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By Grabar’s Hammer, By the Sons of Worvan, You Will Be Avenged!
By Jeff Fecke | June 10, 2008
You know, old wingnut memes never die. They just get recycled in ever-more-vitriolic terms.
Today’s iteration is from Townhall’s Mary Grabar, who discloses that Barack Obama is…wait for it…out to destroy our American way of life, just like all the other liberals before him!
An Obama presidency would signal the final salvo by the Left in the culture wars. Obama’s advance troops have already taken over our college campuses, have bound and gagged our conservative professors, have ravished our virgins, have pillaged our stores of wisdom, and have ensconced themselves in the thrones of power in deans’, presidents’ and department heads’ offices.
Wait — “our” virgins? “Our” virgins?!? I didn’t know I was in possession of anyone’s virginity. Indeed, the last time I could say I had ownership of virginity was my own, and that’s been gone quite some time now.
Grabar is, of course, warning us that yet again, the godless commie gay abortionist college professors are taking over our college campuses, destroying their ability to turn out a new generation of men in gray flannel suits. And to be fair, Grabar is not insane; the nefarious PZ Myers’ reign of terror in Morris, Minnesota continues unabated. Nevertheless, I think she may be a wee bit over the top here, even by the standards of the genre:
Even for the well-being of the business world we need to refocus on the humanities. As [Claes] Ryn points out, the “honesty, good manners, and social responsibility” of Western businessmen is formed by “an ancient civilization.” But the increasingly popular business school major offers little in terms of appreciation for the hallmarks of our Western civilization.
For decades, teachers have been inculcating an alternative tradition and belief system. The beliefs may be based on such amorphous and sophistical ideas as “social justice,” “tolerance,” and “multiculturalism,” the traditions may lead back to the communist ideology of the nineteenth century and then through the heyday of radicalism in the sixties, but the means for inculcation are entrenched.
The conservative traditions and beliefs, in contrast, are rarely to be found in college syllabi and high school textbooks.
So for those of you keeping score, businessmen in the west are totally benevolent, incredibly honest, and well aware that they owe something to the broader society — but this wonderful group of supermen are threatened by people who would suggest that they (gasp!) actually be benevolent, actually be honest, recognize that people come in more than one color, gender, or sexual orientation, and ask that they invest in the broader society. Madness, I say, madness!
The argument that conservatives don’t show up in Poli Sci classes is, of course, news to anyone who ever took a Poli Sci class. But frankly, it’s just the sort of fact-free assertion that conservatives make. Don’t get hung up on it.
Get hung up on this, instead:
Obama connects with audiences because they have been primed for him and his message. Obama, with his scantly resume, is an affirmative action candidate. But his record as a “community organizer” places him at an advantage with those who believe in “social activism” in the classroom.
Let me summarize: Barack Obama is an unqualified black man stealing the jobs of his white male superiors.
Superiors like John McCain:
So when a war hero enters, most college students great him with a collective shrug. John McCain on June 3 suggested that he shared certain similarities with Barry Goldwater, but there was no resounding invocation of heroes the way Obama does with Kennedy and King.
Imagine that! McCain compared himself to a candidate who lost the ’64 election by a landslide, and that isn’t considered nearly as impressive as comparisons to the most important American civil rights leader of the twentieth century, or a president of great rhetorical gifts who was cut down in his prime?
I suppose McCain could have compared himself to Ronald Reagan, but he would have been laughed out of the building; Reagan was the Great Communicator, after all, a title which McCain is in no jeopardy of winning. Now, McCain could have compared himself to George W. Bush, a ham-fisted, tongue-tied example of the Peter Principle at work, but something tells me McCain doesn’t want to go there.
In 1957, with the threat of communism looming, conservatives had passion. But recently I had some college sophomores ask me during class discussion what communism is.
Well, big frackin’ shock. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. College freshmen weren’t born at the time. I know, anti-communism defines absolutely everything for people of a certain age, but there are adults now who have no concept of the Cold War. To them, the commies are as remote as the Nazis — evil, sure, but frankly history.
We had 9/11, but already in the days following you could see how the left brainwashes the inmates of the educational system. Students who should have been inspired to passionately defend their country and culture instead were given lectures in English classes on the historical reasons for the attacks (the Crusades, as my colleague at the University of Georgia presented it to his freshman composition classes). Or they were treated to “workshops” on the “peaceful” traits of Islam (presented in contrast to the rapacious imperialism of Christianity). Today, the fountainhead of anti-Semitism and anti-Christianity is on the college campus.
Actually, after 9/11 there were a lot of normally sensible people, including yours truly, who wanted to go out and exact a pound of flesh from someone — anyone. And Dear Leader delivered, invading Iraq. And far too late, we realized that just going out and killing us some Muslims wasn’t going to make things better — it was going to make things worse. Worse for them, worse for us, worse because the distinction between “us” and “them” is a lot easier to make when one ignores our common humanity, and a lot harder to make when one realizes that in trying to get our pound of flesh, we instead bought ourselves many tons more than the 9/11 hijackers could have dreamed of.
Maybe if all of us had listened to the dirty fucking hippie professors, we would have considered that. I sure as hell wish I had, and I regret every day that I let my worse angels lead me in the run-up to the Iraq war. Funny, but it’s people like me and Grabar who’ve done more damage to American standing in the world than anyone. At least I’m honest enough to be ashamed.
Now, so far, Grabar has pinned our nation’s ultimate dissolution on African Americans and people with foreign policy views to the left of Joe Lieberman. But don’t feel left out, feminists — you’re doing your part to bring down our nation from the inside:
An insidious, concerted attack on logic itself has been conducted by the radicals and feminists. Consider how, for example, University of Georgia’s Director of the Wilson Center for Humanities and Arts, and Professor of Comparative Literature, Betty Jean Craige, describes her scholarship on the university’s website: “I am interested in the shift in Western mentality from a dualist, hierarchical conceptual and social model of reality to a more holistic model, such as that expressed in ecosystem ecology.”
What a crazy woman, thinking that every question doesn’t have a simple right-or-wrong answer, with the right answer always being “America! Woooo!”, “Business! Wooooo!”, or “No, you can’t have the pill! Woooo!” What silly, emotional, unable-to-do-math kind of person would imagine that we’re all interconnected, that influence can flow from the bottom up and from side to side, not just from the top down? You listen to what your social betters tell you and you do it!
As the mush-brained feminists and wild-eyed radicals have taken over English departments and comparative literature departments, they have eliminated or demolished the great works that promoted our values and inspired the passion necessary to propel a movement. The great works of literature that could inspire passion for the love of God, love of a spouse, and loyalty to one’s country, and foster the appreciation for the comedy and tragedy of human life, have been excised from the curriculum. In their place are ideological tracts, video games, television dramas, celebrities, and pornographic performance art. The love of God and a spouse that John Donne could evoke is now replaced by such things as an analysis of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s sex life.
Not for nothing, but quite frankly, an analysis of Buffy Summers’ sex life is probably as relevant to the world today as a sixteenth century poet whose work was published posthumously. I know that it may stun people, but there are great writers and artists living today — some greater than those who are long-dead. I’m not saying it’s ridiculous to study Donne too — but I do think that if you can memorize the line, “No man is an island,” you probably know more about John Donne than 95% of Americans do.
Of course, Grabar goes on to complain further about people daring to study writers who don’t have penises, or writers whose skin tone is darker than mine. She also reproduces an email she received from a colleague, Prof. Randy Malamud. (“You can learn more about Professor Malamud who rejects the traditional Western garb of an English professor, the tweed jacket and now customary jeans, for the flowing robe and bare feet, here on his web page[,]” sniffs Grabar. The horror — he doesn’t wear tweed jackets? To the gallows!) Malamud wrote his email after a Grabar op-ed supporting David Horowitz’s “academic” “freedom” bill, but it’s closing lines echo here:
“I found it self-righteous (without any foundation, as far as I can tell, in any record of scholarly accomplishment on your part, which accentuates a resonance of ‘sour grapes’) gratuitous, and, as a salvo in the culture wars, um, about ten years out of date . . . . [ellipses retained] Your writing is formulaic, utterly predictable, uninspired. As a member of the profession, I found it embarrassing. You will probably ‘interpret’ my response as a self-defensive riposte from a tenured radical, but it’s really not—if I thought your ‘point’ was important enough to attack, I would have done so publicly. I really just found it trite and banal.”
Indeed, that sums up Mary Grabar’s work. It isn’t original; just the same old song with a slightly different chorus. I wonder if somewhere, Grabar has an identical column written about Hillary Clinton, and how her candidacy is going to be the final salvo in the left’s culture war. Actually, I don’t wonder; I’m sure it exists, as sure as I am that Mary Grabar is an obnoxious bore.
(Via John Cole)
Topics: Barack Obama, General Wingnuttery | 3 Comments »
June 10th, 2008 at 7:00 am
One reason why I have absolutely no patience for the right, and why I cannot even bring myself to sit at the discussion table with them, is that they approach discussions with the pre-conceived notion that they have a natural RIGHT to own and control MY virginity and future sexuality. There simply isn’t any way to talk to someone who, even if only mildly or ignorantly, believes that his/her privilege ought to extend over MY body. How can we even begin to discuss matters as equals when this is what we are starting with?
“…teachers have been inculcating an alternative tradition and belief system. The beliefs may be based on such amorphous and sophistical ideas as “social justice,” “tolerance,” and “multiculturalism,”…”
I can’t believe he actually said that. Living in Canada now, it can be difficult for me to grasp that there are people in the world who believe that teachers should actually teach “social injustice,” “intolerance,” and “uniculturalism.” Not only that, but that they could actually get up and SAY SO without any shame! How can you actually think of “social injustice” as a positive trait that we ought to pass on to our children? No, I understand that examples of social injustice may be seen as positive, that a family may feel that woman, for example, are the property of their husbands – but that’s not the same as intellectually admitting that it is social injustice and maintaining the belief that it is a good thing!
As for the whole Communism thing – I don’t get it. I married a Russian who grew up during the Cold War. Guess what? They are human, just like us. Get what else? Communism wasn’t that bad. As my husband says “there were a lot of negatives, but there were also a lot of positives. Now that I live in a free country, there are a lot of positives, but there are also a lot of negatives.”
Yes, he’s right that my generation just doesn’t care about the Cold War anymore. I was only eight when it all came down. But more than that, I’ve had the first-hand experience to see that Communists are no different from anyone else – a whole lot of corrupt who wish to control or own others and are just waiting for the opportunity of being placed in a position of power to do it. In fact, doesn’t that sound familiar? As a woman, I have the right, a bunch of white men oozing privilege, who are whining because they no longer get to own me – in the same way that the Red Russians whined in the late 80s and early 90s that they no longer got to own THEIR population either.
Yeah, I totally went there. I totally just compared Mary Grabar to the Communists. OOOOOH!
June 10th, 2008 at 7:04 am
Oops, default assumption that all crazy sexists are male creeping in. All those “he” pronouns when referring to the author of the article should be changed to “she.”
Nobody’s perfect ;)
June 11th, 2008 at 8:31 am
As someone who has dwelt among academics for the past several years, I always find this discussion of “conservative” vs. “liberal” professors strange. Politics just does not come up in many courses offered at universities. My adviser happens to be quite conservative. I figured that out over the years, but it was only very recently that we ever had anything close to a political discussion because our topics have nothing to do with politics.
But I recall fondly how on the first day of my undergraduate Genetics class at UW Madison the professor stood in front of the class and made damn sure we understood that if we hadn’t read the complete works of Marx, we’d better just march right on out of class because we had no business there until we understood that the worker had been alienated from the means of production. Then she dragged a virgin wearing a flower print dress up in front of class and mocked her for her values. “Don’t come back here until you’ve had kinky sex with a baboon” she said. “You’d better be wearing a lot less too. I want cleavage!”
And that’s how we dealt with conservatives in Madison.