Archive for March, 2003

Crow

Monday, March 31st, 2003

Josh Marshall (who is dealing with his post-dissertation downtime better than I, apparently) responds to Andrew Sullivan. He concludes with this:


Among old lefties, there always used to be this line that you couldn’t say socialism or communism had failed because it had never really been tried. I told a friend a few days ago, that for better or worse, after this is done, we’re not going to be able to say the same thing about neo-conservatism. This is their show. If it all pans out great, they’ll really be able to crow. If it doesn’t, there will be nowhere to run.

It would seem to me that there’s a fair amount of backpedalling in the current administration as it is: the entire economic team’s been canned and replaced, Perle “resigned,” and now Rumsfeld seems to be mystified that the press has finally started, you know, asking questions. And doing some reporting. And writing pieces that clearly lay out what’s at stake here and who’s to blame.

And just yesterday, the Times and the Post were full of stories about rifts becoming public between Rumsfeld and the Pentagon and the Republican Party and the administration (I can’t find any of them now). Perhaps there will be another round of resignations before too long.

In the meantime, when this is all over, we’ll occupy the two countries on either side of Iran.

It’s The Motion Of The Ocean

Thursday, March 27th, 2003

I snicker every time I hear the phrase “the NPR endowment.”

Apology

Thursday, March 27th, 2003

When I first began teaching here, I was told by a number of people “You’re a student first, and a teacher second. Don’t let your teaching interfere with your own work.” In some ways, this is good advice for the graduate student teacher. But I never bought it.

My students, I always reasoned, were paying for my expertise. They had the right to expect the best instruction I could give them, and I have an ethical obligation–because there are classrooms full of them depending upon me–to put their needs before my own. My own work, I reasoned, would have to be placed second. To do anything other than this would risk engaging in a kind of theft.

Until this semester, this is the way I’ve gone about the business of teaching. I stay up late prepping for my classes. I read and re-read their assignments so I can speak authoritatively about the texts. I work hard to come up with innovative and insightful ways to impart to them the knowledge they need to do well in their academic lives. And believe me, no teacher worth his salt wants a student to do poorly on an essay, if only because bad and even average essays take a long time to grade and comment on, while good essays take no time at all. I comment voluminously on their writing assignments, and I explain to them that it does them no good for me simply to write “Good. B+” on their work and not give them any sense of why they earned the grade they did or what they might do better in the future. I work hard to make myself available to them whenever they need me. They can email me. They can call me at home. I tell them, time and time again, that I will meet with them whenever they need me. I’ve met students on Saturdays off-campus. I’ve met students at0 pm

Shame

Sunday, March 23rd, 2003

I saw this story on google news about Michael Moore’s tirade at the Oscars. “Tirade.” Not “tyrant.” And that’s just the headline. [edit: they’ve apparently noticed the vocabulary error and have made the change]

At any rate, it wasn’t really a tirade. Those are supposed to be long.

Nonetheless, I’m sick to death of hearing about it, and this particular piece is typical. Here’s the first salient bit:

First, we defend Moore’s right to his opinion. That is, after all, what American soldiers have fought and died for the past 227 years. Moore may not appreciate that fact, but his freedom of speech so shrilly exhibited Sunday night came at a cost in lives and sacrifice by his fellow Americans.

Notice that it’s not his right to freedom of speech. It’s his right to have an opinion. There is, we should remind this editorial board, a significant difference between the two. One does no one but the individual any good. The other brings down tyrants. At any rate, that’s really not what “American soldiers have fought and died for the last 227 years” (ugh…this sentence actually needs to say “fought and died for for” in order to make any grammatical sense). They fought for his freedom to express his opinion without fear of retribution or silencing by the dominant political body.

Note the implication that Moore’s expression of dissent (the core American value–if we are supposed to be about anything, it is that we recognize the value of dissent), marks him as an unpatriotic ass who fails to “appreciate” the deaths of all those soldiers. And thus not only is he an unpatriotic ass, he is an unfeeling one, as well.

And then, wait for it, that brand new code word to describe dissent from the left: Moore was “shrill.” It’s a brilliant strategy. Any time a leftie goes on the offensive, he/she gets labeled as shrill (with all its connotations of mindless, high-pitched and terrified screaming), and any response afterwards is treated similarly.

For some reason, though, someone on the editorial board of this “newspaper” failed to note that the turn in the logic of this little quote suggests that Moore’s freedom of speech came at so high a price–227 years of American soldiers’ deaths–that it is simply too precious to use.

Then we get this bit, which is the second part of seemingly every attack on Moore:

What was tasteless about his comments is the timing. They came just hours after the shocking video was released on Iraqi TV of American POWs who appeared to have been beaten and some even executed by their Iraqi captors. Millions of Americans on Sunday afternoon had either seen the shocking footage or heard about it. By Sunday night, the last thing Americans needed to hear was a cry-baby tirade by some self-appointed “Blue-collar Everyman” who can’t seem to get over the 2000 presidential election. Shame on President Bush? Shame on you, Mr. Moore, shame on you.

Yes, Michael Moore, the editorialist tells us, your freedom of speech is the most precious thing about being an American. But we’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t use it just now. Maybe if you could wait until the crisis is over to say something. Or maybe if you could wait until you don’t have an immense pulpit from which to have your message heard. Or maybe if you could exercise your freedom of speech over there. It’s inconvenient, you see.

***

And while I’m at it, shame on you Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, for apologizing. How dare you allow yourself to be cowed into apologizing for what you think.

***

Sorry for the silence. I have students who need me right now, and I’m feeling guilty about having neglected them somewhat this semester so I could focus on finishing the dissertation.

I’ll tell you all about it in a couple of days.

For What It’s Worth

Wednesday, March 19th, 2003

There’s something happening here

What it is ain’t exactly clear

There’s a man with a gun over there

Telling me I got to beware

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound

Everybody look what’s going down

There’s battle lines being drawn

Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong

Young people speaking their minds

Getting so much resistance from behind

I think it’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound

Everybody look what’s going down

What a field-day for the heat

A thousand people in the street

Singing songs and carrying signs

Mostly say, hooray for our side

It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound

Everybody look what’s going down

Paranoia strikes deep

Into your life it will creep

It starts when you’re always afraid

You step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop, hey, what’s that sound

Everybody look what’s going down

Stop, hey, what’s that sound

Everybody look what’s going down

Stop, now, what’s that sound

Everybody look what’s going down

Stop, children, what’s that sound

Everybody look what’s going down