Monday, October 29, 2007

Bethany and the 300 Spartans

Spotty, we haven't heard much from you for a couple of days, boy!

Spot's been thinking.

Do you always think with your eyes closed, Spotty?

Such impertinence, grasshopper! If you must know, Spot has been thinking about the new conservative docu-drama, Indoctrinate U. Brought to you by the same masters of the art who brought you Urine Luck and Five Greasy Feces, it tells the haunting story of a cadre of brave conservative college students who are unwilling to leave their life-long fealty to racism, religious bigotry, homophobia, misogyny, and gun nuttery at home when they head off in the pursuit of higher education. Their dedication is the stuff of legend.

Patrons of the film will be treated to gripping scenes of neatly-dressed conservative students going toe to toe with bearded and sandaled college professors that will take you back to the Warsaw ghetto, the Alamo, and yes, even the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. Given the audience it will play to, Indoctrinate U will not leave a dry eye in the house.

The conservative illuminati hope that the movie will tear off the scab, lance the boil, bleed the patient . . .

That enough, Spot.

Okay. Anyway, the hope is that America will wake up to academia's distaste for the yahooism and ignorance these snots think is their birthright to keep without challenge. There are plenty of local conservatives voices adding to the chorus:

Last Thursday, in itching anticipation of the film's opening the next day, Katherine Kersten's column was titled The pariahs of our college campuses. Here's a bit from the column:

It's become a common complaint that U.S. campuses are home to a stifling liberal orthodoxy where contrary beliefs are persecuted. [U. Professor Ken] Doyle says it's no illusion.

A new film, "Indoctrinate U," documenting that atmosphere, opens near campus tomorrow.

Bethany Dorobiala, a senior political science major at the U of M, knows just what Doyle is talking about. Dorobiala was one of the few students who agreed to speak on the record about the problem.

O, brave, brave Bethany! Who is the mythic Bethany who stepped out from behind the ramparts in contempt of the liberal arrows to talk to Katie? Who will now carry her lifeless frame to the funeral pyre? [cue Wagner's Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla]

Uh, Spot, isn't Bethany Dorobiala the great kahuna of the Minnesota College Republicans?

That she is, grasshopper, but of course Katie didn't tell us that. Hear these powerful words from the courageous Bethany:

Dorobiala has encountered this disregard for intellectual diversity in classes outside of political science. "In geology class, I had a teacher who made side comments bashing President Bush," she said. A rigid orthodoxy prevails on issues as disparate as the death penalty and global warming, she says, and some professors regularly pontificate on topics outside their discipline.

A geologist talking about global warming! Can you imagine that?

Spot, don't geologists study stuff like ice sheets and pre-industrial climates?

They do grasshopper, and a geologist is probably in as good a position as anyone to comment on our drooling idiot president and his disregard of global warming. And Spot remembers, from back in the dark days of the Vietnam war, a physics professor who taught him Newtonian mechanics (so you can tell how old Spot is) but also voiced his concern about the carnage half a world away. You don't have to be the Grim Reaper to have an opinion about death.

Besides, if you could only have an opinion about things on which you are an expert, it would mean the end of Katie's column!

But Katie isn't the only siren singing the song of Indoctrinate U. In fact, Captain Fishsticks beat her by a day with 'Indoctrinate U.' -- the ill effects of an illiberal liberal bias.

Spot's favorite, though, was from Professor Empty Holster, who writes after the opening:

If you are a college student, a parent with college students, a future college student, this movie is a must see. What has happened since the 1960's on our campuses is a disgrace, a waste of taxpayer money, but most importantly, a defeat for the open exchange of ideas. Our nation has thrived on the exchange of ideas, different opinions, and the right to express them. Forcing students to adhere to a one-sided philosophy is bad for all.

King Banaian is an odd duck in the Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom set. What he, and Sticks and Katie want, naturally, is just more elbow room for their own oppression and intolerance.

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