly Vegas convention that covers blogs, podcasts, social media, etc. Hewitt does a live broadcast from there every year.
Rick Calvert blogs here and Tweets here. Video interview at BlogWorld Expo 09.
If it’s a genuine offer, Jeff should accept, methinks.
I think it was more #267, di… probably a different person
Haven’t touched a drop tonight, di.
Very sorry to hear this, Jeff. That must have been quite a slug in the gut, to read that email.
{{Jeff}}
di, that question was about #267, a different calvert altogether in my mind…
Well, we can’t afford to lose this man.
Be sure to donate to Jeff if you can, next time Jeff asks…
And yeah, that does look like a decent gig.
We were referring to the later second post that was probably RD, di.
I sent Jeff an email linking the actual Mr. Calvert’s comment to give him a heads up in case he missed it.
damn, 2nd place again!
I’ve got a seemingly endless supply of those that she’s welcome to fell any time she needs to work out some frustration.
If you’ve got one Ailanthus altissima, you’ve also got an endless supply of them. I did saw one in half (diameter of my arm) last fall, but I don’t have the energy to do it more than once a year.
Very soft, weak wood that stinks when you cut it.
I hate them all.
Thanks for posting this.
This incident would also be a good thing to note in his books on Amazon. If Kiteley thinks it’s important to not be associated with certain view points, I think we’d be well justified to make sure that potential buyers of his books know about his attitudes before putting down their hard earned cash.
After all, those buyers might not what to be associated with that sort of thing – and that’s exactly what Kiteley wants, right?
As happy noted, Professor Reynolds has shown some linky-love.
Di, you don’t know how handy you would have been in college though.
Oh, I failed to notice the name on the neo-rickroll one.
Never mind.
/Litella
I think we’d be well justified to make sure that potential buyers of his books know about his attitudes before putting down their hard earned cash.
That’s vindictive and spiteful and it doesn’t make anything better.
Besides, the only people who would buy his book are already in his camp, not to be dissuaded by a bunch of wingers.
Di, you don’t know how handy you would have been in college though.
I was known (behind my back) as the Dragon Lady during my masters. They had a problem with me when during class discussions (we were all sitting around a conference table), I’d destroy their dumb theories.
What else was I supposed to do? I had a monster crush on the professor, and he dug the combat.
If you’ve got one Ailanthus altissima, you’ve also got an endless supply of them.
Right. Sprouts everywhere, many of which are coming from the same root system, others of which are seedlings. If I went away for five years my yard would be an ailanthus forest.
As you say, the wood is completely worthless. It makes okay bean poles, but they only last one season. The smell of the green wood and crushed leaves is pretty bad, for sure.
I don’t like using herbicides (contrary to my image as an Earth-Raping Tool of the Oppressor), but I’m starting to consider it. Supposedly if you paint Roundup on a cut stump it will kill it, or at least frighten it a bit.
Btw, great comic you do, Chris. I’m sure most everyone here reads it and enjoys it.
This is the stuff for which my gut tells me you were meant (for whatever that’s worth). The excellence of your writing is matched only by your perspicacity. Add to that my appreciation for the PW commentariat.
http://nalert.blogspot.com/2008/10/chicago-alderman-ed-burke-quoted-on.html
Supposedly if you paint Roundup on a cut stump it will kill it, or at least frighten it a bit.
You can stop supposing. I tried it. The stump shriveled up a couple inches, then another trunk sprouted from just below the dead zone.
On a sucker that was only the diameter of a magic marker.
Couldn’t agree with you more, Mal.
Hey, I don’t know if it would encourage you to comment more or less but I still think of Twitter partially in terms of a comment of yours and still think about that comment about paradigm shifts. So, hey, please keep occasionally freaking me out with big picture type comments.
Sigh… that was my last hope.
Oh, well. Whacking ailanthus isn’t the worst job I’ve ever done.
Maybe I’ll plant invasive bamboo and let them fight it out.
Jeff’s comments are remarkably appreciated, as is the shared experience of the frustration that comes from seeing mentors we respected leading down the dark path towards the enabling of fascism.
As a libertarian post-anarchist (in the Deleuzian nomadic tradition) who runs risk management for a global corporation, I’m thankful to have had great mentors of numerous political realms. As one who has intimately studied (and embraced) Deleuze, Foucault, Serres, Derrida, Zizek, Hardt & Negri and other post-post-modern and post-structural philosophers, I couldn’t do my day job transforming how we perceive global risk without their contributions. But I must confess that I’m exceptionally worried about the fascist function that is occurring with my liberal mentors.
Zizek writes in “In Defense of Lost Causes” (an exceptionally pro-communist radically leftist work) that the fascists have perpetually had a need to create “Jews” – monsters that are simultaneously exceptional drool-hanging knuckle-dragging morons, while also brilliantly devious, conspiratorial geniuses who confront and confound the best of the left’s schemes. The reality is that both are delusions of the fascist.
Presently, this delusion predominates the academic left in the U.S, signifying a rapid acceleration towards tyranny and totalitarianism as the academic realm firmly departs any semblance of objectivity and reason. They mark libertarian protests against irresponsible hierarchies (in the tradition of Foucault, Debord and others) in a manner as intellectually repugnant as Franco’s Spain and Mussolini’s Italy. They hide from reason, trashing the tradition John Milton embraced in his critically vital essay “Areopagitica” against the repression of speech and thought by the British crown.
Indeed, free thought exists and survives, but it is not found on the left. As Slavoj Zizek would have to remark in appropriate Lacanian tradition (assuming he could leave the hopeless trap of Hegelian dialectics), the left’s pathetic embrace of a fascist hermeneutic is neither live nor dead, but in a repugnant state of being undead. All that is left of the promise of Marx. Death and decay has long been redundant to Marx, given 40+ million murdered souls was insufficient to feed this beast. Undeadness now predominates, but expands past the mountains of bodies to capture and destroy the soul of the western intellectual tradition.
I don’t read fiction; it is the work of liars.
Is it still a lie if you know up front it is fiction?
I feel you comments about your former instructor wanting to disassociate himself from you because of your openess to ideas as very well thought out and written even with the visable anger that is shown in your writing. Linked in from Instapundit. Will add you to my list of blogs worth reading.
Thanks for the kind words, those of you who’ve offered them.
Race with the Devil is coming up on TCM in about an hour, and I’m going to try to stay up to catch it. It’s kind of a schlocky cult classic made on a small budget, but it has its mongrel appeal.
Reminds me of America in a way.
But that’s probably just the liquor talking.
Areopagitica! I read this in my Harvard Classics some years ago. Thank you, Hatless Hessian, for reminding me. I remember it fondly and shall read it again.
And thanks, bh, for the kind words. I try to respect that this is Jeff’s place and avoid holding forth about whatever. But, y’know, sometimes I can’t help myself.
Kitely seems like an intellectual midget.
I forgot about that Village Voice vampire image–but of course in New York vampires used to be considered chic, until they became popular with the bridge and tunnel crowd.
Its so sad. “Progressives” are now the knuckle-dragging Neanderthals of the 21st century, subscribing to ideas that history has shown to be stupid, ugly, and unworkable. And their response—logic is just a construct of the bourgeoisie, and can be disregarded. And if you can believe that, then you can believe that “Progressives” all derived from mutant bacteria that came out of Groucho Marx’s ass.
Its all about the Narrative, you know.
The “Truth May Be Out There,” but if it is, you can be sure that there are “Progressives” with shotguns out trying to hunt it down and kill it.
I’m sorry this happened. I’m even sorrier Kiteley’s viewpoint is probably shared by many academics.
I wonder if Kiteley realizes just how many people now know that Jeff studied with him — especially after the Instalanche (hint: a helluva lot).
I can’t imagine any circumstance under which I’d deny that one of my students had worked with me. If one of them committed, say, a mass-murder, I might say something akin to “Yeah, he was a good student — too bad he went batshit.” But deny that he was my student at all? Why would I do that? I don’t teach people how to commit murder, so there’s no way that I could possibly be responsible for his later criminal activity, any more than I’m responsible for his taste in music, his clothing choices, or what church he attends (if any). None of those things are on my syllabus. :-)
The only way this makes any sense to me is that Kiteley believes that he was responsible for teaching Jeff the correct political beliefs as well as teaching him about writing fiction — or fears that his colleagues will hold him so responsible. Jeff hold political beliefs that Kiteley doesn’t like, therefore Kiteley has failed as a teacher.
It’s late and this is a small thought but I’d like to express it.
Jeff, doing his thing, has created a community of extremely smart and well-read folks. That’s of particular value for someone like me who has become a narrow specialist. Because you have to make choices. Read this book or that book. Ponder this or that.
While we very seldom talk about things I could instruct others in, that so many people here have sifted through all these other subjects and then can relate, smartly recapitulate, and expand upon them… that’s pretty much what we would have hoped for with the internet, yes?
Well, that and porn.
‘Night, all.
Comment by newrouter on 3/26 @ 9:38 pm #
jeez i want a real ford maverick not a hokey az type
I drove one, a ’76 Maverick. You, sir, are so drunk or high you should go to bed.
Intellectuals are a bunch of conformist cowards. That’s why they like appeasement and totalitarianism. (Hell, it’s our own fault for raising ’em to be 98-lb weaklings.)
‘night, bh. I’m going to join Little Nemo myself.
I can’t speak to the motivations of Kiteley but the basic fact here is that the cartoon which offended him should offend all people with any sense – people with any concept of manners. Of what it means to be civilized.
It is certain that “liberal arts education” these is, increasingly, none of the three and perhaps your friend is falling in to a mindset which is not that of a gentleman but, instead, that of a man fearful of offending the Thought Police – but any desire to get rid of such a cartoon is in some way worthy of humanity. Just because a thing can be done doesn’t mean it aught to be done. And some ideas are, indeed, outside the pale. They are to be tolerated in a free society – but no man truly concerned with the health and advancement of civilization would provide a platform for what can only be described as the ruminations of a diseased mind.
Leave his name in your masthead, but describe him as a Professor of Destructive Writing.
I became a conservative thanks to Professor Kitely. He told me that Obama was a big liar and that Sarah Palin would save the planet, one dead caribou at a time. All I know are the smoked links are yummy!
Thanks for the tip Prof. Kitely.
” 1.
Comment by psycho… on 3/26 @ 2:04 pm #
Jeez.
It is an Orwellian world in which we live when fucking novelists want to distance themselves from those who criticize the government.
He’s not a novelist. He’s a functionary with a hobby. And he’s a nervous low-level functionary, or he wouldn’t consider himself subject to loyalty tests.
It’s kinda sad. The bug guy book was all right.
Condolences.”
+1!
Jeff,
Kiteley is neither the first nor the last sellout to have betrayed his Muse for the Court Flatterer’s path. His fate as a writer shall be that of all who did such. One hundred years hence no one will remember or care that he existed save possibly for the way he made himself little in trying to turn upon you and deny the facts of history. I will not say it is too late for him to repent this but I doubt he will ever have either the wit or the will to do so. That is his loss rather than yours.
I’ve been pushing my son to go back to school; he’s 21 and a gifted writer. It’s a reflex: “go to school, graduate, you have to have the degree” but this has reminded me of the absurd PC tripe that was taught to my daughter at the overpriced private art college she graduated from. I paid almost $100k for that BFA and she’s working as a community organizer – collecting signatures for lib causes on street corners. So, note to self, don’t push him back to school. Let him live in the real world, work, daydream, live, write. And don’t give one penny to some writing program staffed by the MiniTru leftbots.
And Pres Obama wants EVERYone to go to college at taxpayer expense. The better to indoctrinate you my dear!
In an Orwellian world they denounce Goldstein.
On the tactical level it would be better if you had ignored Kitely from the start. We all know the adage about wrestling with a pig.
In politics, and this is politics, it is usually better to not complain about an enemies slurs or insults. Refute only specific public allegations. And don’t not reply to private communications. Let them chatter in public or fume in private. By not supplying them with anything to quote out of context they must work harder.
Of course you did not regard him as an enemy. But didn’t his email tip you off?
That was worth my time. It took me away from Dexter videos, and I don’t mind.
Posted your graphic. Now you’ll really be popular.
When I told him who was calling, he let out a forced “laugh” — I presume to show his bemused exasperation with my gall at having contacted him….
————————————————————————
There. That laugh. That’s it. The HAUTEUR that emanates from the left these days.
No need to hear opposing views. Its opponents are now illegitimate, “deniers” so to speak. Their ideology is “settled science”.
If I had the tools I would do a You Tube video with a Feudalism theme. Bedraggled hardworking serfs. The cruel tax collector. Lords and nobles who confiscate more and more of their subjects’ crops. Dialogue would center around pompous nobles who consider themselves their subjects’ caretakers. Any sign of ingratitude must be punished harshly, lest others presume it’s OK to question the lord’s benevelent power.
Jeff, how low are you going to have to sink? This is just sad.
[…] https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=17489#more-17489 Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)George OrwellIllustrations of Animal FarmAnimal Farm by George Orwell […]
[…] https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=17489#more-17489 Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)George OrwellIllustrations of Animal FarmAnimal Farm by George Orwell […]
This is why liberal arts professors make so little when compared to faculty in business and engineering disciplines.
When lives and livelihoods are on the line, there just isn’t room for intellectual dishonesty. But when a person’s area of study is recreational in nature, the potential for delusional thinking is much greater.
A freshly minted Poli-Sci professor in a tenure track position will be lucky to clear 50k a year. Meanwhile new hires for tenure track positions in Finance will make about 2.5 times that much. The same is true for fields like Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Humanities departments have become the stomping ground for nutters and delusional ideologues precisely because these fields have ceased to offer any real rewards. The dominance of nutters in turn has resulted in the credibility of these fields growing progressively worse.
I don’t know if creative writing has followed this course of decay, but it sounds like maybe it has.
Jeff, how low are you going to have to sink? This is just sad.
Not nearly as sad as your pathetic bleating, troll.
What’s not to like about ‘soft’ civil war? Seems to me to be preferable to the two alternatives, which are 1) one side or the other just shutting up and hitting the vodka bottle and hoping to die by age fifty, or 2) ‘hard’ civil war.
Hey Jeff, I sent a message to the blogger liaison at BlogAds. He answers my e-mails all the time. Hopefully he contacts you.
As for what this teacher did. It’s straight up bullcorn. But quite typical for the liberal left these days. Which is why I stopped voting for Democrats.
Anyhow, I hope BlogAds gets ahold of you. I know it is to be in the “no money” area. I’m still there. It sucks.
Let me know, if you can, if BlogAds gets ahold of you.
-Pat
Arrrgh! That should read “I know HOW it is to be in the “no money” area..”
More Coffee..
I don’t see how Kitely has hurt you in any way. He’s ashamed of your site’s activities and wants not to be associated with you, and has the perfect right to request this dissociation. You have the right to maintain the association and ignore his request, though why you would want to in context is unclear. The “butt-hurt” here is unclear.
We were promised unity and we were given division.
Saturday morning links…
Photo of a Cuban hospital from SDA’s Fidel praises Obama’s healthcare. Dr. Sanity: THE PROGRESSIVE LEFT GOOSE STEPS INTO HISTORY Frum’s fall from grace. I tend to agree with Rick on this. Welcome to the Machine: Cultural Marxism in Education Ti…
Darleen’s cartoon is shocking and provocative, and I couldn’t agree with your post more with respect to your alarm to the number of people who find speech alarming, however I think your editorial choice of posting the Bush vampire cartoon but only linking to the Obama rape cartoon is a bit of an obfuscation.
The Obama cartoon is breathtaking, offensive,cruelly funny and thought provoking. It was drawn to draw reaction. I think it is not entirely fair to Kitely not to feature it. I also think their is a difference between banning or promoting the banning of the publication of a thought, idea, cartoon etc.(Mohammad cartoons), and expressing your reaction to that thought or idea.
I think it is fair for Kitely to express his reaction and make it clear that he does not wish to be associated with you. I think that in itself is a legitimate expression of free speech. I also think that when you say you studied under, to many people that implies that you are a “student of” or a follower of the “philosophy of” that particular person.
It seems to me that you and professor Kitely have very different philosophies and I think that in this case it is fair for him to ask to be disassociated from you.
I believe in the right to be thought provoking and provocative. I also wish we all tried to better communicate with each other. However, I do think people have the right to be offended if you depict our president as Hitler (Bush) or as a rapist (Obama), I do not think free speech requires that the listener be passively accepting of what is being communicated.
Mr. Godfrey @ 384; afraid you’ve given in to the equanimity temptation. Could it be that the reason you think that calling an associate a pig is no big deal, is because you are not the associate who is being called the pig?
‘Bruce Godfrey,’ surely you recognize that by posting here you have chosen to associate yourself with Jeff Goldstein?
THE STAIN IS UPON YOU!
[…] with me this far here is your reward: back to where we started. A racist cartoon! And here is Jeff G.‘s complete post. Worth […]
Someone saying they think kiddie porn should be legal is certainly protected speech; if that someone “studied under me” and cited me as a “great influence” I would also be quite “alarmed” by that.
Now, obviously, you didn’t advocate the legalization of child pornography. My point, with the extreme example, was to point out that some speech is disgusting and is best responded to with fierce condemnation and distancing. I think trying to paint this guy as some sort of orwellian anti-thought morlock is, at best, dishonest on your part. He simply thinks some of what you posted (the Obama raping liberty comic and “joking” about owning guns – whatever that means, I don’t have the time or inclination to research this blog) crossed the line from legitimate intellectual disagreement into immoral, disgusting speech that is best responded to by condemnation and distancing.
Personally I think you ought to be ashamed, not of the content you posted (I’m fiercly anti-Obama myself, am a gun owner and don’t have a problem with what most would consider fairly “extreme” anti-Obama rhetoric or political cartoons) but the con-job of trying to paint this guy as some sort of guy who hates you because you’re “anti-government.” No, he doesn’t hate you because you’re “anti-government,” he hates you because he thinks you’ve crossed the line from intellectual disagreement into speech that, while perfectly legal, is also terribly immoral and worthy of condemnation. Is this so hard to understand? You paint yourself as an intellectual, but you’ve gone for the cheap tactic of character assasination and equivocation instead of dealing with the actual interesting question at hand.
Prof. Kitely,
Barak Obama isn’t the only one raping Liberty. You are too.
But I see your point. If enough people wake up, your cushy, tenured position might well be in jeopardy. Your pension certainly is.
We wish. It has looked like late 6th grade to me for the last several years.
Two words: liberal fascism
I don’t see how Kitely has hurt you in any way. He’s ashamed of your site’s activities and wants not to be associated with you, and has the perfect right to request this dissociation. You have the right to maintain the association and ignore his request, though why you would want to in context is unclear. The “butt-hurt” here is unclear.
Perhaps if you had read the entire thread, you would have received clarity? Or, perhaps if you’d read (and understood) the post. Here, let me help you out:
It is an Orwellian world in which we live when fucking novelists want to distance themselves from those who criticize the government.
That really gets to the crux of it.
No, he doesn’t hate you because you’re “anti-government,” he hates you because he thinks you’ve crossed the line from intellectual disagreement into speech that, while perfectly legal, is also terribly immoral and worthy of condemnation. Is this so hard to understand?
It’s hypocritical. Is that so hard to understand?
It’s also intellectually lazy – the idea that the cartoon is “immoral” and worthy of condemnation, which is disgusting for a college professor.
Wow, for a guy who seems to be a fairly educated man, I can believe you are surprised by your former professors world view. College professors are by and large extremely liberal Democrats who refuse to tolerate opposing ideology. They are perfectly content believe they are ‘politically correct’ and ‘tolerant’ and any other white-guilt, 1960’s malcontent buzz word you wish to throw in there. But, in reality; college professors nationwide refuse to be actually ‘liberal’ and have a lock step orthodoxy that is allergic to any idea that contravenes their neo-socialism.
Wow – I think you’ll find that the shocking thing isn’t that (surprise) professors are liberal. It’s the increasing lengths to which they’ll now go to shut down speech they don’t like.
It’s a creeping line.
Oh, do elaborate on that.
Jeff, I think you should urge every blogger you know to write a simple post that states Jeff Goldstein studied under Brian Kitely. I plan to, and then link to this post of yours
Heh. It could be a Google Bomb.
By the way, I liked Darlene’s cartoon. It is spot on, and I don’t see anything racist about it. Those who accuse anyone of criticizing Obama for anything as racists are just looking for pats on the head from the DNC and Oprah.
I have never been to college. In fact I almost didn’t make it out of High school. I have lived long enough to understand the basic idea our founding fathers had when they constructed the constitution. There is no substitute for free speech protected by the right to self defense. Those who are teaching in our universities have been infected with socialism and have been spreading it to our youth since the late fifties.Our youth must have an opportunity to hear both sides of the issue…THE DEBATE IS NOT OVER!Did I mention I live in Georgia and enjoy reading your work?
I recon perfesser Kitely can join perfesser Caric on the intollerant dumbass bench out in the hallway while the really cool outlaw kids drink beer and eat pizza in the classroom.
Me? I’m out in the parking lot in my van with that dumb blond from speech class.
Oh. Yeah. That cartoon thingie was spot on Darleen and very much in the spirit of political cartoons and not racist at all unless you already think everything has racial overtones anyway which is kinda racist so go pound it up yer ass perfesser Kitely.
Jeff, you’re now anti-government? Why do you hate paved roads, police officers, and puppies? Did I miss anything? Maybe vegetables, or Barrett Brown, as if there is a difference.
I once studied under Noam Chomsky. Our ways have since diverged. If he were to e-mail me, wroth over something I’d written, I’d count it as an endorsement.
Ellen, didn’t Chomsky teach Divergence 101?
He’s not opposing you for opposing the govenrment. He’s just reading you out of the Party. That’s a time-honored American literary tradition.
For awhile I kept thinking, why aren’t these guys catching onto the fact that that “Ric Caric” comment was a mildly clever parody? Then I followed the link.
Strange how so many on the left now find it reprehensible – or alarming – to be somehow associated with those who question the dominant power structure. Even if that ‘association’ is nothing more than a recitation of historical fact.
It would appear that comrade Kitely just wants to be
Yezhov to your Stalin.
And who the hell is this Kitely character anyway? Does he have anything approaching the readership that Jeff has?
How can a cartoon showing a half white man (what race did Obama put on his census card I ask) who rapes a green woman be considered as having racist overtones unless we’re talking about Martians, who I’m pretty sure have not attained a class status yet under this administration. Of course interpretations are in the eyes of the beholder, so Kitely is apparently wearing the opposite of rose colored glasses.
This is something I see all the time. I tried to start a blog covering art, culture and sort of general life in Pittsburgh stuff and the slight indications that I hadn’t consumed enogh Kool Aid lost me a lot of links.
Later, one or two people came up to me and said, they really didn’t strongly disagree with me, but were just afraid to be linked to my blog could hurt them in some way. Obviously, a lot of these folks work in museums, local colleges or agencies funded by the state to foster “free expression”, dialog and creativity.
Can we design a nice Obama poster class?
He simply thinks some of what you posted (the Obama raping liberty comic and “joking” about owning guns – whatever that means, I don’t have the time or inclination to research this blog) crossed the line from legitimate intellectual disagreement into immoral, disgusting speech that is best responded to by condemnation and distancing.
The comic: Any writer who says, honestly and without hypocrisy, that the comic in question crosses a line has standards of decency so far out of step with art, literature, and political comics of the last two hundred years that he must live a cloistered existence. He finds the treatments of Bush in cartoons and literature of the last ten years absolutely appalling. He is disgusted by a vast array of critically acclaimed 20th C. novels. He dreams of a society in which genteel politeness trumps almost every other value, and political actions seen as hideously immoral are never lampooned in any manner except polite and gentle. He is an oddball, to put it very mildly. It is possible that Kiteley is such an extremely unusual creative writing teacher. It is more likely that he is a liar and a hypocrite. People such as Jeff who know him know the answer.
The guns: We can dismiss Santiago’s point out of hand because he admits he has no inclination to find out whether it’s true.
Even after following the link I thought it had to be a parody, but I spent several weeks over there a couple weeks back trying to crack the facade and came to the unfortunate conclusion that he is what he says and he is really that dim.
*a couple years back, I meant to say.
Perhaps you should change your “about” page to reflect the obvious: While you may have studied under Brian Kitely, he utterly failed to brainwash you. Or how about, “Jeff studied under Brian Kitely, but not long enough to believe in censorship or to get pregnant.”
Ha! I like Gumlegs’ suggestion.
And, Gail, Caric is a parody. He just doesn’t know it.
Don’t see those thoughts, don’t read those thoughts, don’t think those thoghts and don’t associate with thise who do.
So what you got to do now, is put a banner at the top of every page…”STUDIED UNDER PROFESSOR KITLEY!”
Every article, be sure to put “AND, IF HE WERE HERE, MY GOOD FRIEND PROF. KITELY WOULD SURELY AGREE WITH EVERYTHING I HAVE JUST SAID!”
At the bottom, put “SITE AVIDLY READ BY PROF. KITLEY, WHO IS MY GOOD FRIEND, AND WHOM I HAVE STUDIED UNDER!!”. also, “SOON TO COME, ANOTHER WONDERFUL ESSAY BY THE GREAT PROF. KITELY!!” I have lost several friends, over the years, over issues of personal honor, such as this. Always sad. But my personal mirror-face interface remains sound, in the morning. As for Kitely, a coward dies a thousand deaths. Imagine his day, always checking to make sure that he “looks” right.
My view is that Brian Kitely’s disassociating himself from Jeff is censorious, purposely hurtful, and thus wrong. It’s censorship in John Stuart Mill’s definition of censorship as entailing both government action and the kind of “social pressure” represented by Kitely’s personal repudiation. It’s also purposefully hurtful. If Kitely knew Jeff at all, he would know about Jeff’s extreme sensitivity and insecurity. So Kitely must have known how much his letter would hurt. That makes Kitely morally wrong on both counts in my book.
Having said that, I also have a comment for Jeff. My reading of Mill’s “On Liberty” is that he’s trying to create a space for his kind of people–feminists, atheists, abolitionists, and other liberal activists who were stigmatized in Victorian Britain. In this sense, he was advancing the interests of his group under the guise of claiming a universal principle. It’s hard to believe that Mill would have resisted the urge to exercise “social pressure” on conservatives if his group ever got more powerful. If you thought that liberals would ever forbear from exercising social pressure on you in relation to this blog, you were mistaken and naive.
My own view (which Jeff mistakenly characterizes somewhere in this thread) is that Protein Wisdom is a misogynous (always), homophobic (Dan Collins on Greenwald), and racist (Darleen Click’s cartoon) blog. But I’m far from viewing Protein Wisdom as outside the moral universe and have always been uncomfortable with a lot of left-wing stigmatizing of conservatives (not that I’m above my own stigmatizing). I wouldn’t condemn Jeff, but I do reserve the right to laugh at him.
My own view (which Jeff mistakenly characterizes somewhere in this thread) is that Protein Wisdom is a misogynous (always), homophobic (Dan Collins on Greenwald), and racist (Darleen Click’s cartoon) blog.
And we should give any weight to the opinion of a white heterosexual middle-class male who lives in Klanland why, exactly?
What qualifies you to hold a valid opinion on these subjects? Be specific.
What qualifies you to hold a valid opinion on these subjects? Be specific.
He’s from the Barrett Brown School of Egotist, SBP!
Well, he’s an ‘academic’, so directly or indirectly he’s on the government payroll. In short, he’s bought. Sold out, not that he ever in a billion dollar a year world of books, scripts, plays and stand up has been able to make it on his own. Not once.
His money comes from the forced tax collection of the working class. Hence his common dislike of those his welfare is dependent upon. Beggars always hate the giver. It’s a psychological rationalization, especially of crypto slave males.
Seriously, if in twenty years a house is being cleaned out , would anyone save anything he wrote? No.
I wouldn’t waste your time on this common hack.
Getting to the substance of the cartoon. Yes, Obama is having a go at the lady but he is far from being the first. In fact, a Harvard law prof might be best positioned to know just how far he might be able to go. He knew how few might defend her.
They teach this kind of rape in law school.
Protein Wisdom is a misogynous (always) – strike 1
homophobic (Dan Collins on Greenwald) – strike 2
racist (Darleen Click’s cartoon) – strike 3
Caric is boring, predictable, and invincibly ignorant.
If Kitely knew Jeff at all, he would know about Jeff’s extreme sensitivity and insecurity.
Says the stoic man who couldn’t decide whether or not to buy his dad a Father’s Day card. [sniff]
The answer, Caric, is that you yourself are not a liberal — which is why you have such difficulty spotting them. Terms like misogynistic, homophobic, and racist used to mean something; now, thanks to people like you treating them as just some close at hand convenient political cudgel, they’ve worn down and are but little brittle sticks.
But rather than learning the lesson that Aesop might have seen, you simply resort to poking people with what remains of your once mighty cudgel.
It is irritating, but then, so are flies.
Applying social pressures is fine; laughing is fine; hell, wanting to distance yourself from speech you don’t like is fine. But which you choose to do says a lot about who you are and how you think. And as you so clearly show every time you post, not everyone has the chops to be an “intellectual.”
Oh, Ricaric, there’s an opening at Social Problems Forum. Why don’t you go ask the guys at HillBuzz how much a homophobe I am? Or, read this.
https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=14706
[…] March 27, 2010 In a posting titled “The Lie of the Liberal Arts Education,” Jeff Goldstein recounts at length an emailed plea from a former professor to remove his name from the About page […]
ouch – Caric – that’s got to hurt!
“They teach this kind of rape in law school”
This John Morris fellow is quite astute. Caric, not so much.
Word.
[…] always the intellectuals who get behind the oppressor first. March 27, 2010 by jenn1964 Jeff Goldstein – “It is an Orwellian world in which we live when fucking novelists want to distance […]
The man who honors his teacher honors himself. But when the honored teacher turns out to be dishonorable and small minded it is revealed that a part of oneself, one’s past, is not what one supposed. It is a painful revelation.
Argument by asspull from Prof Caricature !!! YIPPEE !!! Misogynsistic homophobic racists. You forgot xenophobic, jingoistic, imperialistic, warmongering, genocidal misanthropes, you fat greasy suck at the govt teat douchenozzle.
“Jeff, there is a touch of sadness that this happens. I’ll avoid all the cliches that could be used here, and simply say: 1) I liked Darleen’s cartoon, and think it is good that people talk about it, and 2) I agree and support you on this. No “if”s, “and”s or “but”s. You have my support. You have my respect.”
Just a sincere ditto.
Lose your anger and find some sympathy for Mr. Kitely. He lives and works in the academy, where even accidentally varying from the ever-changing party line or fashion can have enormous consequences for one’s career. He lives on a knife edge. Even people he has never met (let alone personally offended) could feel deeply aggrieved by a stray mention of his name on your web site. You live in the free world, while he lives constantly with a suffocating fear as do most of the non-independently wealthy professors. So feel some pity and let some mercy “fall like a gentle rain.” His message to you really amounts to plea for help from the majority of professors, who only wanted to teach some piece of a subject they loved and who now find themselves in a maze-like dungeon where monsters can suddenly appear… So the universities need free speech more than ever and it is a wonder that we send children to such sad places. Welcome to America, 2010.
[…] On his Protein Wisdom blog, Jeff writes about an argument he’s had with a former instructor: I don’t pretend to champion creative expression and individuality of thought, then turn around and agitate for the silencing of speech I don’t like. […]
they are, alas, their own jailers – worthless
I avoided post secondary education and now I can pass those savings on to my customers. I am not conflicted in any way, I know reality from fantasy and right from wrong. Life is not all that complicated if you avoid ‘post secondary’ education and liberal clones in particular.
I read everything, a book per day, and never heard ofKitely. I have however, read this blog for years. He’s a nobody. :)
Might Kiteley just be preparing his case for deniable plausibility– for the day when the Obamabots come calling?
I had a poli sci professor who required a near perfect class attendance in order to pass his class. I saw him three times the whole semester because he was flying around to other colleges, trying to secure a job for the following school year(he was not getting tenure—the rumor was he seduced an administer’s daughter). His TA’s spent the majority of time taking attendance. Imagine trying to teach a class, and having to stop when each and every late arrival needed to be marked “present.”
#419
Perfesser. Nobody gave you permission to get up off the stupid bench. Sit your lame ass back down until you’re called for.
“My own view (which Jeff mistakenly characterizes somewhere in this thread) is that Protein Wisdom is a misogynous (always), homophobic (Dan Collins on Greenwald), and racist (Darleen Click’s cartoon) blog.”
And…and….and…..BOOOOOSH!!!!!!!!!
[…] https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=17489 […]
“It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to never practice either of them.”
– Mark Twain
Kitely is afraid, literally. He is projecting what he and his would be plotting were anyone doing to them what they are doing to others.
It took until comment 408, but I thought exactly the same thing when reading this. Kitely wants you to airbrush someone out of the picture, in this case, him. Why it would be as though he had never met you. As you said Jeff, Orwellian.
has resulted in the credibility of these fields growing progressively worse.
No pun intended.
But it should have been :D
On second thought, perhaps it is you that he is trying to airbrush out as he cleans up his own portfolio.
Imagine the world shattering effect this approach could have if Kevin Bacon woke up one morning and started thinking clearly.
On second thought, perhaps it is you that he is trying to airbrush out as he cleans up his own portfolio.
Like a Kennedy Catholic marriage, the relationship could be annulled, regardless of the passage of time.
Armed Liberal (with whom I used to be friendly; he says in his post he once took my side re: Fr*sch, but that certainly wasn’t the extent of our online relationship) links to what he calls my “screed” and says I’m “sounding more and more like Deb Fr*sch”. He goes on to say “I’m not sorry I defended him against her and sympathized with him … but I wouldn’t want my name on his blog today, either.”
Marc is entitled to his opinions, naturally. But the fact of the matter is, I haven’t much changed since I wrote this, as regular readers will attest. Others, however, seem to have found over the course of time their niche as purveyors of sanctimony. Females and ice dongs is simply a no-no. And those who create such images are subhumans. The depiction of which is not a no-no.
Judging from Marc’s response, it looks like a certain “pragmatic” caricaturing of me as an unstable, violent person — who as a writer doesn’t traffic in substance, but rather threatens to “beat people up” — has taken hold.
Which, hey, that’s cool. Because if Marc trafficked in ideas rather than emotions and high dudgeon, he’d be “Armed Classical Liberal” by now…
Bottom line (and to use a concrete example): what Kiteley wanted me to do was essentially the same as if Marc were to ask me to remove that old post of mine because his name appears in it. I won’t airbrush my own history to accommodate the sensitivity of intellectual cowards posing as righteous men.
#451
It is one or the other, only Kitely can decide whether he wants to be the disappeared or the disappearer.
Heart of hearts and all that.
I think that in this case it is fair for him to ask to be disassociated from you.
Is that what you do, John? When your former protégés (assuming you ever had any) post something on the Internet that you disagree with, do you go out of your way to “disassociate” from them?
If so, why? WTF? Kiteley isn’t asking to no longer be “associated” with Jeff, he was asking Jeff to airbrush his own resume.
That’s not a form of legitimate discourse: it’s petty and small and it reeks of moral preening.
Proximity does not equal causality nor even association. I studied under people whose politics I find reprehensible, but I will never pretend that I didn’t study under them.
I don’t hang out with people who would give me grief for having done so, that’s why? What kind of crowd are you in?
I don’t see how Kitely has hurt you in any way. He’s ashamed…
Answered it right there, don’t you see?
You’re still missing the thesis of the post: this is an allegedly open-minded individual who is “alarmed” by speech and is censuring (not censoring) Jeff in order to save his pathetic hide from the opprobrium of his allegedly open-minded peers.
What, are you looking for a tort here? Is that the only kind of harm you care about?
Lose your anger and find some sympathy for Mr. Kiteley.
I would, but he and his kind are just now slipping on the boot that will be stomping on a human face—ours—for as long as they can.
I can’t sympathize with weak people who value status over principle. They may be pathetic when they’re alone, but in herds they destroy everything that someone else labored and died to build.
They’re beginning to recite the lines from Atlas Shrugged, verbatim. They mean us harm.
And we aim to misbehave.
Stockholm syndrome is very real.
Question 0thority.
How long before the universities are going to want their degrees back, is what I want to know.
My daughter attends a top university in the south. Some of the professors there rake in close to half a million dollars a year! These people are not BRAIN surgeons, they’re economics professors and political science professors, etc. I was shocked to see how much money these blowhards make for teaching when they all have grad students grading their papers and tests for them. It’s insane. Every time there are cut backs in spending because of the economy, they go to the students (aka parents) and raise the tuition instead of cutting back some of these ridiculously high salaries.
The democrat communists have an agenda for America. It’s being taught at the schools our children attend every single day. You’re obviously not towing the liberal democrat communist line and so you must be cut off. Consider yourself lucky.
Hypocrisy is the new benchmark – academic insiders, policy wonks, etc., are now judged on whether they are sufficiently hypocritical.
If not, no more cocktail parties.
I wonder if the concurrence of this and the latest manic press outrage over TEA Parties is coincidence, or are the MSM and Academia synchronizing memes?
I’ve always wanted my kids to get a good, solid reactionary arts education. It’s been a value in my family since the 1960’s.
Hey, B Moe, do you remember that dustup with Feministe, where you were debating with that guy about the “white patriachy”, and they had a list of grievances which included band aids that didn’t match the color of their skin? I lost the link to it, and was wondering if you could point me back to it? Sorry if I’m confusing you with another PW commenter.
If not, no more cocktail parties.
Never having to attend another academic cocktail party wouldn’t really count as a threat as far as I’m concerned. :-)
Some years ago, Ralph Peters wrote “Inside the heart of the Social Sciences Chair beats the heart of a Commissar.”
Why are you surprised? You think people in the Humanities are actually tolerant? Kiteley is just doing you the favor of letting you know what ALL OF THEM THINK OF YOU.
Jeff is unstable and violent and threatens to beat people up, says the guy who brags about carrying weapons right there in his nom-de-blog.
Re: the “Jeff is violent and unstable” trope. I’ve said before, and I’ll reiterate, that I don’t think there is anything wrong with telling people who’ve taken public shots and my family, or wished me death, etc., that if I ever met them in person I’d give them every chance to say the same thing directly to me — and if they did, I’d break their ankle or arm or some such.
That the outrage over such a thing flows toward me for taking this position and not towards, for example, the little prick who said he hopes me an my entire family die in a plane crash, is indicative of a society in decay, so far as I’m concerned.
I don’t need the government or lawyers to fight all my battles for me, and handing that responsibility over to them in toto — as the only way to appear civilized, in our new bureaucratic state — turns me into a criminal and those who wish death upon me or my family into victims of MY aggression.
Meanwhile, there hasn’t been a single incident of my being violent toward anyone. Only that I’ve left open the possibility for a select few whose correspondences with me have been, in my estimation, particularly egregious.
I won’t be shamed by that, nor should anyone else. “Them’s fighting words” didn’t use to be the mark of an unstable beast, if the phrase was used very selectively, and the person felt that his name, his family, or family’s honor was at stake.
I’m old fashioned. Outlawish, even. That’s just the way it is.
I don’t find Brian’s request at all unreasonable. Given that this blog appears to generally be about political content, he simply wants to disassociate himself with views he doesn’t subscribe to. Your argument seems to be that I’m simply stating a fact. While that is true, the listing of the names on your About page appears to be as much about increasing credibility of the writing on your blog as it is to give a description of you.
I’m curious as to why you believe Kitely has any less right to an opinion than you have? Just because he’s a professor doesn’t mean that he is neutral on everything. I’m certain if I listed, as influences, some of my more conservative professors on my site: “Conservatives Who Want To Legalize Rape Of Old Women About To Die Of Cancer”, they’d probably be more pleased to have their name removed than to bask in my shadow.
At the end of the day, it was a reasoanble request made to an unreasonable person. The outcome is pretty much how I’d expect it to play out. Kitely was too naive, or maybe held you in too high of regard, to see the end game.
Jeff, feel free to now list me under the list of people you’ve studied under. I won’t ask you to remove my name, but if you prefer that I remove you from the list of the names of people that influenced the Conservatives that Rape Old Ladies page, I’ll be happy to consider it.
Which is where the escape from the state of nature Hobbes seems to long for has worked all too well. As though in a scene from Caddyshack, “Be the contract.”
Never having to attend another academic cocktail party wouldn’t really count as a threat as far as I’m concerned. :-)
Nor for me, but the petty little tyrants in a faculty department can make your life a living hell if they so choose, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. If you quit and go to another uni, they will make sure your reputation precedes you.
And they do it with a crystal-clear conscience, because once you’re deemed unclean, they figure you deserve it.
One mistake in my last post. It’s not conservatives who are doing the raping, but rather wanting to legalize the raping. My apologies to anyone I offended.
Your experience reminds me of my experience with a university English professor whom I respected. I submitted a paper that had the citations and made clear arguments of which I was proud. She gave me an A, but then said, “Mark, I have to disagree with your arguments but I can’t say why. They just seemed wrong to me. I showed your paper to my husband and he said that it struck him as a conservative argument. I know I could argue against you if I had time to get the facts.”
She gave me an A with one hand and ripped it out with the other. I had no clue about liberal v. conservative arguments. All I know is that I had the facts to back up my argument. That’s what we were taught to do. But she destroyed that for me.
I completely lost respect for her and never cared what grade I received from her after that.
Why are you surprised?
We’re not surprised. We’re not surprised in the least.
We’re also not going to let it pass unremarked. The lie of liberal arts education needs to be exposed at every turn.
I seem to recall reading about something like that going on in another time, another place…*
Nah, must be my imagination.
But that isn’t what he said to Jeff. See comment #473 and click the little orange asterisk.
Given that this blog appears to generally be about political content, he simply wants to disassociate himself with views he doesn’t subscribe to.
So it’s your position that an instructor is responsible for the political views of his students? How about their sexual orientation? Their taste in music? Their position on the long-simmering Ginger v. Mary Anne issue?
I’m curious as to why you believe Kitely has any less right to an opinion than you have?
That Jeff studied with him is not an “opinion”. It is a fact.
listing of the names on your About page appears to be as much about increasing credibility of the writing on your blog
I’ve never heard of any of those people, nor, I’ll wager, has hardly anyone else outside their own narrow academic niche. Jeff’s writing stands on its own.
Next!
One mistake in my last post. It’s not conservatives who are doing the raping, but rather wanting to legalize the raping.
Now you are simply lying. Blatantly.
Do you think anyone here is going to believe you? Seriously>
A quibble if I may dicentra? Mightn’t we say instead “the lie of what is today called liberal arts education” and preserve the possibility at least that there may be something proper to the subject?
@WitNit, that professor probably did one of the most admirable things one could do, which is to give you an ‘A’ for something she fundamentally disagrees with. As you probably know research tends to show that our liberal/conservative bias is less about facts and more about feeling/group association/etc….
I know for most hardcore conservatives/liberals they think the facts/arguments are completely in their favor. The truth is probably for most issues up for debate the facts are pretty weak, moral position is stronger than any critical thinking argument, and people rarely change their positions unless they have an event that changes their moral underpinnings.
And while this blog likes to pretend that academics shouldn’t have these beliefs, they do. The sign of a good academic, like a good judge, is to put aside those beliefs as best they can. This professor appears to have done a good job with this. Her mistake was not realizing that she was doing it, and realizing that should probably should be quiet about it.
I’m curious as to why you believe Kiteley has any less right to an opinion than you have?
You really need to provide an exact quote of Jeff’s that says “Kiteley has no right to his opinion” or something similar; otherwise, you’re willfully misrepresenting his assertion.
Given that this blog appears to generally be about political content, he simply wants to disassociate himself with views he doesn’t subscribe to.
Why is it necessary for him to disassociate himself with Jeff’s resume? Does Kiteley hang out with a crowd that would blame him for what Jeff says, merely because Jeff’s a former student? [answer: yes]
It is an act not of moral duty but of moral preening.
What a shame it is that the port side is so hasty to rid itself of contact with the starboard side. Rend the boat if you will, but both sides will end up in the drink.
Maybe that’s because we know what the word “fact” means.
I know how to swim, and I’m sure Jeff does. Does Kiteley?
Mightn’t we say instead “the lie of what is today called liberal arts education” and preserve the possibility at least that there may be something proper to the subject?
Yup. I stand amended.
Since Mr./Prof. Jackson appears to be confused on this issue, the Statue of Liberty isn’t a real person. A cartoon of it is even less real.
Drawing a tortured parallel between a cartoon of a statue and advocating the rape of an actual person (whether about to die of cancer or not) is so fundamentally dishonest that I can’t do anything but laugh.
Do arguments of that quality actually fly in your discipline? Really?
which is to give you an ‘A’ for something she fundamentally disagrees with
And yet, look at this:
I have to disagree with your arguments but I can’t say why. They just seemed wrong to me. I showed your paper to my husband and he said that it struck him as a conservative argument.
She had no idea what a conservative argument even was, only that this strange, unfamiliar thing must be wrong somehow.
How can you call someone like that an educator? More than half the country can articulate conservative arguments and label them as such, but an academic cannot?
Trust me, she’s not the only academic who freezes, stunned, like a deer in the headlights of this foreign thing called conservatism.
THEY LIVE IN A HERMETIC BUBBLE and they can’t even tell. And they’re doing horrific damage to the discipline of scholarship because of it.
Ken Jackson please pretend you have never been here. Kthankbai.
viva la revolution… even if it’s just a soft one.
Free speech is free speech. While you can’t yell fire in a movie theater, or incite violence, you can pretty much say anything you want.
What’s wrong with that?
realizing that [she] should probably should be quiet about it.
Wow. Your mindset reveals itself ever more clearly. Why should anyone shut up about anything in an academic setting?
The truth is probably for most issues up for debate the facts are pretty weak.
Then you need to spend more time around here, is all I’m saying. We lay down some pretty solid stuff.
P.S. I think some of y’all need to review Foucault’s “This is Not a Pipe”, or better yet, the original Magritte piece.
I suspected there was a good reason we didn’t have grades at my liberal arts college.
@McGeHee, QED
Ken Jackson buggers goats. Fact. And he wants to legalize it. Fact. That is all.
SBP
It’s really not necessary to refer them back to arguments about the difference between art and reality. They know the difference when it suits them.
This isn’t about speech or politics or anything like unto it: it’s about petty snubs and small-minded people and rank hypocrisy and Brahmans vs. Untouchables.
Jeff’s an Untouchable. It’s only reasonable that a Brahman would want to sever all ties.
@SBP, the cartoon and my site both having the act of rape play prominently in them is a happy coincidence, not intentional, and certainly not meant to be a direct comparison. With that said it does give inspiration to the idea of a new site. “Cartoon Depictions of Conservatives Raping Young Famous Fictional Children”. Like Reagan raping Little Orphan Annie. In this case, this blog is not just an influence, but the actual inspiration. Much appreciated SBP and Jeff.
Although now I have to find some good artists. Any artists here?
Ken is denser than neutronium.
Trollhammered™
@JD, what is “buggering”? I didn’t realize that I did that and that it was a fact. I’d like to hear a more clear definition of what you’re stating I factually do (or have done).
You, dicentra, are a naughty girl.
cartoon and my site both having the act of rape play prominently in them is a happy coincidence, not intentional
Sorry, I don’t believe you.
Cartoon Depictions of Conservatives Raping Young Famous Fictional Children
Go for it, dude. Enjoy!
Cartoon Depictions of Conservatives Raping Young Famous Fictional Children
Oooh, how transgressive.
Next you’ll be staging plays about talking vaginas or gay Jesus. Lead on fearless one.
Huh.
That’s not a QED at all, sorry Ken. McGeHee is referring to the fact that the in the hallowed halls of academe, the idea that “facts” and “logic” are tools of Teh White Slaving Patriarchy to keep Teh Othar down is not considered to be absurd.
Furthermore, the thinkers on our side don’t assert that truth is relative or non-existent, or that one ought to say what is useful to one’s cause rather than strive for speaking the truth.
“You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.” — Saul Alinsky
“I don’t have to be accurate, I just have to be interesting,” mused Stanley Fish.
We categorically reject this nonsense for the morally bankrupt twaddle that it is.
Furthermore, the left argues emotion (the parade of sob-stories during the health-care debate) and the right argues using facts (we can’t afford this [chart]) chains of act and consequence (if you do X, it will result in Y, which undermines the problem you were about to solve) and from rule of law (this is unconstitutional).
If you see our arguments as based on feelings, it’s because you’re reacting to them emotionally instead of cognitively.
Go for it, Kenny. And if you note on your “about” page that you once commented on a thread at this site, I won’t ask you to remove that fact.
Novelists?! In my experience almost all people involved in the arts are statists. And I should know: I’m an arty type myself, who travels largely in artsy circles, and usually I’m odd man out because I’m a libertarian. Arty types almost always think of themselves as “free spirits,” but they’re generally lockstep statists, and in any political contest will invariably support the bigger State-shtupper.
And yet, ironically, they’re also opposed to the Religious Right. You kniw, because the Religious Right wants to use the power of the State to force the rest of society into obedience to dogma. Not at all like “liberals.”
You, dicentra, are a naughty girl.
We always need a fresh crop of trolls, n’cest pas?
Ken is so ardent to be thought of as a thinker that he cannot bear to be accused of knowing anything.
Actually, it is — just not the way he intended. He proved my point by missing it.
Like Reagan raping Little Orphan Annie
What political statement is that? I mean, if you’re into anime-style pron, have at it, but last I looked LO Annie wasn’t a political symbol.
True, because we use them up so quickly. They just don’t make ’em like they used to.
You can make fun of the Oministration without being racist, but not without being called racist.
Whatta country.
My kingdom for a balloon fence.
Ken is so ardent to be thought of as a thinker that he cannot bear to be accused of knowing anything.
If this thread weren’t already rich with great lines, I’d declare this one the winner.
@JD, what is “buggering”?
He probably won’t admit to knowing the “double” part of the “teabagger” entendre, either.
They never do, because they’re hoping to make you explain something filthy out loud, thus to expose you as a hypocrite because “conservatives aren’t supposed to know those naughty things.”
#508 it’s right there, behind the mile high berm.
I’m starting to receive some unintentionally funny email over this… gotta love this erudite and thoughtful missive:
BWAHAHAHAH!!
[…] by lady liberty. The original post, cartoons, and comments come from a right wing site, Protein Wisdom, and you can go read everything […]
@dicentra, the thinkers on your side? C’mon, I was trying to keep this discussion from being absurd, but you just crossed the line.
I was trying to keep this discussion from being absurd
Snicker.
dicentra, the thinkers on your side? C’mon
Yes, thinkers
Goats cower in fear when Ken Jackson comes around.
Then perhaps you should have stayed out of it.
@McGehee, jump.
[…] The Lie of the Liberal Arts Education Shame on Brian Kiteley. I mean, if a novelist is so bothered by pointed speech that he’d support political censorship, is it really any wonder that our institutions of higher learning have become cauldrons of conformity and anti-intellectual groupthink — or that students leave them with a healthy fear of ever giving offense? […]
“It is an act not of moral duty but of moral preening.”
Or moral cowardice.
I got the answer Jeff; remove the stricken name from the About Page and replace it with, “and some anonymous asshole from DU” … because that is indistinguishable from Democratic Underground….
The Plight of the Emasculated Society…
Janis Joplin — Ball & Chain 1967 Gospel for the Reb, from Gary Wolf, Freedom of the Mind and the Emasculated Society: As I witness the dismemberment of the American republic, bewilderment overtakes me. I cry out as another human being did millennia ag…
Free speech was “good” only as long as it was the left trying to work it’s way into the establishment. Now that they are the estaishment, not so much.
“dicentra, the thinkers on your side?”
“No one washes a rental car.”
-George Will
“dicentra, the thinkers on your side?”
“The Republicans inculcate, with whatever ability they can, that the Negro is a man, that his bondage is cruelly wrong, and that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged. The Democrats deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insignificance the wrong of his bondage; so far as possible, crush all sympathy for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him; compliment themselves as Union-savers for doing so; and call the indefinite spreading of his bondage ‘a sacred right of self-government.’ “
-Abraham Lincoln
@524, That’s Alinksy Rule #4: Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.
There is nothing implied there that they share any faithfullness to those rules or will maintain them once the enemy has been defeated.
Personally, I can’t get over Alinsky’s use of the word enemy here and elsewhere. So much for “can’t we all get along” or any spirit of bipartisanship from our, ahem, enemies.
“dicentra, the thinkers on your side?”
“Scratch a lefty, you’ll find a totalitarian.”
-Kim du Toit
“The trouble with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
-Margaret Thatcher
“The acme of prose style is exemplified by that simple, graceful clause: “Pay to the order of. . . .”‘”
-Robert A. Heinlein
“American progressivism, from which today’s liberalism descended, was a kind of Christian fascism (many called it “Christian socialism”). This is a difficult concept for modern liberals to grasp because they are used to thinking of the progressives as the people who cleaned up the food supply, pushed through the eight hour workday, and ended child labor. But liberals often forget that the progressives were imperialists, at home and abroad. They were the authors of Prohibition, the Palmer Raids, eugenics, loyalty oaths, and, in its modern incarnation, what many call “state capitalism.””
-Jonah Goldberg
“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys”
-P.J. O’Rourke
“At its most basic level, liberalism is nothing more than childlike emotionalism applied to adult issues.”
-John Hawkins, RWN
“The era of the state church has been replaced by an age in which the state itself is the church. European progressives still don’t get this: they think the idea of a religion telling you how to live your life is primitive, but the government regulating every aspect of it is somehow advanced and enlightened.”
-Mark Steyn
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”
– Winston Churchill
Laz:
Good stuff. But if the spambots have found the thread already, it’s prolly dead.
This comment notwithstanding :D
That was me, but I don’t have a link to it either. I think the dude’s name was Jack Goff, becaus I made a crack about it and it turned out to be the poor bastards real name.
[…] …that Jeff Goldstein studied under Brian Kitely. […]
What is “children hated by their parents,” Alex?
I’ll bet he has a hell of a time getting paged.
[…] a comment, Mishu linked to “The Lie of a Liberal Arts Education.” Jeff Goldstein, on Protein Wisdom, tells us he’d posted a political cartoon and one of his […]
I for one would like to thank Mr. Kiteley for bravely calling such a huge blogswarm to witness his spanking.
#540
I met a Harold Ainis once. I’ve never stared at a business card so long in my life.
The absurdity of it would have been even more glaringly obvious if the prof had written to a book publisher of a politically incorrect tome and asked it to “please remove the reference to me in the About the Author profile in future printings of this book, as I do not wish to be associated with it.” One could also write to newspapers, magazines, etc. to request that untoward albeit true biographical references be expunged.
Just wanted to say a quick congratulations to you Jeff for being so widely linked over this issue on the right-side blogs. You certainly deserve a much wider audience for your thoughts and here’s hoping this breaks the ice a little.
Let’s really have a laugh [garbled]. No one’s here for art.
Ok, Mr. Davies, I’m here for fiction followers!.
*cough*
Now I see problem. Useless “fiction” at end of first link.
Hey, where’d everybody go?
I need a some suggestions on a good book to eat.
Why, that’s a racist.
Ok, I just got internet back at work so I’m gonna skip ahead a little on this response.
(Quick Darleen, whip up another cartoon and buy me some time to catch up;)
“I’m a jerk? Perhaps. Truth be told, I’ve been called worse.”
Yeah, but you’re our jerk and we’re a family of jerks so wear the badge proudly, Mister;)
I think the left is genuinely surprised to the reaction this is receiving They are afraid that the rightwingers just might throw down the gloves after finally discovering the consequences of prefering polite discusions to “in your face” style confrontation. confrontations.
Back in old Napoli, is wherever and whatever it is.
This is why we lose, people.
And this is why we lose Beatles.
By this: “reaction this is receiving”
I of course meant the healthcare takeover not the cartoon. Oh and disregard the repeated confrontation.
Darleen did a cartoon?
[…] The Lie of the Liberal Arts Education […]
Brian Kiteley, whether he realizes it or not, is a perfect example of how today’s “liberals” have embraced Stalinism.
Maybe he doesn’t want to be associated with you because you appear to be a right wing nutcase. Frankly, I wouldn’t want to be associated with you either. The only reason I ended up here and read some of your right wing trip is because you were quoted in another article I was reading and I wanted to see who you were.
What they say is true – once you’ve seen something, you cannot unsee it.
Unfortunately.
your right wing trip
*tweet*
Two minutes, Goldstein, Tripping.
once you’ve seen something, you cannot unsee it.
Sure you can.
so did Mr. Kitely ever apologize?
Yo Ed: He wants to scrub history. This is a PAST relationship, they are no longer associates. Pay attention, please. Gilhooley isn’t your real name is it? I knew an Ed Gihooley once. We called him “Ed The Head”. I don’t remember if it was because he was gay or he smoked alot of weed. One or both of those two, I think.
ALL college professors are dickheads. It’s been proven scientifically!
Yes, even the engineers. Trust me.
——-
Shut up or we’ll turn off your lights.
Ed strikes me as the kinda fellow to whom “right wing” and “right wing nutcase” are indistinguishable — unless by “right wing” he means those “right wingers” like Sullivan or Chris Buckley, etc., who love them some Obama and hate them some conservatives.
It strikes me now that Kiteley thinks the same way. I mean, here am I, an educated man running a site that frequently discourses on lit theory and pop culture and is peopled with regular commenters that include academics, rocket scientists, engineers, writers, lawyers, and any number of other professional types — and yet Kiteley is “alarmed” that some readers, simply by virtue of their right wingedness, would be so riled up by a political cartoon that they’d hop in their pickups and head out to do them some lynchin’!
Not only is this bespeak a blinkered elitism and a cartoonish view of half his countrymen (some of whom I’m sure remain closeted in academia), but it also misunderstands audience, tone, and intent. Coming from a dude running a writing program, that’s a problem. At least, it would be were I doing the staffing.
some of the engineers
That reminds me of when Anil Dash came and commented here. Who knew that that was the poor bastard’s real name?
Exceptions: William Hayt and Gerold Neudeck, to name a couple. Oh, also Dominick Andrisani. Most emphatically NOT dickheads. Dave Meyer, too. Oh, and John Pearce. Antti Koivo, on the other hand, is dickhead enough that I was forced out of my major department to take digital controls from aforementioned Prof. Andrisani.
Frankly I find it galling that Mr Kiteley would write and ask me to alter my personal history. If he didn’t want to “associate” with me, he shouldn’t have emailed. Because before then, I wasn’t “associating” with him, nor was he tied in any way to my site. He appeared in a list of writers I’d studied under. An historical and autobiographical fact, and no more.
Dude, take him up on his “request”. He’ll refund his portion of your tuition, and everyone’s all set…..
“Kiteley is “alarmed” that some readers, simply by virtue of their right wingedness, would be so riled up by a political cartoon that they’d hop in their pickups and head out to do them some lynchin’!”
But Jeff, there aren’t many regulars here who are Democrats.
1. The way you structure your info makes it appear that Kitely was your mentor. If his political leaning is the other way doesn’t it make sense to allow himself to dissociate with you. He has, but you’ve been overly rude doing it.
2. There are alot torches and pitchforks roaming this site. Just like we saw on the liberal blogs in the Bush years. A true victory would be to start a conversation that didn’t end in polarizing people and forcing their views further out on the right and left. Perpetuating that type of situation creates the exact problem we are in…people and politicians that disagree with the policy in question, but allow it to pass because of the pressure of our two party system. This blog is fuel for that fire.
[…] disgust. Goldstein received an email from an old creative writing professor recently saying that he was disturbed by Goldstein’s writings and wanted Goldstein to remove his name from his “about page.” When Goldstein called […]
How have I “structured” anything to make Kiteley “appear” my “mentor”? By putting him third in the list of four fiction writers who taught in the program while I was there? I studied under all four of those writers. None of them is given “mentor” status. And my politics have nothing whatever to do with what fiction writer happened to be teaching a course that I was assigned.
You don’t know the first thing about this site, evidently. For years, I did everything I could to “start a conversation” on any number of topics, from having left wing guest posters to offering to debate issues ranging from academic feminism to racial studies to postmodernism with anyone interested.
It used to be those debates happened. Until one side learned that ignoring such invitations and then demonizing opponent was a better use of their time.
Were you to check the archives of this site (for instance, look through “intentionalism” or “identity politics” under greatest hits on the left side board), you likely wouldn’t be so quick to pass a judgment that doesn’t hold up to any kind of intellectual scrutiny. You’ll also see that some of my most infamous encounters have been with those on the right, be it over defining “racism,” or Miers, or Schiavo, or Kid Rock, etc.
Presuming of course that any of what you said is serious.
Perhaps he didn’t want to be associated with a failure of a journalist who pushes sensationalist Conservative garbage on a sadly eager-to-consume and easily led right wing? I probably wouldn’t either. You seem to have a grave and sad misunderstanding of a great many things. I can’t go out and try to spread the word about the existence of unicorns or my theory that the government is secretly running a clinic in the New Mexico desert designed to give government agents super powers and then act like a persecuted child when people tell me that my ideas are stupid. Your speech may be free, but you’re also going to get called on sensationalist tripe like ““Obama threatens to appoint anti-job growth activist Craig Becker to National Labor Relations Board”.” Good on the professor. Shame on you for crying like an entitled baby. Who’d have thought that we’d live in a day and age where intellectual lightweights can claim persecution for people rightfully shunning lies and misleading garbage intended to feed a ravenously paranoid right wing? Good grief.
the little president man is all kinds of anti-job growth… jeez… how many drilling projects has the little shit canceled already? A kajillion? And that’s just that. How many people will be out of work cause the little shit nationalized student loans? How many people will be out of work cause the little shit is burning up capital like it was crack?
It goes on and on.
He really sucks, our little president man.
Calling him “anti job growth” because he canceled programs is the worst sort of misleading and sensationalist crap. You guys will find any reason to complain. Your comment doesn’t do a very good job of concealing your massive ignorance on the subject.
I guess it might be a wild thing around here to ask but why should the opinion of the professor cause such a ruckus?
Who wants to be a journalist?
Who invited you?
Such as? Do you read this site? Or are you just approximating, because I’m supposedly “conservative,” and conservatives, being opposite you, are therefore wrong. QED.?
You could, sure. But I have no idea how that translates to what goes on here. I would say there’s quite a bit a difference between arguing for the existence of unicorns and offering a critique on the linguistic assumptions that generate various epistemological stances. Not that I’d expect you to understand those, mind you. Just saying.
See the quotes? That was the headline from the source I linked.
Yes! Good on him! Somebody said something he didn’t agree with, and that shall not stand! Of course, offering intellectual correctives or engaging in debate is too time consuming. So let’s just call for a shunning, instead. Leaves time to catch the newest Norwegian short film collection at the Aztec.
The same kind of people, evidently, who think that shunning somehow proves that what was shunned is intellectually light weight.
Meaning, morons like you. And yes, good grief is right.
His opinion didn’t cause the ruckus. The presumptuousness of asking me to modify my personal history to appease his delicate sensibilities — followed by his suggestion about what needs to be removed from public discourse (itself coupled to the idea that the right wingers who read this site might go on a lynching rampage) — is what caused the ruckus. For reasons covered in the post proper.
I said at the outset it was an especially personal post. If you find that it doesn’t much speak to you, well, that’s why I warned you up front.
I guess it might be a wild thing around here to ask but why should the opinion of the professor cause such a ruckus?
I wouldn’t say wild. Since the original post explained it in detail, and there have been well over 500 comments expanding on that, I would say that is a pretty fucking stupid question, but not really very wild.
After all this ire and responding, it still seems to come down a simple conclusion, IMO. He has an opinion which started out with a very polite note and request. You have yours. No one’s free speech has been injuried.
Maybe I’m old-fashioned about these things. You have a difference of opinion and you call it a day.
Reading can be for fun. In serious discussion it is fundamental. How one goes about reading and sussing out the meaning in the text written is a major part of what is discussed on this site.
It is always instructive how those wandering in from some port side link offer up themselves as perfectly illustrative of all the various fallacious theories on language and it’s workings. And for “volunteer” pay too. Bravo.
The post isn’t about free speech. It’s about intellectualism, the academy, and a writer who, in addition to pretending he’s interested in the pursuit of ideas wherever they may take you, is also charged with choosing who gets to pursue a graduate degree in writing at that program.
We now know that at least half the population, should they reveal themselves to be conservative, likely wouldn’t qualify. Unless, that is, they promised to mouth leftist orthodoxy.
It’s about hypocrisy. And anti-intellectualism. And how they have both infected the academy.
What started out with a “very polite note and request” (hey, Jeff. Would you mind airbrushing your personal history? Your speech is alarming, inasmuch as the hicks that read you might use what you say as a proximate cause to shoot them a Negro, and I would prefer we just agreed that you never took classes with me) escalated when I asked Professor Kiteley to explain why he’d asked.
That’s when his biases and his cloistered view of the world (and who is worthy to speak while living in it) really hit me. It was only then I wrote the post.
You can pretend it is a tempest in a tea pot. Hell, you might even think so. And if so, that would tell me everything I’d ever need to know about your future intellectual pursuits. Me, I had other ideas.
You kind of just proved my point about being an intellectual lightweight by completely missing the point. In the end, you’re looking for a reason to feel persecuted. It helps you connect with your delusional audience much better when they don’t realize that it’s an act. At least, I hope it’s an act and that you’re not really this disconnected with reality and the implications and underpinnings of this event.
People that call themselves John Robertson have been shown to be more likely to bugger goats, be mental midgets, and to rant and rave with spittle-flecked fury while savaging strawpeople and caricatures.
Aw, truth hurts, huh? Pity.
Aw, truth hurts, huh? Pity
Shouldn’t you reveal a modicum of erudition before characterizing anyone else as a lightweight? You haven’t offered anything more insightful than the already mentally-deficient Amanda Marcotte might in the midst of a weekend meth binge. I’m only thinking of you and the good name John Robinson in suggesting this. Show your your work, otherwise we’ll be forced to assume you’re just a typical limp wristed progressive with a case of bulging cybermuscles.
I don’t think that truth means the same thing to him as it does to most people, Abe.
There was one?
Let’s get one thing straight: I look for reasons to ejaculate, not “feel persecuted.” I can’t speak for what gives you your kicks, but as to what gives me mine, you haven’t a clue.
Lot of words to say nothing there, John.
Truth be told, were we really to put our intellects into weight classes, yours would be holding my spit bucket and hoping one day to grow up into a man. That you haven’t yet figured that out is what has led you, in the course of your life, to I am certain many instances of humiliation — both public and private — with the result being that you now find yourself in the middle of the night on the blog of someone you don’t respect trying to win an argument you can’t even muster.
No wonder you’re bitter and so eager to lash out. I’d find it sad if I could convince myself to give a shit.
[…] […]
[…] Jeff Goldstein again: This will be an especially personal post, but as it brings into sharp relief many of the ideas I’ve spent years writing about here, I figured it’s worth sharing. […]
Lame move by professor. If I teach a conservative student, I just want her to be a better thinker and writer at the end of the experience. If he was angry about the cartoon, he should have just said that– no point in pretending you didn’t study with him.
As for him being the singular objective correlative known as “academy”– that’s the kind of totalizing gesture that helps keep folks from making much headway on these issues. Note I said “helps.”
Well, maybe that was a bit of rhetorical flourish. Let’s just say he represents the ascendant trending.
[…] one that discusses how his former creative writing instructor requested to have his own name removed from Jeff’s biographical […]
One might call it “anticipatory PC” — the idea we must self-censor for fear of “offending” some tender-souled “other”– pushed to the point that we have no chance to speak any hard truth because someone, somewhere, might be upset by our view of the truth. [Isn’t that what started the whole Danish cartoons brouhaha? Some editor was convinced his people were “self-censoring” and wanted to push them beyond their self-imposed boundaries (and surprise!!! the “boundaries” were actually not quite as self-imposed as they all thought … sort of like “the dog thinks it runs free until it reaches the end of the tether”.)]
Vald Tepes had an interesting item he titled “Pointing out hate speech is now hate speech, while hate speech itself, is not.”
http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=21128
His article was in regard to YouTube videos about Islam, but I think it’s still the same Big Idea: There are people out there who think free speech is just wonderful –until you say something that Really Offends Their Sensibilities. At that point they believe they have an ABSOLUTE right to demand that you STFU. They hold out their belief as “A Self-Evident Truth Which Any Reasonable Person Would Acknowledge” — and yet somehow they can’t stand any debate about, or criticism of, their tender little Truth; they can’t even acknowledge that another point of view might be possible.
Islam and The Left. Willing to go the limit to be sure you don’t offend them in any way. The next step (coming soon): willing to go the limit to be sure you don’t HAVE A CHANCE to offend them in any way.
Thanks for the interesting and informative post. I enjoyed reading it and look forward to more in the future.
[…] conservatives and classical liberals — particularly those open about their beliefs — need not bother to apply, especially if the department doing the hiring already has a token Republican willing to send, say, […]
[…] Somebody email this off to Professor Brian Kiteley. So he can haughtily distance himself from civil rights activists, consumer advocates, and small […]
[…] Someone please email this to Brian Kiteley. […]
I didn’t see Darleen’s cartoon as raping but rather as a plain good sexing up which to me was a hilarious and happy projection of our president and made me like him more. It made me think that Darleen is
hang on
sorry. laughing fit. really fun at parties. Here, responding in kind
hang on
sorry again. to an earlier similar thing about Bush, I see is accompany this post. Likewise with the GDB poster, tit tat rubber glue bounce stick, Alynski, Alinsky whatsisname. They are very funny and both do what was already done in reverse and circulated as if nothing at all was out of line. If you are offended, the cartoon answer, of course, is to make a cartoon about that. It would be trickier though; satirizing the Right wing cartoonist that satirizing the Left wing satirization of the Right wing.
” John Robertson says March 31, 2010 at 12:15 am
You kind of just proved my point about being an intellectual lightweight by completely missing the point. In the end, you’re looking for a reason to feel persecuted. It helps you connect with your delusional audience much better when they don’t realize that it’s an act. At least, I hope it’s an act and that you’re not really this disconnected with reality and the implications and underpinnings of this event.”
It’s alright dude. I can tell that you are full of shit and really angry that you failed to impress or intimidate, even if you can’t admit that to yourself yet.
THAT was a taunt. Did you blow it off? Of course you did. Why? Because it is empty!
Taunts need to follow convincing arguments or criticisms or… they are just taunts. “Just taunts” is usually what happens when you don’t have anything better to bring, you want to disengage without feeling like you blew it, or you want to enrage the other party to see if they fall for it.
It’s a pretty weak tactic.
You have to show people that you are smart and informed before they start to care if you think they are smart. I don’t care if Bill Mahr thinks I’m smart because Bill Mahr claimed to be libertarian while describing the need for a nationalized single payer healthcare. He did not recognize the philosophical contradiction. He thought that libertarian meant “hedonist and hipster pot smoker who tries to say outrageous stuff for a living”. Even if you can’t wow them with your brain power, you can still try to show your opponent why they are wrong in specific terms. It is possible that if they made a mistake and it can be demonstrated they will revise their opinion.
A cheesy mind reading hot tub psychology act is no valid substitute for a real substantive discussion. It’s just a taunt. By themselves taunts don’t even metaphorically break the skin in an argument.
I just responded to a two year old post. Luckily I whipped it’s ass. And in my defense it is 5 AM and I have not had my breakfast yet. Also I am a member of the silly asshole minority class so I am permitted an occasional pants shitting.
Also it only took me two minutes to realize the degree to which I had demonstrated my asshole status.