Becky Tuch

"The Party Line"

How does ones mind end up following a party line in all ways?  Difficult question.  In any case, that’s the title of the above aquarelle, which features Democrat in Chief Howard Dean feeding Becky Tuch, editor of the Review Review.  In supine position is courtjester poet Ian Thal.  The sketch was influenced by Goya’s “Las Chinchillas.”  Tuch had written a politically-correct inspired negative review of an issue of The American Dissident.   I'd met Howard Dean briefly, while I was protesting in front of the Emerson Umbrella Center for the Arts during the Concord Festival of Authors.  He was guest speaker and refused to even take a flyer.  A partir de la marde, la creativite! Merci, mademoiselle Tuch et cie. 

Jon E. Travis

The Anti-Freedom of Speech Mission to Destroy Public Education in America:  A Counter-Essay

Thought & Action (the National Education Association’s Higher Education Journal) published (Fall 2012) “The Anti-Egalitarian Mission to Destroy Public Education in America,” written by an educational bureaucrat, Jon E. Travis, Professor of Educational Leadership at Texas A&M University-Commerce.  In that essay, Travis decried so-called “anti-egalitarians” as “individuals hostile to the tenets of American liberty.”  Furthermore, he labeled those faceless individuals as “oligarchs” seeking to restrict “educational access to the rich and white.”  They remain faceless because Travis lacked the courage to name any of them. 

As a white, more or less unemployed professor, I’ve always dared “go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways” (Emerson), especially regarding institutions of higher education employing me.  Travis blindly, if not religiously, praises those institutions as “revered.”  Likely, he has never mustered the courage or dared think as an independent citizen to actually question and challenge them. 

Travis and the bulk of educrats seem purposefully ignorant of the damage left-wing ideological political correctness has been doing to higher education, especially in the form of restricting (often unconstitutionally!) democracy’s cornerstones, vigorous debate and freedom of speech.  Why the egregious ignorance?  Evidently, it is self-serving.

As a white citizen, I take offense at the anti-white racist programs educrats have institutionalized in those so-called “revered” establishments of higher education.  Affirmative Action and the Un-Fair Campaign (see http://unfaircampaign.org) are several examples.  Institutionalized multiculturalism has served to diminish the very “tenets of American Liberty” (the words are Travis’) more than anything else on college campuses across the nation.

Yet why the silence with that regard? Why do our so-called “revered” institutions of higher learning evidently prefer diversity over democracy? Why have most, if not all, of them established Departments of Diversity, as opposed to Departments of Democracy?  Could educrats like Travis possibly be unaware of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the annual statistics it compiles with regards campus speech codes?

“Public education faculty, staff, and administrators need to believe they are in a war,” notes Travis, but I note in a war not with the nebulous “anti-egalitarians,” but rather with freedom-of-speech libertarians. In fact, the politically-correct  institutions of higher education praised across the board by Travis tend to be anything but egalitarian in nature. Conservative white students, for example, are surely not considered on an equal footing with minority students. The professorate is anything but egalitarian.

Finally, how can independent-minded citizens, as opposed to politically-correct indoctrinated college graduates and professors, possibly agree with Travis’ overall assessment of America’s institutions of higher learning as “revered,” especially when the majority of those institutions willingly and often illegally suppress freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of speech?  

Neither Travis nor Thought & Action deigned to respond to this counter-essay.  Perhaps both he and editor Mary Ellen Flannery are examples of those anti-egalitarians. 

Mary Jo Bang

Fluttering Dichterlings

There’s often a world of cocooned vacuity on the website of the Academy of American Poets... because the high-and-mighty Academy chancellors are as established order as it gets.  Do not offend is their mantra.  Smile, you’re on clever camera!  You’d be hard-pressed to find just one dissident mind amongst the lot of them.  Gary Snyder?  Maybe 100 years ago, but certainly not today.  He's comfortably gone from Beatnik to tenured emeritus academic stuffed in the established-order canon.  Oops.  He’s no longer on the chancellor roster. 

A handful of poets were asked on the Academy website (poets.org) to respond to the following question posed by some invisible Academy chancellor or likely lackey thereof: 

“What do you see as the role of the poet in today’s culture?” 

Now, if I were asked that question, I’d state upfront precisely what the chancellors would not wish to hear, for evidently they'd feel inevitably and uncomfortably, though indirectly, targeted. 

The poet, above and beyond all else, ought to decry censorship, speak rude truth even at the expense of literary and/or academic career, and otherwise be a soldier/defender of freedom of speech and vigorous debate, democracy's cornerstones.  He or she ought to have the courage to especially denounce the censorship effected by organizations like the Academy of American Poets. 

A few years ago, I’d contacted members of an earlier flock of chancellors who proved indifferent to censorship.  One of them is present in the current flock, prof emeritus, ex-hippie Lyn Hejinian.  No matter.  The careers of chancellor Dichterlings depend on chancellor Dichterlings turning a blind eye and adorning a classy-looking muzzle. 

Mary Jo Bang was first to present a response:  “Today, as in any era, there are myriad roles for poets: semiotician, elegist, eulogist, gamer, white noise machine, musician, Sapphist, theorist, father figure, bird watcher, a video projection of a moving mouth—all trapped behind the glass of Wittgenstein's fly-bottle.”   

Jo Bang seems to excel like most other known poets in the art of vacuous verbiage.  Perhaps that’s the true role of today's poet.  Brilliant, Jo Bang!

Mark Bibbins was next in line:  “To point out that today's culture has spinach in its teeth and egg on its face.” 

Now, that’s a good way to avoid speaking rude truth!  Cover it up with egg… and why not throw some bacon in its mouth too?   Brilliant, Bibbins!

Timothy Donnelly fired out the fundamental problem, without of course realizing it was in fact a problem:  “The role of the poet qua poet is to write poems. What is the role of the architect in today's culture? What is the role of the chef? The answers are self-evident. A poet writes poems. I don't see any other additional role or function or responsibility that all poets share...” 

Yes, the poet as ostrich supreme.  Brilliant, Donnelly!

Randall Mann echoed Donnelly’s modus operandi of scribouilleur uber alles:  “The poet should shut the door and write poems, and then, after much time and care, show the world. If this goes well, the role-playing will take care of itself.” 

Yes, the poet as role player certainly mirrored the sad reality of most poets as role-playing poseurs.  Just look at their websites.  Brilliant, Mann! 

Ben Mirov noted with a little touch of fanciful Dali:  “The role of the poet in today's culture is the same as it's always been: to be a huge transparent eyeball.”   

But it took more than a mere eyeball.  It also took a mouth and especially the courage to open it when doing so might irk the flock!  Brilliant, Mirov!

Brenda Shaughnessy suggested:  “Not that the poet's work makes it all the way out into actual ‘culture’ very often, but nonetheless, I do see the poet as someone whose role it is to push back against anti-intellectualism, anti-activism, and passivity in general.” 

Yet how not to be anti-intellectual when the intellectuals remained buffered in academic herds, ever truncating freedom of speech and vigorous debate in the name of today's world religion:  PC?  Would Shaughnessy remain passive now that she's been informed the Academy not only censored my remarks but also banned me from participating in its online forums several years ago?  But of course she would!  Brilliant, Shaughnessy!'

 

Betsy Newell

Celebrate Banning Books and Patrons Week