Every time I think I have problems...I can just read how people are allowed to have opinions on college campuses. If you approach things from the far right (or far left), then any teaching from the other side is perhaps the key threat to everything that makes America so awesome.
A colleague of mine from Weslaco compared the Tea Party to Nazis. He is apparently liberal, and that is unacceptable to conservative bloggers. Eventually, enough of these blogs picked up the YouTube video a student made of the lecture (which doesn't come up in a typical search on the site). Even from the video, I can see how things were taken out of context by these "journalists." Then, actual press corps members got involved by reporting on what the blogs were saying. This is how non-stories become part of the news culture. [Props to the Beaumont Enterprise for reposting the story--along with this story about a Middle Eastern "honor killing." Ummm, stay classy, Beaumont.]
The student, a future "anonymous" leader of the faceless masses, decided to record the class period because "it's wrong for him [instructor] to use his position as a soap box for his beliefs, especially with young, impressionable students." How refreshing that a community college student deeply understands that the idiots in this class are too stupid to realize how insightful I am.
Meanwhile, other professors--at, say, "different" types of institutions, operate from a stronger sense of entitlement. Consider a Harvard professor who has some anger issues. Other institutions are dealing with situations like professors "having sex with the grandkids" or citing a cat instead of a graduate student in published research and then claiming espionage. My fear? A professor gets disciplined or terminated for speaking his mind--i.e., professing. Blogs like this only work to make things uncomfortable until they get THEIR way from a place they've never been. Demand action. Walk away. Avoid responsibility. Gripe about anything else to cover a lack of substance or your own flat-out evil.
So--while I read "The Blaze" griping about a community college professor on a campus they can't find on a map--I listen to discussions about American torture. The Blaze has decided to ask the author of "Black Hawk Down" about "coercive methods" and dig for things in paragraph 17 of the New York Times story. Also on this future-Pulitzer-Prize-winning site (text size kept):
Mysterious Death of College Gymnast Found in Dumbwaiter Finally Explained
(FINALLY!)
and
(Hint: The Blaze is run by a very lonely man that has issues with women.)
I read quotes from "Red State," which should be a scary name to any of my readers. What, you ask, would the next Walter Cronkite have to say about this lecture?
"Clearly, this professor knows more about talking points than he does either the tea party or the Nazis."
Clearly.
Really? How does a community college professor from an outer campus of a community college have such a strong knowledge of "talking points?" Did he leave his job as Barney Frank's Chief of Staff to take this job? Just grab words and phrases like "liberal media" and "talking points." No reason to do anything other than slam the other side. This issue isn't even a debate--the other side flat-out does not care.
Fortunately for "anonymous boy," sites like The Blaze and Red China State will diligently work toward the end that "young, impressionable students" will NEVER hear from the left. Eventually, these young, impressionable minds will happen upon the "Fair and Balanced" approach of Fox News. The pipeline will be secured. After all, only one side has any value, whatsoever.
Any self-respecting Nazi knows that.
