The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

#Metaphor: Academics Sign Their Own Death Warrants by Defending Loomis

Posted on | December 19, 2012 | 11 Comments

Professor Erik “Head on a Stick” Loomis has established a new precedent in Online Civil Discourse: Any epithet-strewn obscene rant full of violent language against political opponents is acceptable, as long as you explain that it is a Metaphor Right-Wing Morons Can’t Understand.

We thank our enlightened progressive overlords for this blessing.

It has furthermore been established that if you are engaged in metaphor, and sympathizers of your political opponent quote you in such a way as to suggest that your sentiments are deranged, menacing and offensive, this is a “witch hunt,” and anyone who calls attention to this is “orchestrating a campaign” against the user of metaphor.

Such is the essential syllogism of “Statement on Erik Loomis“:

[W]e must stand by Loomis’s side and speak up and out on his behalf, for he has become the target of a witch hunt, and as an untenured professor at the University of Rhode Island, he is vulnerable. Loomis needs our solidarity and support, and we must give it to him. . . .
Glenn Reynolds is now accusing Loomis of using “eliminationist rhetoric.”
Other conservative voices have joined in. The Daily Caller says Loomis “unleashed a flurry of profanity-ridden tweets demanding death for National Rifle Association executive Wayne LaPierre.” Townhall put Loomis’s tweets in the context of NRA members and leaders getting death threats. And just this morning, Michelle Malkin wrote at National Review Online [a column critical of Loomis] . . .
We do not expect any better of the orchestrators of this campaign—this is what they have done for many years, and doubtless will be doing for years to come. We do expect better of university administrators. Rather than standing behind a member of their faculty, the administration has sought to distance the university from Loomis. . . .

In other words, if Professor Wobbly-Gay-Lumberjack Dissertation fails to gain tenure at the University of Rhode Island, the haters win, and the academic right to use fucking bloody hate speech metaphor in Online Civil Discourse will be destroyed.

(Damn it, why did Ace of Spades have to take a vacation this week? How can this douchebag not receive the full-on AOSHQ treatment?)

Nevertheless, in order to show “our solidarity and support” for the unalienable right to employ violent obscene rants metaphor in Online Civil Discourse (and still get tenure at the University of Rhode Island), I will list the signatories to the “Statement on Erik Loomis“:

  1. Chris Bertram, University of Bristol
  2. Michael Bérubé, The Pennsylvania State University
  3. Henry Farrell, George Washington University
  4. Kieran Healy, Duke University
  5. Jon Mandle, SUNY Albany
  6. John Quiggin, University of Queensland
  7. Corey Robin, Brooklyn College
  8. Brian Weatherson, University of Michigan

Perhaps readers can offer appropriate suggestions for what should be done to these subversive Bolshevik intestinal parasites metaphors!

UPDATE: I’ll have to provide the dog-whistle translation for Professor William Jacobson’s eliminationist rhetoric here:

I don’t think Loomis should be fired

Instead, he should be castrated with pruning shears

but that doesn’t mean he should be free from criticism.

And by “criticism,” I mean “Birther lynch mob rage”

And he certainly is not a hero of anything.

Except to the Marxist traitors who voted for the Kenyan usurper!

He’s just a guy who

should have his eyes gouged out with rusty nails because he

wanted to deprive others of the rights he claims for himself.

Right-wing morons don’t understand metaphor, but our ears perk up quick when we hear that secret lynch-mob dog-whistle.





 

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Category: Education, Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, Rhode Island

Comments

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    This is douchefreude at its finest. Why? Because douchefreude is best served with a heapin’ helpin’ of good, old-fashioned irony.

    Well, I found your irony, mister, it was over at Doug Ross’ site. See, Doug read an article at The American Interest (so we wouldn’t have to), and pulled out some very delicious facts with which to hammer these cretinous, caviling, coercion-mongers.

    As the jobs grow more scarce, let it be known far and wide which of them has been sending threats toward their fellow law-abiding citizens. Stacy’s list here is but a small sample, I’m sure.

  • http://www.twitter.com/thebadger14 Badger Pundit

    I’ve issued a couple of responses to these 8 professors.

    One was a tweet I sent them (at @crookedtimber) and a bunch of others (mostly liberals) pointing out that Glenn Reynolds, the supposed leader of this “witch hunt,” has suggested that people ought to calm down about Loomis, and including a couple of links in support of that view. Tweet here: https://twitter.com/thebadger14/status/281564729758060544.

    Another was a tweet I sent them and a bunch of others pointing to their failure to explain what “academic freedom” interest they’re defending, given that Loomis sent the tweets as part of his private life and they’re not related to his academic field — and pointing out that they deleted the comment to this effect I tried to leave on their blog, because they apparently don’t want to answer questions from critics. Tweet here: https://twitter.com/thebadger14/status/281565049896714240.

    I ended up having to leave that comment on this blog, on an earlier post, which you can read here: http://theothermccain.com/2012/12/19/university-president-repudiates-professors-violent-anti-nra-messages/#comment-743153343.

    I’d appreciate if one or more of the professors would be kind enough to answer the question I set forth in my comment, and I’ll tweet them a link to this comment to let them know that I, and perhaps others, will be waiting for an answer.

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    Mmmm. I read Glenn Reynolds’ post. So I guess we technically can’t call them “threats,” exactly. More like “incitements that some unknown follower ought to carry out, with zero concern for the law.” (I mention the law since the health and safety of the target of these violent musings is clearly not an issue to the authors.)

    Gosh, that makes it all seem so much more above-board and acceptable for human discourse, doesn’t it?

    #PublishTheirNames

  • scarymatt

    “Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true!”

    Get with the narrative already.

  • Gunga

    I for one encourage Professor Loomis to continue to express his most closely held political beliefs on Twitter. The self-identification of people who can’t be trusted with sharp implements, let alone the minds of impressionable young people, is essential to effective transformation of our education system. It also makes it easier for us tranquilize, tag and study them in their natural habitat.

  • http://opinion.ak4mc.us/ McGehee

    I’m amazed someone hasn’t pulled the plug on Crooked Timber. #metaphor

  • scarymatt

    But surely a non-metaphorical pulling of the power plug for the Crooked Timber server would work better.

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