The Literate Citizen » Culture

A rational assessment of Ayn Rand

Mary Grabar — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:41:50 +0000

Cathy Young presents one of the most reasonable assessments of Ayn Rand as her birthday passes. Atlas Shrugs has some great passages, some great jabs at the left. But parts of it are very disturbing, and Cathy points them out. (Oh, and the sex scenes just parody themselves.) It seems that many of Ayn Rand’s devotees are young males…maybe that says something, maybe it’s a reaction to the forced collectivism in our schools. Maybe young males like the objectivism after all the “maternalist thinking” forced on them in schools. Those are my personal observations from teaching and reading. Tobias Wolff has a great send-up in his autobiographical novel Old School.

Here’s Cathy’s article http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/02/09/a_rand_revival_100227.html

Tebow pro-life commercial? Give the feminists equal time.

Mary Grabar — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:21:17 +0000

I have an idea for the feminists who can’t stand having a pro-life message from the Tebows during the Super Bowl: Buy some time for yourselves. Produce a commercial with one of your own people. She can be filmed with her six cats and provide testimony like, “Thirty years ago I made my choice to abort. I have never regretted it. I have been able to devote my life to Fluffy, and Princess, and . . . .”

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=123217

I don’t think that this is what Martin Luther King, Jr., had in mind

Mary Grabar — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:02:15 +0000

Cornel West at MLK commemorative service

Cornel West is no scholar; he is a racial hate-monger.

This is a travesty.

http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/worshippers-urged-not-to-277561.html

Morehouse English prof just doesn’t get it

Mary Grabar — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:19:42 +0000

Morehouse English professor Stephane Dunn, writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution today, implores Morehouse men to pull up their pants and dress appropriately when they attend her class. I say ‘hurray’ to Morehouse for its new dress code and to Professor Dunn for speaking up.

Because she is a “sister,” Dunn is allowed to command her students to “’pull those pants up, Mr. So-and-So,’” without being hauled before the P.C. panel and subjected to an inquisition. I doubt I would be called back to teach as an adjunct should one of my students complain about such a command. I would be charged with not only bad “customer service,” but racial insensitivity. (Of course, I would also like to be able to tell all students to yank out their piercings, sit up straight, etc.)

So I was expecting that this professor, who envisions herself before a classroom of conservatively dressed gentlemen scholars, would be teaching the Great Works. I would expect her scholarship to focus perhaps on the author that W.E.B. Du Bois was so enchanted by—William Shakespeare. I thought she would be upholding the canon that is so rapidly being eliminated and replaced by popular culture. (My colleague Mark Bauerlein in Minding the Campus reports on the disappearance of positions for those who specialize in great authors like Shakespeare–or John Milton, as I did for my master’s thesis.)

So, what would the well-dressed Morehouse man read in “Sister” Professor Dunn’s class? Well, if her book is any indication, it would be on the theme of “Baad Bitches & Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Films.” Professors tend to write on the subjects they teach. Does anybody see a disconnect?

Did you miss it? Cornel West says we are still racist

Mary Grabar — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:48:28 +0000

Dog bites man.

Cornel West speaks on race at Emory. Ho hum. “George W. Bush is a racist.” Yawn. “We’ve come a long ways (witness my speaking fees), but we’ve got a long ways to go (otherwise no one would have reason to book me as a speaker).” (Just doing a little deconstruction for the folks out there.)

No wonder the kids find school boring—and why I find most of my tenured colleagues to be so tedious. I wonder when Cornel West last went to a local Republican meeting, Baptist church service, or a Cajun Dance—or patrolled with police officers. Maybe if he left his ivory tower he’d see that the real world does not live up to his theories of racism and oppression.

“9/11 as Avant-Garde Art?”

Mary Grabar — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:09:30 +0000

What does my colleague, professor of performance studies at New York University, conclude? Writing in the ever-so-prestigious journal for members of the Modern Language Association, Richard Schechner concludes, “I cannot settle in my own mind the question of whether 9/11 in itself is art or can be more fully understood under the rubric of art” (PMLA October 2009). These ruminations come after assessments of other like-minded critics and spending 9/11/01 on his patio about a mile away watching people jumping from the burning towers.

He analyzes the coverage as “made-for-television drama series,” as he contextualizes the event into the tradition of avant-garde art.

He notes,

“By mainstream American standards, the 9/11 attack was evil. . . . However, from the perspective of performance studies, the attack on the World Trade Center was a performance: planned, rehearsed, staged, and intended both to wound the United States materially and to affect and infect the imagination. The destruction of two iconic buildings, and the murder of so many people in one fell swoop, was intended to deliver a very specific message about the boldness of the jihad and the vulnerability of the United States.

A performance, surely, but art? I believe that the attack can be understood as the actualization of key ideas and impulses driving the avant-garde. Thierry de Duve writes. . . . “

Well, you get the picture. The “perspective of performance studies” is evil too. As for me, I’ll keep my ”mainstream American standards,” Professor Schechner.

Hip-Hop Professor Off Fox News, Kudos to Cliff

Mary Grabar — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:31:44 +0000

Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media has managed to get hip-hop professor commie Marc Lamont Hill off Fox News. I winced every time I heard O’Reilly call Hill “professor” or “doctor.” You can read about “Professor” Hill’s background and “scholarship” at the AIM website www.aim.org.

An update and more analysis http://usasurvival.org/listmanager/asinews101809.html