Posted January 23, 2015: by Mary Grabar: It was the Martin Luther King, Jr., national holiday last Monday, and "Prison Abolitionist"/Communist/Black Panther Angela Davis came and spoke on three campuses in Georgia and North Carolina and then pocketed a cool $20,000 for one of those speeches from the bourgeois taxpayers. Former real model for the FBI's most wanted list spoke to an overflowing crowd at Kennesaw State University on Sunday. Many in the community objected, but university officials predictably cited such high-falutin principles as academic diversity. But there is nothing academic or scholarly about leading the audience in a chant of "No justice, no peace, no racist police," as the Marietta Daily Journal, reported. Her words of wisdom also included “And we also have to say to our friends in Europe, look at the example of the United States of America. Look at what happened in the aftermath of 9/11. Look at the fact that all over the country now, people who practice Islam are the targets of a racism that has been built on the histories of anti-black racism. And as a matter of fact, I think that black people in this country have a special responsibility to stand up and say ‘no.’”
Urging students to abandon middle class values: According to the article, Davis cited MLK: "It is ironic,’ Dr. King wrote, ‘that today so many educators and sociologists are seeking methods to instill middle-class values in Negro youth as the ideal in social development,’” Davis read. “‘It was precisely when young Negroes threw off their middle-class values that they made a historic social contribution.’” There were a number of op-eds pointing out that Kennesaw could have done better than Happy Stalinist Davis for a speaker-- a leading neurosurgeon and former secretary of state, to name a couple.
Teaching students history by taking them to a movie that "interprets" history: The week was also the occasion of treating students to field trips to see the movie Selma. The director admitted to interpreting history, as I noted in my PJ Media article, "Selma and the Sanctimony of Liberals," but that did not seem to bother school officials who accepted donations to take pre-teen students from South Philadelphia, to Brevard County, Florida to see the movie. Maureen Dowd was upset that the school children in the theater watching the movie with her were getting a negative picture of LBJ. Alas, they should have heard the real LBJ, and, in contrast, his opponent Barry Goldwater, who did not use civil rights for political expediency. Sadly, as can be seen in this clip, students take the movie to be more factual than their textbooks.
State of the Union and Obama's Hemingway: This was also the week of the State of the Union Address and the New York Times, did a glowing profile on President Obama's speechwriter, Cody Keenan, whom Obama has christened "Hemingway." Now the Dissident Prof knows that Ernest Hemingway wrote novels and short stories, which many of her readers probably had to endure in high school. But he was no Cicero. His Nobel acceptance speech was under three minutes. But textbook editors, seeing Obama as the great litterateur, include his speeches and chapters of his autobiographies in textbooks. Professors of Rhetoric have given themselves over to analyzing Obama's rhetorical prowess. But has Obama read Hemingway? Surely, he would know that Hemingway was known for his spare, direct prose style that reflected manly activities such as lion hunting. It was never cluttered with superlatives or frivolous adjectives. In fact, it inspired writing contests. This is the opening of the winner for 1986, "The Snooze of Kilimanjaro" by Mark Silber:
He had come with the woman to Kilimanjaro to gather ideas for a cycle of haikus he was writing. The woman had suggested, in the aristocratic manner of the rich, that living on a diet of dried bark and dirt would toughen something inside him that had gone soft and prevented him from creating Instead it softened him further, and now he was dying of severe dysentery complicated by writer’s block.
Now he would never write the things he had saved to write until he learned to spell them. For instance,accommodation. One C, two Ms, or the other way around? He wasn’t sure. Or chrysanthemum? On rugged Kilimanjaro, there was not even a dictionary.“
How do they know I’m dying?” he asked the woman, indicating the crowd of undertakers, florists and wake caterers who were gathering at the edge of the campsite.
On a serious note, these are the closing lines from Hemingway's Nobel speech at about the 2-minute mark:
How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.
I have spoken too long for a writer. A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it. Again I thank you.
Here is a nugget from the State of the Union as recorded by the New York Times:
We are 15 years into this new century, 15 years that dawned with terror touching our shores; that unfolded with a new generation fighting two long and costly wars; that saw a vicious recession spread across our nation and the world. It has been, and still is, a hard time for many. But tonight, we turn the page.
Tonight, after a breakthrough year for America, our economy is growing and creating jobs at thefastest pace since 1999. (Applause.) Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before thefinancial crisis. More of our kids are graduating than ever before; more of our people are insured than ever before – (applause) — and we are as free from the grip of foreign oil as we’ve been in almost 30 years. (Applause.)
Tonight, for the first time since 9/11, our combat mission in Afghanistan is over. . . .
And, no, that was not a contest winner. It was the real thing, written by Obama's Hemingway.
Free community college: Some of you may have noticed that the Prez was pushing his "free" community college program. Emmett McGroarty and Jane Robbins have a theory about why: It's to Make Common Core Look Good. Read the article in the Daily Caller.
Die-ins and mendacity on campus: the inimitable Tennessee Williams-quoting Professor Robert Paquette at See Thru Edu.
Update: on the effort in Arizona to recall legitimately elected School Superintendent Diane Douglas--an effort that began before she was even sworn in, largely because of her opposition to Common Core, as noted in these pages previously: here is a Facebook page to support her: Standing Strong for Superintendent Diane Douglas.
