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Hey guys, better hustle on over to the registrar.  Over at RenewAmerica, Mr. DiCintio is teaching an A.P. class in sarcasm.  (Who’s Mr. DiCintio?  Well, let’s let him tell it…)

dicintio.jpg A.J. DiCintio is a Featured Writer for The New Media Journal. He first exercised his polemical skills arguing with friends on the street corners of the working class neighborhood where he grew up. Retired from teaching, he now applies those skills, somewhat honed and polished by experience, to social/political affairs.

Well, students of Working Class, U.S.A., your loss is our gain.  Today, Mr. DiCintio has brought along a very entertaining film strip explaining how one can disarm a rhetorical opponent by feigning elaborate surprising over statements you pretend he’s making.  Let’s watch…

Whether the object of their dictatorial pedantry is based upon what “empathic” judges, politicians, and social activists weave according to rules laid down by a penumbra, fashion from the love of power, or create from leftist ideology, liberals have something new and ridiculous to teach us every day.

You know, before we go past the first paragraph — not that it isn’t great, mind you — maybe we should check out this “New Media Journal.”  I’m curious about any publication which could, in these parlous times, induce a man to abandon tenure and a good health plan:

The New Media Journal is division of BasicsProject.org, a non-profit, non-partisan 501(c)(3) research and educational initiative whose mission is to re-introduce the American public to the basic elements of our constitutional heritage while providing non-partisan, fact-based information on relevant socio-political issues important to our country, specifically, but not limited to, the threats of aggressive Islamofascism and the American Fifth Column.

Well, that sure sounds non-partisan!

The organization works to educate the American people using primary source materials and culling qualified opinions from governmental agencies, congressional testimonies, internationally recognized experts, credible think tanks and editorial boards.

…and former gym teachers who took early retirement under mysterious circumstances.

However, on a number of days since the election of the most leftist president and Congress in the nation’s history, we have been sent reeling by so many madly perverse liberal lessons that, frustrated beyond patience, we have no other option but to avail ourselves of the cathartic effects of an especially sarcastic, “I never knew that!”

Because John Davidson and Cathy Lee Crosby threatened to sue if he pursued his original plan of periodically ejaculating, “That’s Incredible!”

By the way, the third person pronouns used above refer to a line of common sense folks so long it extends all the way to China, where a billion souls were surely driven to expressions of the sardonic exclamation when they heard Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promise that only good things will happen to China if it buys up every last penny of Obama’s ten trillion dollar debt offering.

PLASarcasmCorps.jpg

The Peoples’ Liberation Army Sarcasm Corps Greets Secretary Clinton with a 21-Girl Eye Roll

Although it would be both interesting and instructive to sojourn in the land of justified Sino-sarcasm a while longer, it is time to get back home, where Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court has caused us to be bombarded with so much liberal bunk that we are afforded not a moment’s respite from issuing one mordant “I never knew that!” after another.

I’m having a hard time placing Mr. particular DiCintio’s discipline, but judging by the clear Jeff Goldsteinian influence, I’m guessing he taught semiotics and Drivers Ed.

Anyway, as long as we’re imbibing the wisdom of high-minded academics, let’s check in with Professor Mary Grabar, who appears to have lost her berth at Clayton State University, since her last review at RateMyProfessors.com was in 2008 (“Truly one of the stupidest profs I’ve ever had.”), but has happily landed on her feet at Georgia Perimeter College (“This is the worst professor ever”).

grabar6-3-09.jpg

I was a bit surprised to hear former Homeland Secretary Tom Ridge echo President Obama’s criticism of Rush Limbaugh by calling him “shrill” and “divisive” recently. Then Senator John Cronyn joined in the Rush-bashing over Limbaugh’s use of the word “racist” for self-described “wise Latina woman” judge Sonia Sotomayor. I do not recall ever being enlightened or inspired by these politicians.

On the other hand, as I’ve driven to teach afternoon classes I’ve enjoyed the insights and wit from Limbaugh. I am always impressed by his ability to apply historical figures, ideas, events, and Constitutional principles.

Then chop them up with a razor blade and snort them.

This is what I miss about my profession as a college instructor. Rarely am I able to discuss ideas with my colleagues; indeed, I dare not speak my opinion nor say anything positive about any figures on the Left’s “hit list.”

Oh, before we get too deep into Professor Grabar’s analysis of Professor’s Limbaugh’s theories, I should probably take a moment to plug her latest academic project:  The Other White People (theotherwhitepeople.com)

This is a blogsite run by Mary Grabar, who does not apologize for being white, who believes that “hope” and “change” come not from some academic, politician, or celebrity, but from within with the help of God, and that Western civilization is the best civilization.

White People:  The Pork of humanity.

I’ve listened to other colleagues on WGKA, like classics professor Victor Davis Hanson interviewed by host and law professor Hugh Hewitt, and host and professor of Russian and Jewish history, Dennis Prager.

Prager is a professor of Russian and Jewish history?

In 1970-72, Prager attended the Russian (now the Harriman Institute) and Middle East Institutes at the Columbia University School of International Affairs. He studied under Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who later served in the Carter administration as the head of the National Security Council.

Huh.  Well, what do you know?  I guess he is…

Prager did not complete his master’s degree, dropping out instead in 1973

Ah.  Well, I guess it’s sort of like the way Harold Hill was a “Professor” in The Music Man.

On radio host Glenn Beck’s Fox television program, I learned about Florida State University history professor Robert Gellately’s currently apropos and lively study, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler. Rush Limbaugh provided historical explanation for the public’s adoration of Obama: the same kind of emotional investment that caused gulag prisoners to cry at Stalin’s death.

And yet Obama did it without exiling prisoners to Siberia, or dying, so he totally kicks Stalin’s ass!

Many mistake the shows of sophistication—modulated voices and stylish sentences–for intellectual depth. But the educated can spot what is left out of the NPR or “New York Times” report. Usually it is a serious consideration from the other side.

As represented by David Brooks, William Kristol, and Ross Douthat.

A good professor does not speak in the monotone of a policy meeting or business negotiations. He moves around the room, gesticulates, asks provocative questions, and even, as I heard two lawyers discuss a favorite professor they had at the University of Georgia, throw chairs out the window.

And if that doesn’t work, start throwin’ out dead bodies every ten minutes until they bring that fucking helicopter!

What the talk show hosts do is present foundational ideas to concerned and intellectually curious citizens. Their wild success exposes a hunger for ideas rarely met in other forums—like our schools. That is why they want to shut down talk radio as it is today.

Clearly, the answer is to shut down our schools, and require children to listen to AM talk radio six hours a day.

So I suggest that the government functionaries and politicians take a moment out of their wonkish study of policy and listen in to talk radio. I suggest they go pick up Tocqueville. If they want to be voted into office they need to understand what he says about a free democracy

But…if they’re government functionaries, aren’t they already in office?

Tocqueville is talking about the middle class that keeps this country going. And today they are millions of voters and they’re educating themselves by listening to talk radio and buying books.

And that’s why, sadly, nobody signed up for Professor Grabar’s Introduction to White English class at DeVry.  They were all over at Palm Beach U (total party school!) auditing Professor Limbaugh.

8 Responses to “Teacher’s Putz”

So when “21-girl eye roll” hit me without warning I was holding the morning’s first brimming cuppa, and now I’m typing with one hand. Fortunately, I’m an internet veteran.

Okay, CVs. What’s the deal? If the best you can cough up about your teaching career is “Runner-up three consecutive semesters, Neatest Bulletin Board contest”, or “Records sealed pending completion of community service” then just say you’re a writer and spare us that time your superior polemicatin’ forced Stinky Brown and that kid who ate paste to admit you were right about The Gadsden Purchase.

And when a “professor of English” perpetrates this sentence:

He moves around the room, gesticulates, asks provocative questions, and even, as I heard two lawyers discuss a favorite professor they had at the University of Georgia, throw chairs out the window.

We are led to conclude–or perhaps just to hope–her “English” teaching duties involve helping aspiring young actors master Cockney, or young brides tell when a meal is boiled to perfection. Meanwhile, Professor Prager “has been teaching the Bible verse-by-verse at the University of Judaism” since 1992, though he might want to update that, since the University of Judaism no longer exists, and is now subsumed by the Continuing Education Program at American Jewish University, where you can find Prager explaining Leviticus this very month. Just plunk down your $100 at the door, and you get to breathe the same air as Denny four consecutive Tuesdays. Bring Bubbie, Zadie, and the kids, he suggests. ‘Cos why shouldn’t they suffer too?

I had to go check the link to be sure you hadn’t cut something out, but no, Mr. Honing and Polishing Featured Writer Man actually says (my emphases):

However, on a number of days since the election of the most leftist president and Congress in the nation’s history, we have been sent reeling by so many madly perverse liberal lessons that, frustrated beyond patience, we have no other option but to avail ourselves of the cathartic effects of an especially sarcastic, “I never knew that!”

By the way, the third person pronouns used above refer to a line of common sense folks so long it extends all the way to China, where a billion souls were surely driven to expressions of the sardonic exclamation when they heard Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promise that only good things will happen to China if it buys up every last penny of Obama’s ten trillion dollar debt offering.

Well, colour me convinced.

Seriously…Georgia Perimeter College?

It sounds more like it’s smack dab in the heart of the state.

“Empathic” judges, politicians and social activists? I am so jazzed!

I am so sojourning in the Land of Justified Sino-Sarcasm this summer. How come we liberals only get to have foreign vacations in boring places like France and Hawaii?

And that’s why I tune in to talk radio, to hear the hosts throw chairs out the window.

I’m still trying to figure out how rules can be laid down by a penumbra.

Say what you will about Heretofore-Prof. Grabar’s style, it’s possible to read most of her sentences without getting lost or very, very dizzy. OTOH, she doesn’t come up with anything approaching that Justified Sino-Sarcasm thing. I guess everything has the defects of its virtues.

Its hard to be really bad at sarcasm, the dumbest form of response/reaction to whatever one doesn’t understand or “get”.

I don’t think Mr. DiCintio even looked up the definition of sarcasm before writing his, um -whatever it is. If you told him what sarcasm really is he’d no doubt say “Really? I didn’t know that!”

“He first exercised his polemical skills arguing with friends on the street corners of the working class neighborhood where he grew up.” And what neighborhood was that? Bronx in the 1950′s? White male factory workers with ma at home polishing the Lady Kenmore and the black and white block tiles in the kitchen? Or was it 1975 St. Louis, jiving with pimp-daddies in the North End (god bless my homeland). Or was it hangin’ with the Bronx homies in the 1980′s? Well? Because we gotta know, it matters.

Retired from teaching, he now applies those skills, somewhat honed and polished by experience, to social/political affairs…

Oh, I know, he worked in some dying blue-collar midwestern town telling his captives his “off the record” lessons about history and life, the vietnam war (we shoulda bombed ‘em all), gun control and coon hunting. There’s a factory in hell that manufactures teachers like him. They use local tax dollars making future fodder for Bill O’Reilly. How minds had he managed to poison during his career? Prior to being pink-slipped?

And Ms. Grabar?

Students should be allowed to sue any school they pay to attend that would cause them to suffer through such a waste of cranial fluid as that woman. Honestly.

Something to say?