The Pedagogical Imperative

Those who can do, do.  Those who can't do, teach.

Those who can't teach, well, they agree to guest post on conservative blogs.  (About liberals in academia, no less.)

Why?  Because writing for a hostile audience—or, more accurately, writing for an audience you assume will be hostile—closely resembles walking into a classroom and informing students they'll be re-reading Huck Finn. 

Speaking of which, that's one of the topics I'll be addressing while there.  Re-reading Huck Finn, that is.  Why?  Some fool devotes a chapter to it in his new book ...

[Since PW's servers can't parse liberal guests posts, I've included the text of mine below the fold.]

Pot, Kettle, Black and All That [Scott a.k.a. “The Token Lefty"]

For some reason, Jeff thought having me blog here wouldn’t be a terrible idea.  I hope to make him rue that decision.  Not rue rue, mind you, just a little.  I’ll be concentrating my posts on two books which deal with multiculturalism in contemporary academia and American society.  Each is brilliant in its own way, and each deserves a fair hearing.  The first is Michael Bérubé‘s What’s Liberal about the Liberal Arts?; the second, Walter Benn Michaels’ The Trouble with Diversity.  Who am I?  My name’s Scott.  Want to know more about me?  Read my greatest hits.

That said, I composed something which has absolutely nothing to do with either book this afternoon.  You see, I thought it’d be nice to introduce myself via a rational examination of a clearly irrational argument.  Looks like I was wrong:

So you’ve all seen the infamous photo, right?  If not, click on it.  Finished?  What did you see?  I saw an awkward group portrait.  Not nearly so graceful as, say, this one.  Or this one.  Or this one, either.  It’s almost as if the photo Ann Althouse considers evidence of feminism’s death wasn’t a carefully orchestrated moment captured by a professional photographer to commemorate the happiest moment in a young couple’s life, but a hastily assembled photo op in which a bunch of amateur photographers told him to stand over there, yes, and her to, no, no, not there, in the first row, now, yes, over there, look here, thanks.

Click.  Click click.  Click click click click click.

This confusion, well, it confuses Althouse.  To wit:

I’m judging you [Jessica] by your apparent behavior. It’s not about the smiling, but the three-quarter pose and related posturing, the sort of thing people razz Katherine Harris about. I really don’t know why people who care about feminism don’t have any edge against Clinton for the harm he did to the cause of taking sexual harrassment seriously, and posing in front of him like that irks me, as a feminist.

That second point?  Beyond reproach.  Feminists can and do have reservations about sharing a conference table with someone with Clinton’s reputation.  But the first one?  Remember all the sluts in the wedding photos?  The ones who stood up straight, turned a little to their left or right and smiled for the camera?  You remember them, the sluts.  They were sluts.  What do you mean they look like women “posing” in a group photo?  Of course they do.  That’s the problem.  That’s what makes them sluts.

As I read Melissa’s post, I realized how wrong I’d been.  Apparently, it is not the belief of rational individuals that Althouse confused her hatred of Clinton for the conventions of group portraiture.  Turns out rational people like Melissa believe the left—the monolithic thems and theys peppering her rant—betray a pernicious hypocrisy by, get this, participating in the American political system.  Can you believe the nerve of these lefties?  Forming coalitions of convenience, which their counterparts on the right haven’t done since the economic conservatives broke from the Christian fundamentalists—Wait, that never happened.  Seems the right fancies this commonplace of American politics as much as the left. 

Now, I know writing intelligent criticism is difficult—look at how rarely you read any these days—but broadsides drawing attention away from what you’re doing by pointing out that your opponent’s doing it too are bound to backfire.  Which brings me to Glenn Reynold’s ironic condemnation of partisan politics:

It’s all about supporting the right people politically, even if it turns you into a groper’s support group.

Yes, Mr. Reynolds, I would say.  Exactly.  Such is the nature of representative democracy: no single candidate will ever reflect all of your personal beliefs to your satisfaction.  (That’s why they call it a representative democracy instead of a reflective one.)  You have to choose the one who best represents the majority of them.  Sometimes that decision is mildly unpleasant; others, it is decidedly so; last November, you lose weeks to the thought that you may be forced to vote for John Kerry.  But you know what?

You can either act like a responsible adult and admit that this defect is built into the system; or, like Mr. Reynolds, you can hope your audience forgets about that and rides your high-handed rhetoric to ideological complacency.  Because believing your opponents are the only ones whose politicians are, well, politicians is not a sign of intelligence, but unthinking complacency.

Comments

[peter ramus]

Apparently protein wisdom's server can't parse liberal guest posts, if that's what Internal Server Error 500 means, and I think it might.

[David R. Block]

No, there was a time when the thing went ka-boom, and the blogging software had to be reloaded.