Thursday, April 22, 2010

IRT: Is Marxist the new "nihilist?"

In reply to: American Power: Long Beach City College Premier of Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, -- [UPDATE 4/29/10 - Apparently that post--and thus all links to it--have fallen down the memory hole. Here's a link to a cached version from April 27th, 2010: American Power: Long Beach City College Premier of Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story (cached version). Please use that link, instead.] -- and particularly this comment:
"Yay! Thanks for coming, Prof. Douglass! I must say, it's long been a dream of mine to be mentioned in your blog as a Marxist." - Richard Booth - April 21, 2010, 10:08 PM
(I assume this is the former student, though given the number of folks Dr. Douglas smacks that Marxist label on in the post, it could be any number of people):
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Richard, even Dr Douglas' "nihilists" are Marxists, now... (Any slur in a storm... It's not like these words have actual, y'know, definitions that a political scientist might be expected to understand and adhere to, or anything...)

Congrats on the formal denunciation, though... From what I've seen over the last several years, you're in good company... (if I do say so myself.) - repsac3 - April 22, 2010, 6:06 AM
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4/29/10 - Not only was this comment removed, the whole post was deleted, which is some serious moderation for content.

While I'd like to think Professor Douglas made it go bye-bye on my account--something about thrashing and trashing his dishonest bullshit about the military budget, perhaps--I have a feeling it had to do with his nasty treatment of his cow-orkers... I'd think there'd be some rule against doing that kinda thing, regardless of where one works... ...but especially anyplace that relies on folks believing the "employees"--the faculty of LBCC--is competent and open to intelligently discussing and debating a variety of political and social ideas and ideals, including those with which they personally don't agree. Whether one agrees with Donald Douglas's political biases and observations or not, it doesn't project a good image of any of the professors named (including Dr. Douglas) or of the college itself to have a professor calling his colleagues "communists" and "lesbians" and "far left indoctrinators," for all the world to see.

Regardless of the reason, it was moderated away, and can only be found at that cache link posted above (and on the screencaps of it that I'll post, should I ever notice that the cache link is dead, as well...)

3 comments:

Kevin Robbins said...

Don must be very popular with his peers at Long Beach. I don't think he's going to be elected prom queen anytime soon.

repsac3 said...

No, I'd imagine that he's not the most popular blowhard on the LBCC block--and his whiney protestations about his "co-workers" seems kinda unprofessional, besides--but I did find it interesting that he let it slip that he apparently was reprimanded by the school's human resource department during that battle with Octo...

"History Professor Elizabeth Orr gave extra credit to students who attended (although my v.p. of human resources warned that using conservative blogs in the classroom would be inappropriate ... hmm ... no left-wing bias there, eh?)" (and while we're on that subject, I still love the irony of his being a guy who rails against unions... even as he brought his teacher's union rep to the meeting(s) with the college. And I'm still profoundly disappointed in Octo's reaction to my disagreeing with him as concerns that whole episode. He's still the only blogger to ever moderate one of my comments off a liberal (or even "left-leaning") blog... ...a blog where I was once listed as an author, no less. He had every right--it's his blog, after all--but generally, libs embrace dissent and disagreement, and would rather debate (or agree to disagree) rather than flushing commentary with which they disagree down the memory hole. Moderation for content (outside of honest to God trollery or spammage) is more of a conservative thing... SOAPBOX off.)

The other bit that got me was the commenter who failed to see the irony of bitching to Donald about those other professors "belong[ing] to a niche labor market that rewards orthodoxy and requires "elitist" degrees to be a part of," the same elitist niche labor market to which Professor Donald Douglas, good union man, belongs.

They make me wonder whether they're even serious, sometimes... or whether it's all just some elaborate satire of actual conservatives. (After all, an alarming number of 'em think Colbert is one of them, too. Douglas might just turn out to be a less funny version for blog readers.)

Kevin Robbins said...

The other bit that got me was the commenter who failed to see the irony of bitching to Donald about those other professors...

I was simultaneously laughing my ass off and biting my tongue on that one.

The Octo affair was unsettling, if that's an appropriate word. I still prefer to have loons like DD out in the open. Sunlight being the best disinfectant and all that.

As far as bringing the union rep, I guess that's the equivalent of the liberal who's been mugged.

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