10/19/2004 03:00:19 PM|||Nathan Moore|||

This exchange is interesting, and shows that academic freedom has ultimately been reduced to unrealized ignorance. Read this first, then the source of the subject academic screwballness here second.

Par exampla

"Suggested" topics of assignment

8. The Economy (tax cuts, the military budget, education, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, etc.). Under President Clinton, the Federal Government had a handle on the national debt. Now the Bush administration is passing that debt on to the post-baby-boom generation. See Ronald Brownstein's column, "Our Children Will Pay the Bill for Bush's Budget," Los Angeles Times, 10 February 2003: A10.

and

23. Hiroshima: Was Dropping the Bomb Immoral?

and of course

34. Birth Control: Should the so-called "morning-after" contraceptive pills (pills that prevent fertilized eggs from implantation) be more readily available to all, whether they can afford them or not and regardless of age? Of course, in your paper you would need to state your position and support it while acknowledging the opposing position. (You cannot argue that such pills amount to an abortion; I do not accept abortion as a topic. See below.)

but let's not forget

40. Should Justice Sandra Day O'Connor have been impeached for her partisan, political actions in the Bush v. Gore case of December 2000 (she is reported to have expressed a desire to retire but would do so only if a Republican were president; see Newsweek, 25 Dec. 2000-1 Jan. 2001: 46-47)? What about Justice Scalia, whose son worked for the law firm of the lawyer who argued for Bush before the Supreme Court, or Justice Thomas, whose wife was part of an organization selecting people to work in a potential Bush administration?

Any ideas what NOT to say to get an A in this quack's class?

UPDATE Oh, and this too

52. What evidence do we have that Mr. Bush and his cronies lied to the American people and the world in promoting the war with Iraq? Do you agree that America has lost its "moral authority" in the world because of this immoral war? See "Another Casualty of War: American Moral Authority," by Rami G. Khouri, in the Los Angeles Times, 9 October 2003: B17. See also, "Iraq War Questions Gain Momentum," by Janet Hook, Los Angeles Times, 30 January 2004: A1+, and John Barry and Mark Hosenball's "What Went Wrong," the cover story for Newsweek, 9 February 2004: 24-31. Another article from the Los Angeles Times, Bob Drogin and Greg Miller's "CIA Chief Saw No Imminent Threat in Iraq" (6 February 2004: A6+), might be useful. Other articles worth reading are Peter Singer's "Bush's Meandering Moral Compass," Los Angeles Times, 26 March 2004: B13 and Bob Drogin and Greg Miller's "Iraq's Illicit Weapons Gone Since Early '90s, CIA Says," Los Angeles Times, 7 October 2004: A1+.

What a schmuck!

UPDATE TOO Clifton Snider in his full glory. Apparently, he is, in fact, an "award winning poet". For instance

What a schmuck!

UPDATE EVEN MORE Dr. Snider is awfully proud of "Poets Against War". How many poets have you met that are for war? As a rule, poets are fairly useless in the fight for freedom.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

The woman with a scarf
at the food stand
asked for an ounce of flour:
she had three children
and a little water.

The American leader
squinted, eyes like oil pools.
He shot her point blank
in the temple.

His secretary of state
lopped off the arms & legs
of a soldier, pressed into service
by the sword of antiquity.

The minister of defense
ordered smart bombs to explode
the brains of a man in turban
old enough to remember
the American president
who provided his people arms
to fight their neighbor.

And then this rather horrifically misnomered piece of work

Victory in Iraq
April 2003

Bush II sips his blood-red bubbly,
one bullet in the glass,
upstairs in the White House.
He nibbles pretzels of victory.

The horror he manipulated
exploits the TV screen.
Marines place the flag, lasso
a statue of Baghdad’s dictator.

Bush II must telephone Daddy. First
he belches from a toothy Texas grin
under brine-black eyes,
a brainy mangle of manure.

Somewhere in Baghdad,
on a solitary bed, lies an
armless boy, newly orphaned,
his face asleep, innocent agony

What a schmuck!

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