>
> On Dec 5, 2009, at 1:08 PM, dredmond at efn.org wrote:
>
> On Sat, December 5, 2009 8:52 am, Eric Beck wrote:
>>
>> <http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2009/12/jane_hamsher_off_the_rez.html
>>> >
>>>
>>> "So far as students are subject to the kind of intellectual quackery
>>> peddled by LBO-Talk-types (who are typically are academics or aspiring
>>> ones), I think quite a lot of harm is done in preventing effective
>>> activism. I.e., lefties as well as dembots have their methods to help
>>> keep
>>> the ruling class ruling.
>>>
>>> Posted by Peter Ward | December 4, 2009 7:23 PM"
>>>
>>> What's funny about this is that most of the people you think are
>>> academics or aspiring ones are neither academics nor aspirants.
>>>
>>
>> And then there's the small fact that us academics on the list are horribly
>> exploited service-workers, not six-figure-income superstars with Ivy
>> tenure.
>>
>
> No matter, Dennis. Academics are bad people who don't put in an honest
> day's work - unlike, well, I don't know what. Lawyers? Bashing academics
> proves your bona fides as a man of the people (I can't recall seeing too
> many women do this, actually).
>
> Doug
>
> Its true, the 600 students I teach each year... well, I have to apologize
to them all the time, and the administrators of the places I work (if you
can call it that), cuz my family (totally unreasonably) insists I spend a
little time not grading papers or trying to stay current with my
profession... I keep telling them its a dog eat dog world out there and
they're just going to have to start fending for themselves until the day,
any day now, when Peter Ward organizes them and all our lives quickly become
much easier (and I keep on trying to train my body to sleep less than the
five and half hours I generally get but its fighting me AND insisting that I
eat and sometimes even be active on top of it all).
I should also say that the reason my students have so much trouble getting my message is because they, too, have the extraordinary depth of understanding - that I lack - that all that I have to teach them is hooey and that the primary purpose of my work is to distract them from what they'd much rather be doing, hanging our with Peter Ward and organizing to solve the world's problems... you see, they chastise me all the time for not emphasizing often enough the simplicity of the world and then assigning them difficult readings and other busy work that distracts them from the native commitments they've been raised with to transforming the world by means of glocal activism and synthetic social movements. I suck.
But at least I hate myself, resent all the work my mom did helping inner city poor folks gain the credentials to escape East Orange and surroundings, despise my dad for taking leaves from the AT&T Bell Labs to teach at Tuskeegee more than once, and all the disgusting academics who encouraged me to skip class in favor of anti-war, anti-nuclear, anti-South Africa, anti-Reagan, environmental, feminist and AIDS activism... and don't get me started on David Harvey or Angela Davis or Jim O'Connor or Donna Haraway or Adolph Reed or Barbara Rose Johnson or Mike Davis or Dianne Rocheleau or Bertell Ollman or... wankers. At least the folks at the Research I university where I used to work agreed with Peter and made sure I got little or no guidance or support - despite the number of grad students I took on and the qualities I developed in the one's they were training - I really looking forward to the place that's hired me at the lower salary and status of a temp since that time figures out the ways I'm incapacitating their naturally-political students and tosses me out (probably just as my librarian wife has the State Library closed on her - I mean, really, the only thing more dangerous than academics is books and records) so that our kids lives get worse and they can hire someone who doesn't teach students anything beyond the disciplinary mainstream. I think I'll go write bad things about myself on ratemyprefessors.com...