Academic

Amusing Comments to Blog Entries

By propertyprof

In keeping with my theme of stupid things that bloggers do to mess up our careers (with apologies to Dr. Laura Schlesinger--haven't heard her in years, but what entertainment I'm missing) I thought that I'd post a couple of links to comments that I've found amusing.  Actually, I like these comments, but this is part of my theme that people are likely to read what you write on a blog--and remember it, for good or bad, long after you've forgotten about it.  (Just like students who come up to me and recite a conversation I had with them in class a dozen years ago.  Sometimes I can't even remember them, let alone the conversation.)  And here are a couple that I've enjoyed.  I'm most interested in hearing ones you've liked....

We've worked most of the "x is like Hilter" stuff out of our national character (more or less).  But the Hitler analogy keeps cropping up every now and then--and the Stalin analogy as well.  So here's to you Mr. Diablo, whoever you are, for calling out the commentators to one of Orin Kerr's posts a couple years back on whether academics have a politically based grading system:

If liberal professors are so bad and so biased and so detrimental to education, then don't go to those schools. The reality is people don't actually believe this crap, they just want to use it as yet another GOP red herring -- this time to try to pass bills as reckless as that of the Arizona legislature. It's another card in the "every environment must have two giant yelling heads who disagree" school of thought. It's so anti-academic freedom it's absurd.

And while I feel bad for whoever got a C on here, the anecdote proves nothing. And time and time again these silly arguments about the bias in universities are nothing more than that: Anecdotes that are less than completely unverifiable.

...

Are we really using the word 'Leninist' and expecting to be taken seriously? That too easily bandied word should be thrown into the 'Nazi' pile.

And now for a comment that made me smile for a day.  Over at Althouse's shop, she likened an Obama video to an episode of the Twilight Zone.  I can't figure it out, either--you need to read the post for yourself.  However, George in comments thought Obama was not trying to evoke the early 1960s, but the early 1970s:

He's pushing that "I'd Like To Teach the World to Sing" '71 Real Thing goodness vibe...

Post '68 assassinations and Altamont, but before the '73 recession, Watergate, and the choppers on the roof?Everyone was tired of the War. Tired, tired, tired, and Coke hit a grand slam with an ad promising universal peace and harmony. Made Lennon like a fascist.

Love it: "Made Lennon look like a fascist."  I was smiling about that for a day.

By the way, I remember hearing that song when it aired back in the early 1970s, though for some reason that's not quite the video that I remember.  Reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend back on the 30th anniversary of the moon landing when I said that was my first memory of childhood.  "You saw the moonlanding!" was the immediate response.  Yup, the years are passing....

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on March 12, 2008 (boomark / email).