Monthly Archives for September 2011

Professor Melissa Harris-Perry Explains How Going from Bad to Worse Equals Racism. Sort of.

There is nothing like a good double-take to get the weekend off to a great start. And so it was on Saturday morning as I clicked from Real Clear Politics to “Black President, Double Standard: Why White Liberals Are Abandoning Obama,” an essay appearing in the October 10, 2011 edition of The Nation. The essay is written by Melissa Harris-Perry, professor of political science at Tulane University, where she is founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South. Have a look at her impressive credentials on the Tulane website.

In the classroom of Professor Harris-Perry, it is anything but brief.


Professor Harris-Perry’s essay begins, “Electoral racism in its most naked, egregious and aggressive form is the unwillingness of white Americans to vote for a black candidate regardless of the candidate’s qualifications, ideology or party.” Professor Harris-Perry goes on to explain that such cancerous racism appears to have gone into remission in the body politic. But, she hastens to point out, all is still not well.

Because President Obama’s re-election in 2012 is looking less and less like a shoo-in, Professor Harris-Perry has diagnosed a new and equally terrifying form of racism to explain the president’s dimming prospects:

the tendency of white liberals to hold African-American leaders to a higher standard than their white counterparts. If old-fashioned electoral racism is the absolute unwillingness to vote for a black candidate, then liberal electoral racism is the willingness to abandon a black candidate when he is just as competent as his white predecessors.

Let’s, shall we, examine the symptoms that have led Dr. Harris-Perry to her diagnosis. “The relevant comparison here,” she says, “is with the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton.” Fair enough. According to Harris-Perry, “liberal electoral racism,” as practiced by progressive white voters, gives Clinton a pass while holding Obama “to a higher standard”:

  • “Today many progressives complain that Obama’s healthcare reform was inadequate because it did not include a public option; but Clinton failed to pass any kind of meaningful healthcare reform whatsoever.”
  •   “Others argue that Obama has been slow to push for equal rights for gay Americans; but it was Clinton who established the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy Obama helped repeal.”
  •   “Still others are angry about appalling unemployment rates for black Americans; but while overall unemployment was lower under Clinton, black unemployment was double that of whites during his term, as it is now.”

Please remind yourself, as I have had to do repeatedly while attempting to fathom Harris-Perry’s arguments, that the author of them holds a) a PhD; b) a tenured faculty position at a top-tier university; and c) a directorship of a university institute. So busy was Harris-Perry collecting her academic credentials that somewhere along the way she forgot how to make a lucid argument.

“Progressives” are “complaining” about Obama care. So what? Does that mean they’ll pull the lever come November 2012 for somebody else? Does Harris-Perry really believe that complaining equals racism? Can this possibly be true? Has it possibly not occurred to Professor Harris-Perry that those same whining progressives might’ve griped about Clinton’s healthcare debacle? And what does the fact that Clinton’s scheme for healthcare reform never became law twenty years ago have to do with a flawed plan in the here-and-now, anyway?

“Others” (unnamed, unsourced, uncounted) take the president to task for his supposed failure to advance gay rights, even though Clinton “established the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy Obama helped repeal.” While I understand that political scientists such as Harris-Perry are not historians and therefore not necessarily familiar with the record, I do feel inclined to point out that both Clinton’s and Obama’s polls on the public’s attitude toward gays in the military coincide with their respective decisions—in 1993, 55% of the public, according to a Time-CNN poll, disapproved of gays serving in the military; by 2010, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, 72% of adult Americans were favor of gays serving in the military.

As for her observation that people are rightfully disturbed at the appallingly high unemployment rates among blacks during Obama’s administration, she neglects to mention that unemployment—for blacks, Hispanics and whites—fell steadily during the Clinton administration, but has grown steadily under Obama’s. And what about her suspect implication that it’s OK to be critical of black unemployment numbers under a white president, but not under a black’s? Hmmm…methinks the pot…oh, never mind.

America's first and second black presidents, side by side.

Can YOU tell which one's the pot and which one's the kettle?


Harris-Perry concludes her essay with one last distortion of the truth:

President Obama has experienced a swift and steep decline in support among white Americans—from 61 percent in 2009 to 33 percent now. I believe much of that decline can be attributed to their disappointment that choosing a black man for president did not prove to be salvific for them or the nation. His record is, at the very least, comparable to that of President Clinton, who was enthusiastically re-elected. The 2012 election is a test of whether Obama will be held to standards never before imposed on an incumbent. If he is, it may be possible to read that result as the triumph of a more subtle form of racism.

Rodney's PhD is from the School Of Hard Knocks. Literally

Rodney King speaks to Perry-Harris and racist white progressives everywhere.

Obama’s record—as indeed any president’s sitting or otherwise—is indeed “comparable” to Clinton’s, and, in Obama’s case, suffers from the comparison. Badly. And were I a student in one of Professor Harris-Perry’s classes, I would ask her how it is possible that a president elected with less than a majority, as President Clinton was for his second term, can be said to have retained his office courtesy of an “enthusiastic” electorate.

There is a saying about lies, damn lies, and statistics. There are also good faculty, incompetent faculty, and faculty ideologues for whom the truth is an inconvenience easily set to one side. Do you wonder what kind of faculty member Professor Harris-Perry is?

Note to readers: In addition to Harris-Perry’s essay for The Nation, sources for this essay include the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Presidential Responsiveness and Public Policy-Making by Jeffrey E. Cohen.

Keep Your Stinking Feminist Paws OFF MY DAUGHTER! Robert Drago’s Hands-on Lesson

First there was the voyeur; then there was the exhibitionist. Now comes the esteemed academic who’s been arrested for “misdemeanor sexual abuse and misdemeanor sexual abuse of a minor.” The perp is Robert Drago, late of Pennsylvania State University at University Park, now also the late research director at a Washington think-tank. In the good old days, we used to define “diversity” within the faculty ranks by such things as race, gender, ethnicity, veteran’s status. Today, however, diversity of sexual misconduct has been added to the laundry list of differences a robust faculty exposes to the freshman class.

The first thing you need to know about Raunchy Robert is that he says he is a feminist. Indeed, he was featured last year in the Chronicle of Higher Education for giving new meaning to the Peter Principle: he put his feminist creds to the test and passed with flying colors when he resigned he position of at Penn State to follow his lady love Laurie Bonjo aka Laurie Equality Damiana aka suratalulumax to our nation’s capitol, where she was pursuing a doctorate at Old Dominion University and he signed on as research director of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Raunchy Rob and Laurie Equality Damiani were a cute couple!


RR characterized his move with the kind of self-deprecating terminology professors often use to heap praise upon themselves. Drago demurely demurs that his new job “wouldn’t be a story if I were a woman, because thousands of women do this every year…. They either don’t get on the tenure track so their husband can, or they move with their husband and end up doing contingent work and teaching ad hoc because their husband’s job comes first.” We’ll pass over that Drago allowed himself not only to be interviewed by the Chronicle, but also photographed—a sweet picture that features the good professor and the tattoo-strewn Ms. Damiana packing up books and other office flotsam—essentially ensuring there would “be a story.”

Drago is a frequent contributor to the MomsRising.org blog (“Where moms and people who love them go to change our world”), where he opines on such women-friendly topics as breastfeeding, daughters (his) graduating from high school, and the gender of nuclear disaster. A feminist with a feminine side. What a catch for yoga instructor Laurie Equality Damiana!

Or so she thought until Drago tried to cop a feel from her seventeen-year-old daughter. From the Chronicle:

Mr. Drago’s then-girlfriend, Laurie A. Bonjo, and her 17-year-old daughter filed in late July with the Washington police following an alleged encounter that month between Mr. Drago and the girl. According to Ms. Bonjo—who said her daughter did not want to be named in an article—her daughter stayed overnight alone with Mr. Drago at his apartment in Washington during some travel between family members’ homes. While her daughter was at Mr. Drago’s apartment, said Ms. Bonjo, Mr. Drago put his arms around her daughter, kissed her on the lips, and attempted to fondle her breasts and buttocks.

He later acknowledged making the advances in text messages he sent to Ms. Bonjo’s cell phone, she said.

Text message confession notwithstanding, Drago’s lawyer Barry Coburn offered this stirring defense: “Dr. Drago is innocent unless and until he is proven guilty.” In my view, Drago isn’t guilty of anything. The age of consent in the District of Columbia is sixteen. How then can a little grope between feminists of age be construed as “sexual abuse of a minor”?

In fact, not only do I not think he is a criminal, I think he is a victim. A victim of his own hubris—a fate that befalls so many academics it should be declared an occupational hazard.

Laurie is flexible, except when it comes to her daughter.


Or maybe somebody slipped him a mickey—you know, gave him a drink or a drug that unhinged him. If I were Barry Coburn, I’d look at the ex-girlfriend-PhD student-yoga instructor-concerned mom Laurie Equality Damiana. After all, damiana, says Wikipedia

has long been claimed to have a stimulating effect on libido, and its use as an aphrodisiac has continued into modern times. More recently, some corroborating scientific evidence in support of its long history of use has also emerged. Several studies utilizing animal testing have shown evidence of increased sexual activity in sexually exhausted or impotent male rats when exposed to damiana, as well as generally increased sexual activity in rats of both sexes.

Rats of both sexes. Do you suppose they are both feminists?

UPDATE: Guilty!

These days Professor Drago has a new meme.

Paul Krugman, Jimmy Hoffa, Barack Obama: Paragons of Cultural Decline?

Much ink has been spilled over the last few weeks about Junior (“Take Them Out”) Hoffa’s death threat to those of the Republican persuasion. That it comes as a surprise to anyone that a union goon should talk like a union goon is as baffling to as it is unsurprising that President Obama, with his eloquent silence, condones Hoffa’s lethal orders to the rank-and-file. We live in a time in which man’s political nature, red in tooth and claw, reveals just how debased our culture has become.

Paying their union dues.

But Jimmy told me to, and Barry said it was OK.


In the sub-basement of our decline resides the New York Times‘s Paul Krugman, who has chosen the tenth anniversary of September 11 to add his voice to the many who have spoken out in memory and reflection of that terrible day:

The Years of Shame
Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?
Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.
What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te [sic] atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.
A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?
The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.
I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.

Paul Krugman speaks out.


Where I come from, week-long NPR special reports on a single topic, week-long programming on myriad broadcast and cable channels, and 21 (i.e., every single one) of the Huffington Post’s “Featured Blog Posts” hardly add up to a “subdued” recognition of September 11. Perhaps, however, in the dark reaches of societal decay where Krugman hangs his hat, news of these commemorations has yet to penetrate.

When Mayor Giuliani raced to Ground Zero and gave New Yorkers a glimmer of hope that their city would not be torn asunder, I sincerely doubt he was thinking about cash. When George Bush assured the recovery workers that he—and the world—heard them he was not working the crowd at a political fundraiser.

Whatever poison has tainted the memory of September 11 leaks from the pustules bubbling up from the caldera Krugman calls home. Safely ensconced in his cesspool, Krugman spews his bile, insulting his readers by claiming they “know” he speaks the truth—then with the courage of one who hides in the cover in darkness takes his final shot: “I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.”

And this is where we live today. In a country that tolerates a president who thinks it’s OK to make death threats to US citizens. In a country that gives a platform to a writer who tells one lie after another then taunts readers for their lack of recourse.

Makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it?

Entrance to Krugman's condo.

Home, sweet home

Professor Dan Middlemiss Backs Out of Teaching, Parking Space at Dalhousie Now Available

Freshman orientation has barely started, but that doesn’t mean it’s too soon for an academic to start bellyaching about the deplorable conditions under which he is expected to show up for his 2:30 p.m. class.

I should point out first that many universities are known for the appalling state of their facilities, perhaps none so much as Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada. And indeed it is right here, on the mean streets of Halifax, where Professor Dan Middlemiss declared he’s fed up and he’s not going to take it anymore.

A thirty-year veteran of the political science department, Professor Middlemiss has made the ultimate sacrifice by “resigning” his position. Why on earth would a dedicated faculty member resort to such a drastic solution to protest substandard working conditions? Things must be pretty bad up in Canada.

My friend, you have no idea.

Middlemiss quit because he had to wait in line to purchase his annual parking sticker.

Dalhousie faculty denied a seat at the table of parking entitlements.


The Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) picks up the story of one man’s bold stand against the establishment:

Dan Middlemiss and hundreds of other Dalhousie staff and students lined up Monday to buy the first available parking passes.

After waiting for more than an hour, he decided instead to leave his profession of 31 years….”I went straight upstairs, I said, ‘I’m not kidding this time, I don’t have to put up with this. I’m resigning.’”

Take that you brutes in the parking office at Dalhousie.

Imagine the suffering on this, the Dalhousie campus.


It remains unclear as to whether Middlemiss has made good on his threat, given that he remains on Dalhousie’s fall/winter schedule as instructor of record for several courses. So it may boil down to nothing more than an attack of the vapours, the pre-season jitters of a faculty member eager to smell the chalk dust and get back into the fray. Perhaps the good professor will be in the classroom bright ‘n early (2:30 p.m.) for his class come Monday morning.

At Dalhousie, the students are even worse off than the faculty!


Or maybe not. Some indignities a full professor simply cannot tolerate. Apparently Professor Middlemiss reached his limit at the end of a long line to buy a parking sticker. If Professor Middlemiss’s behavior does not tell you something deeply disturbing about the privileged lives academics live, then I guess you can just go eat cake.

The Leader of the Pack: Professor Kinzey Hops on His Hog, Flees Drug Charges

I don’t know about you, but for me summer’s over not just because Labor Day rolls around and the fat cats exit the Vineyard.  No, I know the end has come when the distant howl of police sirens and the gentle clink of handcuffs locking signal the cops’ first bust of a faculty member caught trafficking in drugs.

Fall is arriving late at Cal State San Bernardino this year, though, because CHP has yet to catch up with fugitive from justice Professor of Kinesiology Stephen Kinzey, AKA leader of the Devils Diciples (sic) motorcycle gang, Southern California division.

On the Lam

As a professor of kinesiology, Kinzey puts his knowledge to practical use, what with being on the run and whatnot. His hasty departure leaves his live-in girlfriend (coincidentally a 2005 alumna of CSUSB) literally holding the bag of the methamphetamines Kinzey’s suspected of manufacturing and selling.  With the finely tuned ethical sensibility so characteristic of academics (c.f. Middlebury Professor Kateri “I didn’t know stealing was wrong” Carmola), Kinzey is letting his woman take the rap.  On the other hand, the erstwhile coed has been named by police as Kinzey’s “business partner,” assisting in the distribution of “meth to mid-level dealers in the cities of San Bernardino, Highland, Redlands and the community of Mentone.”  Hands-on learning at its finest.

Meanwhile, back on campus, Kinzey’s name has been scrubbed from the faculty list in his department.  You can still find references to his committee work and so forth if you do a more elaborate search, but the buried treasure of his cv has been excised.

Cut Kinzey some slack--his field is kinesiology, not linguistics.

And University President Albert T. Karnig is issuing stern warnings–to the police, that is, not the fugitive. Karnig’s marshalled his own troops to fact-check the authority’s case against Kinzey:

To our knowledge, this is the first notice that anyone on our campus has had regarding this situation. Our university police department and the entire campus community, as relevant, will work as closely as possible with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department to assist with the investigation to help assure that all the facts are accurate. If the allegations are indeed true, this is beyond disappointing.

I agree.  It’s “beyond disappointing” when a joint drug task force raids a faculty member’s home and takes custody of “a pound of methamphetamine as well as a number of rifles, handguns and biker paraphernalia.”  Such a find can ruin a university president’s whole day.

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion to this drama, when Kinzey is hauled off his motorcycle and starts bleating for his union rep to ensure CSUSB accords him his due process.

Happy New Academic Year!

Source for all quotations: Los Angeles Times, September 1, 2011

Only an ergonomically correct hog is good enough for a meth-peddling kinesiologist.