You're Kidding Me

I'm watching all of the episodes of Bullshit from Penn & Teller. I'll be posting reviews of certain clumps of episodes, but I'm starting with the episode College, which is actually an indictment of diversity. I can hear the bs reason for the society in Fahrenheit 451 already. In all seriousness, I am censoring my post because I am nervous about having this blog deleted, literally. Though I have almost every reason to believe that the threat of this is gone, the risk is too great, censoring away!



That is an image of [a college], my alma mater and the episode actually talked about [something I vividly remember]. [I had another paragraph about my relationship with the events and people and locations portrayed] [Finally there was a paragraph about the racial make-up of the campus and other things] I can say that the episode's description of events does not match my recollection in that it leaves things out and doesn't actually answer any of the questions I had 8 years ago.

The white rich guy in the episode said that women, people of color, LGBT, etc people are treated like children when we are "told" that we should not be exposed to certain types of speech or opinions. In my experience, these same people are asking for a learning environment free of these assholes. It isn't just speech or opinions either. Remembering going to my alma mater, I remember a lot of conversation and yes, vitriol aimed at people who said stupid racist shit. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from criticism of your hate speech. But a lot of what was said also wasn't protected speech. Harassment and threats are not the same as free speech. Sure, attention to diversity can be problematic - I am not a moral relativist - but you can't have an open discussion with someone that insists that "f****ts", "n****rs", and "b***hes" are less than human.

We have a history in this country that creates a context of hostility towards anyone not that "majority" group with which we are familiar. It is very easy for members of a group that has not been threatened with violence or are seen [more in the past than now, thank goodness] routinely as less than human to tell us what we want. In fact, they do it all the time and they did just now. Sure, diversity is rationally ridiculous to people that don't benefit from it, but ask the out black lesbian who is going to college to learn chemistry about the tangible benefits of diversity training and even awareness in the people around her in her ability to obtain her degree.

This episode could have been much more powerful and I did not come away from the episode with any new knowledge, literally, even about the incident at my alma mater. It could have been an indictment of the excesses of diversity training. They hit on some overreactions at my alma mater and pulled a stunt protesting diversity at a diversity event. Tolerating intolerance is not tolerance and the episode proved that universities are aware of this fact. The tolerance of any idea without editing, without regard to effect is an excess of diversity and no one is doing that. Making campus safe for a KKK group would be a problem, but it isn't happening. I think the fact that this episode had to go to a second rate state university in a state that most people in America forget about to get an example of "diversity gone wrong" when it wasn't even ABOUT "diversity" is an indication that they REALLY had to reach for something that just ain't there. Seriously.

The show could have also addressed the issue of too many people going to college or getting crap degrees with which they cannot get a good job after they graduate. What about grade inflation and the snowflake epidemic? They tried to address this issue by trotting out names of talented and/or lucky people that struck it rich without college, but that does not a criticism of college make. Everyone knows that being an entertainer does not necessitate college, with the exception of maybe Peter Graves. But these days college has become what high school used to be - a training ground for young people before they enter adulthood. But we consider that college and made high school into a holding pen for children and elementary school is elaborate day care. Colleges need to be places that create future leaders, artists, professionals, and scholars to enhance society for all people, whether or not they went to college. They should not pass students after they skip the final and even ask not to be failed so they can have time to drop the class.

There is so much this episode could have been, and it should have been two episodes to address the excesses of diversity (because they exist) and the problems in college today. As is, this episode just taught me that some highly educated and high powered and uneducated but wealthy entertainer white guys don't think that diversity or college are good things, respectively. I should probably make up some kind of rating system, but overall, this episode is bullshit.

A Comic for Me

toothpastefordinner.com

I miss severe weather

Seven Years Ago

The week after Thanksgiving, on a Monday night, Minnesota and northern Wisconsin had a snow storm. Huge piles of snow dropped on the great white north, closing most schools on Tuesday. College classes weren't canceled until after everyone had already done their best to get to campus (about a third of the students at my college commuted to class from around town). It was also the second Tuesday that semester that classes were canceled after noon, the first one being on September 11.

I felt bad for any teachers - or students, for that matter - with Tuesday night classes, which met only once per week. Living in the dorms, the snow storm was nothing but fun for me. I woke up in my loft and decided to cancel my classes myself - screw what the administration said. I had just gotten a mattress pad for my bed and it was soooooooo comfy! Actually, I can't remember if I went to class or not, I'm pretty sure I didn't, but I was up and about that day. After all, the cafeteria was on the other side of campus, and I had to eat and catch up with friends.

That night, while hanging out in the dorm room we all hung out in, my friends and I decided that we were going to celebrate the storm and get drunk. Problem was that we had no booze, only one of us was 21, and the liquor store would be closing soon. So we created a shopping list. For some reason, two of us wanted wine coolers, another two wanted beer, and someone wanted some Boons. The 21-year-old and I set out with our backpacks. We weren't normally friends, him being an evangelical and me being an atheist, but we hung out and got along. He was also an Art Major and I was History. We decided that if we saw any of his Christian group friends, we would tell them that we were on the way to the library to study. If we were past the library, we were going to a classmate's apartment off-campus to study. What were we studying? Art History, of course. We could safely tell most of my friends the truth about out outing.

So onwards we trudged over the ice and through the little paths created in the foot deep snow. We finally made it to the Coburns liquor store with time to spare. My friend went in and bought the consumables - 22 glass bottles in all. When we were safely across the street, in the parking lot of some church or other, we packed the bottles in our backpacks, taking care to make sure we weren't seen. SCSU was a dry campus, after all. We ventured back slowly. Clinking bottles would be a dead give-away. My friend told me that if I fell on the ice and broke anything, he didn't know me. We made it back to the dorms, checked in with the night supes (it was past 10pm by now) and walked up the stairs to see the rest of our friends resting in heated comfort.

That night was a lot of fun. We peeled off our snowy clothes, drank, and danced all night long. Being only 20 years old, I wasn't smart enough to avoid a hang over yet, so the next day, I felt awful. I ended up canceling my own classes again and nursed myself while working on a paper for my Wednesday night class. On Thursday, I remember taking a good look at that snow with some co-workers at my admissions job. I remarked that it looked like it would be gone by Christmas. They thought I was crazy, but the snow was gone by finals that semester.