Lecturer on the Study of Religion Brian C.W. Palmer ’86 says his course on “Personal Choice and Global Transformation,” dubbed “Idealism 101” by The New York Times, “looks at how individuals can make a difference in a troubled world.” That means your guard should be up. Almost every single one of Palmer’s guests espouses the same model for making a difference in a world where the popularity of people who disagree with them is evidently troubling: hysteria-generating, far-left activism.
Global transformers this spring include, according to Palmer’s description, “renowned historian Howard Zinn,” who is mostly renowned for his socialist screed A People’s History of the United States. MIT professor Noam Chomsky, euphemistically described by Palmer as a “social critic,” compared President Bush’s counter-terrorism efforts to Nazism. Among other idealist guests is “Alfie Kohn, the nation’s leading critic of ‘standardized testing as ethnic cleansing,’” and students will additionally hear prescient social criticism from “a socially engaged actress from ‘Buffy the Vampire-Slayer.’” University President Lawrence H. Summers is the class’s conservative bête noire this semester, and he worked for President Clinton.
Perhaps even more infuriating than this blatant one-sidedness is the masturbatory rhetoric Palmer and his students deploy to defend it. Indeed, it seems that not enough vacuous and fawning praise can be heaped upon Idealism 101, as it is stroked in a single Harvard Gazette profile as “a way of having richer discussion,” “creating a caring community,” “[helping students] envision what they could become,” and helping to “bring about a more humane, peaceful world.” Naturally, guest speakers were admired for their “extraordinary courage.” Said Palmer: “[Students] told me it was this kind of discussion that they came to university for, that education was this.”
These meaningless accolades may make everyone feel good, but they prove absolutely nothing—least of all that the class is balanced or sane. With characteristic understatement the CUE Guide’s caveat reveals all, noting “the absence of contrasting viewpoints to the liberal bias of the course.” Students should pull up their pants and look for more serious amusements.
—LUKE SMITH
What Really Went Wrong at Halftime
As a first-time watcher of the Super Bowl, Dartboard had never in his wildest dreams expected such a gripping last quarter. His surprise was exceeded only by the decadent halftime show, which featured such an assortment of performers as to convince any lucid observer that the population of this country is entirely contained in the 18-25 age group. But it wasn’t so much who the performers were as what they were doing that had Dartboard disbelieving his own eyes. And Dartboard doesn’t mean the famous undressing. (A much-celebrated moment that he missed and that never would have corrupted him if the media were not secretly obsessed with sex.)
No, it didn’t take nudity to set off Dartboard’s indecency radar. The animal impulses that seemed to overcome the halftime entertainers all along were strangely familiar. Dartboard had last seen them in party-hosting dorm rooms filled with booze and pheromones. Astoundingly, viewers are meant to believe that this licentious behavior—nudity notwithstanding—is as all-American as the football it interrupts. At the very least, the FCC would have Dartboard think such a display more acceptable than saying one of George Carlin’s seven dirty words on television. But Dartboard knows better and will be sure to avoid the Super Bowl once he has kids, so as to protect them from the soft-core porn that now pervades primetime sports, courtesy of MTV. After learning that Jackson had revealed a breast, Dartboard saw no reason for surprise: with the tomfoolery that was allowed to go on on that dance floor, the networks were asking for it.
—DANIEL B. HOLOCH
