tar pits are tar pits

Music: Marconi Union: Distance (2006) Yesterday a crackpot named Alan Travis (a probable pseudonym) sent an email to all the faculty in my department, as well as the dean and a number of regents. The email basically shamed all of us for working along side Dana Cloud, my good colleague and friend, because she was a “homosexual Marxist.” It’s the sort of note I’m told deans and chairs get all the time about a number of faculty; hostile, angry, accusatory. Travis’s was misogynistic and homophobic. With restraint, I responded at some length (I won’t rehearse that response here, since Dana’s blogged it).

I knew when I decided to respond that doing so would be a mistake---it was just so fun to imagine this guy was responsible for all of those guys who presume to understand what goes on at a university but have no clue. Why is it a mistake? You cannot reason with an obsessive or a psychotic (I'm hoping this guy is the former). There is a certain predictability to these types: the world is only to be understood in black and white terms; latent but unacknowledged homoerotic feelings; often ex-military; lack of a college education or forced to leave college before the degree was finished. During my first year at LSU I had to deal with these kinds of folks, sometimes as students. Usually about mid-semester they “got it” and became much more respectful of others opinions.

Anyway, so I responded to Mr. Travis, which ignited, of course, his ire and a couple more emails, each one more bigoted. They’re actually entertaining (at least my colleagues said they enjoyed reading this guys rants).

Dear Black Nails, Your arguments are about as inane and pathetic as you appear in your website photograph. In fact, you look so silly, I thought about including you in my initial response. However, I kept to the subject of one radical nut, the lesbian Marxist.

I'll now address the second, you. In the interest of specifics, I'll reply within your lengthy blathering.

Dear Mr. Travis,

Thank you for taking the time to express your views. Clearly you are upset about the educational enterprise today; you find Dr. Cloud particularly emblematic of an "extreme left-wing bias" among the professoriate, and worry academics like Cloud are "brainwashing" young people. You seem to suggest that educators have the power to: (a) convince young people the United States is a bad place to live; (b) force young people to accept feminist philosophies; (c) and encourage young people to accept or become gay or lesbian, which tempts violence.

Alan Travis: Nowhere did I suggest that homosexuality "tempts violence." You twist my words, sir. And yet you call yourself an academic. You pretend to use reason and express yourself with utter clarity. No, in fact what I said was that homosexuals commit a disproportionate amount of violence and death on others. They beat and kill. This homosexuality does not "tempt violence," but commits it.

[snip]

As a teacher, I can assure you, Mr. Travis, our students are a bright bunch. [How could they be, with such as Ward Churchill, and you, Black Nails, pontificating your nonsense to them.]

[snip]

[The presumption of your department website is that change is always positive. Of course there is no evidence of such a thing. It is another of the many fatuous pretenses you and the lesbian Marxist advance.]

[snip]

[Sir, your pretense that freedom and liberty and justice need to be defined is the height of ignorance and condescension and empty argumentation. The absolute height. The "sense" of the kind of "freedom" I am referencing moves people from virtually every country on earth to move to America and remain here. As Tony Blair said, "The measure of what other people think of a country is how many of them want to move there."

"Might makes right" came from your computer, not mine.

On any measure of desirability, America is at or near the top of the worldwide list. Unfortunately we taxpayers have to suffer the relentless condemnation of such as you and the lesbian Marxist not to mention your partner in crime, Ward Churchill.]

[snip]

[Black Nails, you're not very bright. You can't name a Marxist state that is not a dictatorship. In fact, leftists, including Marxists, and socialists, murdered approximately 100,000,000 human beings in the Twentieth Century, and that grisly total continues today, in the cesspools of Africa.

Now speaking of Africa, the lesbian Marxist pretends that America is so racist towards blacks, but clearly she, and you, choose to ignore the fact that virtually any black African would pay handsomely to leave their homeland and live here. I have spoken to many of them. I have asked blacks born in Somalia, and Ethopia, and Nigeria, and Kenya to name but a few, if they thought America was racist. They said not at all. Moreover, many said that they could "not talk to black Americans. They all have a chip on their shoulder."

That chip has been placed there by leftists like you, and Dr. Cloud, and Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson. You should be ashamed of yourselves for being so patronizing to blacks, and holding them to a lower standard, and excusing all manner of irresponsible behavior by blacks which you blame on some Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, to borrow a line from Bill Clinton's enabler, the "smartest woman in the world." But how can a radical leftist professor like you, with your black fingernails, be ashamed of anything you do.]

[snip]

[What do you mean by "feminist studies," Einstein? Knock off your condescending bullshit, will you? Everyone knows what "feminist" means. It's just an oxymoron of a word. "Feminists" are about as "feminine" as you are masculine.]

[snip]

[You sure spent a lot of time, and words, refuting my lack of an argument. How positively silly of you, Black Nails.]

[snip]

[Let me tell you what doesn't make sense. First, we hear from you leftists that women are, and have been, discriminated against. We also hear that women are "just as equal as men if not more so." If in fact, women have been so beaten down and abused and fearful, like the famous psychology professor at Harvard who "nearly threw up" when Dr. Lawrence Summers suggested research to determine differences between men and women, then they should not and cannot claim equality.

If in fact women were as "equal" as you leftists lie, you need to explain: 1. Why 93% of the people in prisons are men; 2. Why more men are physically abused by women than are women by men; 3. Why it is quite acceptable for women to be described as more nurturing, and more verbal, and more communicative, and better at so many different things than men are, and yet men are no better at anything than women are except lifting weights. Although I think that dandies with black fingernails probably fall behind women in this category as well.]

[snip: I suggest a morbidity report from the CDC would be good evidence for claiming an increase in homicides among LGBT communities]

[Listen, Black Nails, you're SUPPOSED to be a scholar. You look it up, huh. It's really not that hard. Try it. I have better things to do than reply to all the nonsense you can conjure up. ciao]

Well, I couldn’t help myself. I am happy to have a little fun with this guy, but he keeps emailing the college with his replies. But, you know, I couldn’t resist one last note. Clearly this guy didn’t get to go to college, so, I hit that button:

Mr. Travis: you say “I have better things to do than reply to all the nonsense you can conjure up.” Ditto that, only--to tweak your tone--"I'm rubber and you're glue; what you say bounces off me and sticks to you."

I'm glad you won't suffer us fools. If you had an education you might be dangerous!

Josh

His reply (again, cc’d to everyone under the sun), is absolutely golden. Read this, dear reader, and you delight in its phallic powah!

Josh, you traffic in bastardizing words. You're no more a scholar than Al Gore.

I have been around the world more times than I can count. My earnings year to date just on my investments is in excess of $600,000.

As to who knows what, here are a few puzzlers for you that I can answer in a hearbeat, having worked with them for my mere amusement:

1. What proportion of an atom is empty space?

2. What would happen to a teaspoon of neutron star if you could hypothetically place it atop El Capitan?

I am still married to the wife of my youth. And you? How many boyfriends have you had? Particularly of the Goth variety?

By the way, my P.R. for the marathon is 3:06. Have you any idea of the significance of that? Any at all, Black Nails?

I caught a 210 pound ahi at the Kona Coast and a 350 pound black in the Sea of Cortez.

How is your knitting coming along, Black Nails?