Toni Morrison

...................

Morrison is as racist as it gets and of course gets a pass because she's not only privileged but is black.  That is the sad sign of our modern times.  Two wrongs make a right... somehow.  I was planning on doing a cartoon on her thanks to her latest white-hate racist essay in the New Yorker, "Mourning Whiteness," but then realized I'd already done two on her and that was enough.  So, I post the two old cartoons now.  The only thing that's changed since them is her girth, which gets larger and larger... along with her privilege.  We have white-privileged racist pigs and we also have black-privileged racist pigs, including Obama, Holder, Lynch, Oprah, and Morrison...

...................

Mourning for Reason

A Dialogue de Sourds between a Black One-Percenter and a White Male without Voice

Reason is the arch-enemy of ideology.  

—P. Maudit

The New Yorker certainly does not mourn for the death of reason and will certainly not publish this pro-reason rebuttal.  Indeed, it is quite content for the death of reason in the darkness of the left-wing ideology it espouses.  If it did mourn for reason, it would not have published Toni Morrison’s “Mourning for Whiteness,” a despicable anti-white racist diatribe, of the kind so popular on far too many of the nation’s ideologically-controlled college campuses today, where anti-white racism has all but replaced reason.    

Morrison is a multimillionaire one-percenter, immensely privileged black woman, far more privileged than most white males.  Simply mentioning that reality inevitably upsets her white-privilege narrative.  Besides her wealth and hoarding of over $25 million, she has voice, whereas most white males do not have voice.  The elitist New Yorker will publish anything she has to say, including racist rant.  That’s called privilege.  In fact, one must have privilege connections to be published in such a highbrow magazine.  For Morrison and likely the editors at the New Yorker, racism is good, as long as anti-white.  Double standards, stereotyping, and grotesque generalizations are part of Morrison’s game, while logic and reason are not.  For Morrison, two wrongs make a right. 

TM:  “All immigrants to the United States know (and knew) that if they want to become real, authentic Americans they must reduce their fealty to their native country and regard it as secondary, subordinate, in order to emphasize their whiteness.”  

PM:  So, white immigrants from England or Norway, for example, have (and had) to reduce their fealty to those countries, or they’d be emphasizing their blackness and thus anti-whiteness?  And all those immigrants brandishing the Mexican flag or setting up mosques are also rejecting whiteness in favor of blackness?   Hmm.  And how can a black immigrant from Haiti emphasize his or her “whiteness”?  And how about Somalis in Minnesota?  If assimilating into American values such as freedom of speech, vigorous debate, due process, and equality of treatment constitutes whiteness, then what values might constitute blackness?  Evidently, values you prefer.  Perhaps then you ought to consider moving to a whiteness-devoid black dictatorship in Africa.  It might make you a lot happier!  

TM:  “White people’s conviction of their natural superiority is being lost. Rapidly lost.”  

PM:  Yet I am white and do not walk around with a sense of superiority, natural or unnatural, for the mere color of my white skin.  But you walk around with a definite sense of superiority for the mere color of your black skin.  Go figure!  Logic is certainly not the forte of racists and ideologues. 

TM:  “There are ‘people of color’ everywhere, threatening to erase this long-understood definition of America.  And what then?  Another black President?  A predominantly black Senate? Three black Supreme Court Justices?  The threat is frightening.”  

PM:  Well, that “threat” is only frightening if it means the same blackness rule we’ve seen in African countries like Liberia, Ruanda, and Nigeria, where “whiteness” principles of freedom of speech, vigorous debate, due process, and equality are inexistent.  

TM:  “In order to limit the possibility of this untenable change [i.e., the “threat”], and restore whiteness to its former status as a marker of national identity, a number of white Americans are sacrificing themselves.  They are willing to kill small children attending Sunday school and slaughter churchgoers who invite a white boy to pray.”

PM:  That number is a minute minority!  You make it sound like a majority of white males shoot blacks!  How absurd!  One deranged man in South Carolina shamefully massacred those black churchgoers.  Why do you not mention the shameful massacres at Orlando and San Bernadino perpetrated by blackness?  And what about the near massacre at Ohio State perpetuated by blackness?  Ah, they do not fit your racist anti-white narrative, that’s why!  The racist KKK, which for some reason you do not name, is hardly representative of white people in America today.  Is Farrakhan’s racist Nation of Islam representative of black people in America?  Let’s hope not!  And what about the black males shooting black children in the streets of Chicago?  Ah, again, that doesn’t fit the narrative, nor do the black on white crime statistics that indicate blacks attack whites 25 times more frequently than vice versa (National Crime Victimization Survey).  

TM:  “To keep alive the perception of white superiority, these white Americans tuck their heads under cone-shaped hats and American flags and deny themselves the dignity of face-to-face confrontation, training their guns on the unarmed, the innocent, the scared, on subjects who are running away, exposing their unthreatening backs to bullets.”

PM:  Yes, there is or was a KKK violence problem in the deep south, though I haven’t heard much at all about it in several decades or more. However, I have heard of racist anti-white Black Lives Matter mobs  beating up whites.  

TM:  “Surely, shooting a fleeing man in the back hurts the presumption of white strength?”

PM:  And of course the same could be said of blacks who shoot whites in the back!  

TM:  The sad plight of grown white men, crouching beneath their (better) selves, to slaughter the innocent during traffic stops, to push black women’s faces into the dirt, to handcuff black children. Only the frightened would do that. Right?

PM:  And what about the sad plight of grown black men, crouching beneath their (better) selves, to slaughter the innocent during traffic stops and rape white women? Only the frightened would do that.  RIght?  Well, maybe only the mentally deficient, violent macho cruel-streaked. 

TM:  “Personal debasement is not easy for white people (especially for white men), but to retain the conviction of their superiority to others—especially to black people—they are willing to risk contempt, and to be reviled by the mature, the sophisticated, and the strong.  If it weren’t so ignorant and pitiful, one could mourn this collapse of dignity in service to an evil cause.”  

PM:  How can you really incarnate “the mature, the sophisticated, and the strong”?  On the contrary, you incarnate a conviction of black superiority just like the white superiority you denounce!  When have you manifested an iota of “personal debasement,” whatever the hell that means?  What a flaming hypocrite!  

TM:  “The comfort of being “naturally better than,” of not having to struggle or demand civil treatment, is hard to give up.  The confidence that you will not be watched in a department store, that you are the preferred customer in high-end restaurants—these social inflections, belonging to whiteness, are greedily relished.”

PM:  Now, who but privileged multi-millionaires like you even go to “high-end restaurants” and lament about the possibility of not being treated like some queen Pulitzer bee?  As for civil treatment, I’m white and have had to demand it and still have not received it.  My civil rights are being denied in my town because I have been prohibited from attending any cultural or political events held at my neighborhood library because I stood up for freedom of speech.  What library prohibits you from attending cultural and political events?  Not one!  So don’t tell me high-and-mighty queen Pulitzer bee that because of my skin color I have rights you do not have.  Wake up!  This is the 21st century, not the Antebellum South!  

TM: “So scary are the consequences of a collapse of white privilege that many Americans have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against the defenseless as strength. These people are not so much angry as terrified, with the kind of terror that makes knees tremble.”  

PM:  Affirmative Action ended the notion of white privilege and began the notion of black privilege… quite a while ago and now it’s two wrongs make a right.  Some progress, eh!  If the “collapse of white privilege” is synonymous with the collapse of reason, free speech, vigorous debate, due process, and equality, then indeed perhaps we should flock to a new platform.  It is your visceral hatred for white people that makes your knees tremble!  

TM:  “On Election Day, how eagerly so many white voters—both the poorly educated and the well educated—embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump,” 

PM:  And yet why did so many white voters vote for Obama with almost no experience, who didn’t give a damn about New Black Panther scare-tactics at the voting polls and supported Black Lives Matter rioting and looting?   And why should so many black voters have voted for a congenital liar and perjurer like Hillary?  Do they represent a basket of deplorable blackness?   

TM:  “The candidate whose company has been sued by the Justice Department for not renting apartments to black people.”

PM: And what about the candidate whose foundation cheated poor black Haitians in need out of millions of dollars? 

TM:  “The candidate who questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the United States, and who seemed to condone the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally.” 

PM:  Yet Obama himself wrote that he was born in Kenya!  And what about the candidate who supported Black Lives Matter—the riots, looting, killing of cops, and beating up whites?

TM:  “The candidate who kept black workers off the floors of his casinos. The candidate who is beloved by David Duke and endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.”

PM:  And what about the candidate who is beloved by the father of Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen and crooked Muslim pay-to-play lawyer Khzir Khan and who takes millions of dollars from Islamic dictatorships that treat women as sub-humans?  

TM:  “William Faulkner understood this better than almost any other American writer. In Absalom, Absalom, incest is less of a taboo for an upper-class Southern family than acknowledging the one drop of black blood that would clearly soil the family line. Rather than lose its “whiteness” (once again), the family chooses murder.

PM:  This is the 21st century.  Educate yourself queen Pulitzer bee!  Now, here’s a few facts you willfully ignore about wonderful blackness.  The very first legal slave owner in America was a black man, Anthony Johnson.  Thousands of black slaveowners existed during the Antebellum period, including over 3000 in New Orleans alone.  Some of those black slaveholders used their slaves as human sacrifices in religious rituals.  Black author Thomas Sowell notes that Muslim (i.e., blackness, not whiteness) slaveholders “marched vast numbers of human beings from their homes where they had been captured to the places where they would be sold, hundreds of miles away, often spending months crossing the burning sands of the Sahara. The death toll on these marches exceeded even the horrific toll on packed slave ships crossing the Atlantic.”  Blackness Muslims enslaved millions of whiteness Europeans.  After all, the word “slave” derives not from blacks, but from Slavs, who were white Europeans, many of whom were enslaved. Today, blackness Muslims still own slaves!  

 

In retrospect, whiteness must be pretty damn good if it allows people like Morrison to freely express their white-hatred viewpoints.  In fact, do blackness regimes allow for black-hatred viewpoints to be expressed in Africa and elsewhere?  Apparently not, which explains why so many choose to immigrate to whiteness America.  In any case, real progress does not mean giving a pass to black racists.  It means rejecting racism, black or white.  Period.  Morrison has a long way to go with that regard… and evidently at her age, she ain’t gonna have the time to get there.  The New Yorker has yet to respond to this rebuttal.  

Toni Morrison

Elizabeth Lund

.........................

Poetry-as-Usual:  A Brief Review of a Brief Review

“The key reason for the smallness of the audience for poetry is that people associate poetry with school…”

—Billy Collins

What to scribble when famous poets and their hagiographers have nothing to say and never dare transgress the space space of literary careerism?  Well, Elizabeth Lund, publishing house pusher, uh, literary critic at Washington Post, illustrates the problem in her brief essay, “Best poetry of the month: New collections by Billy Collins and Robert Pinsky,” where not an iota of criticism… just the kind of praise one might expect from a court jester introducing a poet laureate to a Hillarius, the First.  In this case, it’s two poet laureates.  

Well, at least Lund didn’t take the leap to best poetry of the century.  However, she still piles it on.  For Collins’ The Rain in Portugal, it’s “dry wit,” “subtle twists,” “fanciful landscape,” “richness,” “biting moments,” and “evocative and lovely.”  The subjects Collins writes about, anything but critical of the academic/literary hand that feeds him so royally, include conversations with an imaginary sister, thoughts of Shakespeare on an airplane, Keith Richards holding up the world, a weathervane, a “veggie platter that suggests the impermanence of life,” and “an encounter with a brown rabbit that could be the late Seamus Heaney.”  Yes, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud!  No, I am not making these things up, nor apparently is Lund, who argues:  “The constant shifting in these pieces provides both pleasure and a vivid example of how one’s thoughts, when unrestrained, can lead to unexpected destinations.”  Allow me to paraphrase with a touch of hard-core critique: “how one’s thoughts, when restrained, can lead to expected destinations… of utter fluff.”  

As for the other academic careerist and distinguished fellow, Pinsky—you know, that working-class guy from New Jersey—, it’s always quite safe to write about subjects distant from his little cocoon in the intellectually corrupt academy, in this case, Boston University, which was accorded the worst rating for freedom of speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (see 

https://www.thefire.org/schools/boston-university/ and https://www.thefire.org/speech-code-of-the-month-boston-university/).  Does Pinsky care about that rating?  Not in the least!  Yet how can a poet survive chained down by speech codes (i.e., without freedom of speech)?  Well, Pinsky apparently has no problem at all with that!  

His latest book, At the Foundling Hospital,” concerns “infants, slaves and immigrants.”  Perhaps a plea for open borders or support for Black Lives Matter?  Again, Lund lauds with unoriginal high-brow laudanum:   “tremendous range of thought,” “ability to weave together complex ideas into resonant poems,” “sophisticated,” “refined music,” “gives voice to various gods,” and forces “readers to rethink the wisdom they know.”  Man, Pinsky must be a god himself to be able to do all of that!  Lord, I better get down on my prayer rug.  Hmm.  And brilliantly Lund decides the poems themselves are foundlings.  Oh, she’ll surely bring a smile to Pinsky!  

Yes, poet laureates Billy Collins and Robert Pinsky not only have the stamp of Congressional approval, but, according to Lund, provide fascinating, if not brilliant, examples of… absolute fluff.  

Collins is wrong regarding the key reason for small poetry audiences.  The real reason is gutless, boring poets, not to mention gutless, boring poetry reviews, and poetry devoid of purpose.  Well, he gets it right with that regard: “Poetry is aimless, not purposeful. The poem is dancing with itself.”

The Fall of Hillarius, the First ! 

I think she’s a total goddess and I just love her.

—Miley Cyrus aka the Tongue

the lies, the denial, the perjury, the lying about the lies,

the lousy memory, the short-circuiting mind,

the rampant cronyism, the deflecting, the hypocrisy, 

the flip flopping, the ethics vacuum, the quid pro quo,

the Wikileaks bombshells, the Project Veritas revelations, 

the spinning surrogates, the entitlement, the elitism, 

the social engineering, the ultra-efficient smear machine,

the most transparent opacity in history, the epic greed, 

the conflicts of interest, the demonization tactics, 

the ruthful vindictiveness, the fawning Pravda press,

the four FBI investigations, the Homey in the back pocket,

the stronger-together platitude spewing, the reset button,

the safe spaces, the speech codes, and the trigger warnings,

the diversity groupthink exclusion mind-forged manacles,

the White Privilege bullshit, the rejection of All Lives Matter, 

the deafening silence in the face of Black Lives Matter racism, 

the deranged smile and cackle, the mess in the Middle East,

the Goldman Sachs speeches, the BleachBit, 

the town hall questions from Donna Brazil,

the rigged Democrat Party primary, the selling out of Bernie,

the basket of “I’m for her” deplorables, 

the fraudulent foundation, the election tampering,

the Muslim Brotherhood, the Benghazi nightmare,

the $5.4 million “crystal stemware” for the State Department,

the death of Vince Foster, the selling of the Lincoln bedroom,

the vast right-wing-conspiracy left-wing conspiracy theories, 

the defamation of Bubba-accusing women, 

the carbon footprint for thee, but not for my family,

the decades of self-service public service, 

the Istanbul Process and its Resolution 16/18,

the contempt for the Freedom of Information Act,

the revulsion for the Freedom of Information Act,

  the hatred for the Freedom of Information Act, 

and, more than anything else, the thousand-dollar Mao Pantsuits…

—G. Tod Slone (todslone@hotmail.com, Ed, The American Dissident

Michael Rectenwald

..................................................

From: George Slone

Sent: Thursday, November 3, 2016 5:42 PM

To: tips@nyunews.com; managing@nyunews.com

Subject: A cartoon on NYU and its Court of Civility

To Alex Bazeley, Ed-in-Chief, and Managing Ed. Bobby Wagner, Washington Square News, NYU student newspaper:  

Please publish the attached cartoon in your newspaper.  It concerns NYU.  If you decide against it, please inform me why.  Thank you!  

..................................................

[NO RESPONSE FROM THE EDITORS!}

From: George Slone

Sent: Monday, November 7, 2016 6:27 PM

To: smm274@nyu.edu; se24@nyu.edu; rs84@nyu.edu; marion.thain@nyu.edu; et28@nyu.edu; michael.rectenwald@nyu.edu

Subject: In the High Court of Civility

To NYU Professors et al of the Liberal Studies Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Working Group (i.e., Suzanne Maria Menghraj, Sean Eve, Robert Squillace, Marion Thain, Elayne Tobin, Jonathon White, Hannah Pingelton and Michael Rectenwald): 

A new cartoon depicting each of you was just posted on The American Dissident blog site (see 

wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com).  

About a week ago, I wrote to Prof. Rectenwald, hoping he might submit an essay RE his current battle with PC-academe.  He chose NOT to respond.  Likely, he is now cowering with regard to his career as a lifer academic.  So be it.  I then contacted the editor-in-chief of the Washington Square News.  He did NOT respond.  It seems to be the norm nowadays that such editors tend to be in lockstep with reigning professors, while, of course, boasting independence.  With his regard, I could be wrong.  Maybe he’ll respond in a week or maybe two or maybe next year.  Alas, VIGOROUS DEBATE tends NOT to be a cornerstone in most corners of academe.  Feel free to respond and even post your comments on the blog site.  Comments are NEVER censored.  I do not bite!  But I do tickle.  Nevertheless, my long experience with academics like you leads me to assume not one of you will respond.  BTW, it was the mind-numbing statement repeated in the cartoon that grabbed my full attention.  How not to question and challenge such inane statements?  Enjoy! 
........................

[NO RESPONSE FROM THE PROFS, except from Elayne Tobin.  See below!]

Bitch

Thanks for your feminism, for your activism, and all I can hope is you keep up the really important, good work.  And let me just say, this is directed to the activist bitches supporting bitches. So let’s go.

—Hillary Clinton

When criticized, the academic/literary establishment is all so predictable—the inevitable deafening silence.  Partisans of the establishment overwhelmingly rejected vigorous debate regarding their openly expressed thoughts and ideas.  When a rare partisan responds, she or he will inevitably not respond to the counter arguments put forth, but rather employ an arsenal of unoriginal epithets.  

My creativity, as a cartoonist, is more often than not provoked by comments devoid of reason, replete with vacuity.  One such comment stemmed from an open letter in the Washington Square News, the student newspaper of “elite” New York University, penned by members of the collectivist Liberal Studies Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Working Group.  Even Orwell couldn’t have made up a better name for it.  A more honest name would have been Collectivist Studies Uniformity, Inequity and Exclusion Working Group.  But academe alas is not known for honesty… and individualism is after all the enemy of collectivism… and vice versa.  

The open letter in question was written to castigate Michael Rectenwald, an untenured NYU Clinical Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies, whatever that might entail.  Rectenwald had made anti-PC comments on the internet.  Oddly, he argued he was not right-wing but rather “left communist.”  Go figure!  No matter.  What grabbed my attention was the following statement made in the open letter:  

“We fully support Professor Rectenwald’s right to speak his mind and we welcome civil discourse on the issues that concern him. But as long as he airs his views with so little appeal to evidence and civility, we must find him guilty of illogic and incivility in a community that predicates its work in great part on rational thought and the civil exchange of ideas. The cause of Professor Rectenwald’s guilt is certainly not, in our view, his identity as a cis, white, straight male. The cause of his guilt is the content and structure of his thinking.” 

First, I contacted Rectenwald, asking if he’d write a short essay for The American Dissident.  He chose not to respond.  After all, he was a tenure-tracker, seeking to climb up the establishment ladder and into a professional safety cocoon.  The idea for a cartoon then materialized, and I began sketching.  When I finished the cartoon, I sent it off to Editor-in-Chief Alex Bazeley and Managing Editor Bobby Wagner of the student newspaper.  Unsurprisingly, neither responded.  Such editors usually proclaimed independence while simultaneously being in lockstep with their journalist professors, and otherwise quite dependent on the thought-pabulum dished out at their respective universities.  

Next, I posted the cartoon, “In the High Court of Civility,” on The American Dissident blog site and sent notice to the targets depicted in it.  Because of space limitations, I did not sketch student Working Group members Asha Kuziwa, Felipe Gomes, Marsha Ho, and Tiger Kneller, though did include mention of their names at the bottom of the cartoon.  The email sent was the following:  

To NYU Professors et al of the Liberal Studies Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Working Group (i.e., Suzanne Maria Menghraj, Sean Eve, Robert Squillace, Marion Thain, Elayne Tobin, Jonathon White, Hannah Pingelton and Michael Rectenwald): 

A new cartoon depicting each of you was just posted on The American Dissident blog site (see wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com).  About a week ago, I wrote to Prof. Rectenwald, hoping he might submit an essay RE his current battle with PC-academe.  He chose NOT to respond.  Likely, he is now cowering with regard to his career as a lifer academic.  So be it.  I then contacted the editor-in-chief of the Washington Square News.  He did NOT respond.  It seems to be the norm nowadays that such editors tend to be in lockstep with reigning professors, while, of course, boasting independence.  With his regard, I could be wrong.  Maybe he’ll respond in a week or maybe two or maybe next year.  Alas, VIGOROUS DEBATE tends NOT to be a cornerstone in most corners of academe.  Feel free to respond and even post your comments on the blog site.  Comments are NEVER censored.  I do not bite!  But I do tickle.  Nevertheless, my long experience with academics like you leads me to assume not one of you will respond.  BTW, it was the mind-numbing statement repeated in the cartoon that grabbed my full attention.  How not to question and challenge such inane statements?  Enjoy!   

A sketch at the bottom of “Literary Letters for the Public Record” appearing in each issue of The American Dissident features P. Maudit fishing and catching an academic on a hook.  Now, how not to think of that sketch when Clinical Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies Elayne L. Tobin responded?  

Dear George,

The Working Group was echoing Mr. Rectenwald's claims that he was "guilty of being a cis white male”—I assume before you posted this you read his original interview with the University newspaper, the Washington Square News, right? As a writer, I assume you did that? 

If not, here is the paragraph from the interview:

WSN: Could you talk a little about your thoughts on the entire push for diversity in general then?

MR: A cis, white, straight male like myself is guilty of something. I don’t know what. But I’m fucking sure I’m guilty of it. And I am very low on the ethical totem pole, you know? People who are doing different things, it’s like, “we are the most precious souls,” you know? The most beleaguered are the best, and the worst is the best. So there’s a one-downmanship that goes on. I despise it for the status seeking, the seeking after the most oppressed people position status that it involves, which is just utterly and completely eradicates any possibility of solidarity. But one thing I want to make clear is that I am not against diversity. What I’m against is the policing of identity that’s going on — the policing of behavior with reference to diversity. I’m not against diversity. I’m against the university using diversity as an ideology to make themselves look ethical..

Also, you are naming 18 and 19 year old students in this cartoon. Most of whom are minorities. You want to do that in a magazine about dissent? When they were actually dissenting? Free speech goes both ways. You say something and someone can say something back. That is how it works, as you know.

I am speaking for myself, not the Working Group. I want to make this clear. They are smart, empathetic people who I am sure will have their own responses, or not.

Mr.Rectenwald is on a paid leave that he requested.

And I am respectful of Cuba, unlike you. I have no idea what your site is about in general, except nastiness and the bizarre "tickling" comment.

Thanks, but not very much, for the head's up. I stand with these people.

Dr. Elayne Tobin

From there, the two of us engaged in what the French term a dialogue de sourds.  However, I responded to every point Tobin made, while she chose not to respond to any points I made.  Perhaps that sums up the new academic modus operandi.  

In my response, I congratulated Tobin for actually responding, while noting my doubts that any of her colleagues would also respond.  And indeed not one of them ever did.  And of course I had read the interview and had not found an iota of illogic or incivility in the paragraph she presented from it.  

But then I was not one who looked through ideological glasses.  And logic would never/could never be the forte of an ideologue.  I noted I would have taken it much further than Rectenwald, as in eliminate the costly diversity ideology centers with their overpaid deans of diversity that served to indoctrinate, not educate, and replace them with First Amendment centers that would educate students on the importance of freedom of speech and expression and vigorous debate.  One would be hard-pressed to find just one university in America with such a center and equally hard-pressed to find just one university without a diversity center.  Sadly, academe and academics had a strong monkey-see, monkey-do tendency.  Tobin of course ignored my comments.  

Now, the sentence that had provoked my satirizing of Tobin and her group was, as noted above:  “But as long as he airs his views with so little appeal to evidence and civility, we must find him guilty of illogic and incivility in a community that predicates its work in great part on rational thought and the civil exchange of ideas.” 

The “civil exchange of ideas” was of course code for mandatory groupthink.  Criticize the group and be judged uncivil.  The growing emphasis on civility in academe was a thinly-veiled anti-free speech ploy.  Why Tobin could not see that was easily explained by her position in academe and ideology.  

Regarding Rectenwald’s request for a paid leave of absence, I would have thought such a request would be very difficult to obtain.  The norm would be that administrators dictate the paid leave because of unwanted controversy.  In fact, that happened to me once upon a time.  Moreover, I asked Tobin why she referred to Rectenwald as Mr. rather than Dr.  After all, he did possess a doctoral degree and she signed her email with Dr. because she had a doctoral degree.  Might that be subtle “nastiness” on her part?  

If Tobin were so respectful of Cuba, then she evidently did not respect that most basic of human rights, freedom of speech and expression.  Cuba was a dictatorship.  Poets and artists were in jail in Cuba for having simply expressed themselves openly.  Thousands and thousands of Cuban citizens had fled Cuba because of the ruthless Castro dictatorship.  For a writer, Tobin certainly did not seem to care about them or the absence of freedom of expression in Cuba!  Of course, when I brought those things to her attention, she did not address them. 

Furthermore and unsurprisingly, Tobin did not seem to understand what free speech encompassed. Her statement on the students, bizarre in itself, emphasized that lack of understanding:  “Also, you are naming 18 and 19 year old students in this cartoon. Most of whom are minorities. You want to do that in a magazine about dissent? When they were actually dissenting? Free speech goes both ways. You say something and someone can say something back. That is how it works, as you know.”

So, if someone were dissenting, then I shouldn’t question and challenge that person?  How aberrant!  And if that someone were 18 or 19, then I should give him or her a pass?  How aberrant!  How did that possibly jive with the concept of free speech?  Were minorities somehow exempt from questioning and challenging?  Oddly, Tobin evidently thought they should be.  

An 18 or 19-year old student was no longer a child, but officially/legally an adult.  Whether or not those students were minorities was immaterial.  Why should minorities be treated differently… and like children?  Was Tobin against equality?  If those students wanted to be safe and cocooned, they should not have joined her Working Group and become signatories of an open letter.  Surely, Tobin could agree with that.  But she didn’t.  

Tobin’s ”nastiness” comment served to demonize the entirety of The American Dissident website, which was composed of numerous pages, including essays by Thoreau, Emerson, Orwell, and Solzhenitsyn, as well as poems by Villon, Lorca, Mandelstam, Neruda, and Cuban dissident Raul Rivero.  Were they "nastiness"?  Tobin would not stipulate.  Moreover, without precise examples to back such a general “nastiness” criticism, it became meaningless.  

Regarding my “tickle” comment, well, it was clearly meant to be humorous.  Tobin would not specify why she thought it was “bizarre.”  Well, I did not expect responses to any of those questions because I’d be surprised if Tobin had any logical retort to offer, besides the “nastiness” non-argument.  Perhaps somebody should judge Tobin guilty of “illogic and incivility” and not for having contravened the ivory-tower community modus operandi, but rather for having contravened that of the freedom-loving community beyond the tower walls.  Tobin responded with another non-response.  

George, some of what you say I agree with, some things I vehemently disagree with and find quite knee-jerk, frankly. I didn't think the Working Group's letter was perfect, but then, nothing ever is. I simply can't talk about employee issues in any detail here, as it is not my realm nor my right. 

You can assume what you will, but your journalistic knowledge about this is, of course, severely and problematically limited by your lack of knowledge about the specifics. Painting Michael Rectenwald like some sort of religious martyr in the cartoon seems odd, at the very least. He claimed he was "guilty" in the most desperate and straw man way. He has been given all the benefits of employment at an elite university. You know nothing about our program and are distinctly out of line with the facts of the situation.

I am sorry you were asked to take paid leave once, but that only sours me to your objectivity on this issue.

As does your bio:

G. Tod Slone, aka P. Maudit (cartoonist sobriquet), is the founding and sole editor of The American Dissident, which was created in 1998 as a direct result of the corruption experienced first-hand at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts (see genesis).  At that institution, I was a tenure-track professor of French and Spanish.  After arbitration hearings during my fifth year overwhelmingly pointed to intrinsic institutional corruption, I was offered a year's salary as settlement, but not further employment and, of course, no apology whatsoever. 

Many personal conflicts and events helped to form my critical nature and passion for the First Amendment. The following include a small sample of them. 

—Permanent trespass w/o due process from McKay Campus (Fitchburg State) due to the complaint of one professor, friend of chairperson DeCesare who wanted me out, that she was afraid of me 

—Three-month Trespass w/o due process from Watertown Free Public Library due to the complaint of the reference librarian (one hell of an uptight bitch!) 

—My arrest and incarceration in a Concord jail cell for a day for having had a non-violent dispute with a Walden Pond State Reservation Park ranger

—Permanent trespass from Sturgis Library due to written criticism of Lucy Loomis, its fascistic director (another hell of an uptight bitch!) 

But good luck With your cartoon and article.  I had never heard of your publication before, and probably won't again. Maybe I am, your words, "An uptight bitch"?

Elayne

Then came a brief PS.  

Also I just found this [from The American Dissident website], so now I am laughing out loud at your free speech arguements [sic] and your cartoon, mocking us as a "J'accuse" Centered group.  

Public Citizen has been publishing a list of questionable doctors. In vain, I've requested that it also publish a list of dubious professors and college administrators. After all, public higher education shapes the very soul of the nation. At Fitchburg State College, a list of those apathetic to truth and justice ought to be topped by presidents Riccards and Mara, Dean Shirley Wagner, Emeriti Semerjian and DeCesare, former Director of Personnel Mary Scott, former Director of Academic Advising Joan Niehaus, former Dean of Continuing Education Michele Zide (who had been evaluating her teaching husband, a local judge), Professors Nan Wiegersmeier, Charlie Hetzel, Jane Fiske, Louis Lorenzen, Robert Champlin, Robin Dinda, Carol Sickul, James Colbert, Walter Jeffco, Richard Glidewell, and Maria Jaramillo. The list ought also include the lawyers and administrators of the MSCA professors' union (part of the all-powerful Massachusetts Teachers Association, which is part of the National Education Association), The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Sentinel, The Concord Journal, The Worcester Telegram, Thought & Action, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Adjunct Advocate, Lingua Franca, Academe, College English, as well as former Poet Laureate of the US Congress Robert Pinsky and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, both Fitchburg State College graduation speakers who preferred collecting their big taxpayer-paid speaking fees to responding to my correspondence regarding the corrupt administration inviting them. 

Now, should I be surprised that Tobin would be laughing out loud regarding the diverse injustices listed on my website?  Not in the least!  Her academic career depended on her having that kind of pitiful reaction.  I hadn’t thought of adding her to that list of dubious professors because I’d forgotten it even existed.  I’d composed it in the late 1990s.  And again, Tobin essentially and unsurprisingly ignored the precise points I’d made in my response.  What points she found to be lacking in objectivity she, of course, did not mention.  I do not knee-jerk respond.  In fact, I carefully proofread and contemplate my correspondence prior to sending it.  She would not state on what precisely she agreed with me.  

Oddly, I hadn’t thought of the “martyr” aspect at all.  The main thought was the JUDGES.  I did not consider the inquisition idea.  I did NOT view Rectenwald as a martyr.  Not in the least!  If I had had the martyr thought, I would have depicted him in chains and dressed Tobin and the others as holy inquisitors.  Instead, I simply had them all wearing the chevroned regalia.  Again, my critique was focused on the Working Group statement, not on Rectenwald.  That was clear, though evidently foggy for Tobin.  

The items listed from my bio certainly helped turn me into an individual who questioned and challenged what perhaps most people did not have the courage to do, let alone the thought or interest.  My college degrees certainly did not form me in that sense.  From those events (i.e., listed items), I obtained so much grist for my creative writing mill.   A dissident was always formed by conflicts with power.  Tobin would not/could not understand that because rather than question and challenge power, she instead chose to be part of power.  Only when one tested the waters of power and democracy did one truly come to realize just how murky they tended to be.  

Regarding my use of the term “bitch” to characterize library director Loomis, I was very much against ad hominem, though in that instance it was clearly not simple ad hominem because the case for labeling Loomis a “bitch” was presented in full detail.  Ad hominem was really the use of such terms with little if any backing at all.  It served to kill the messenger in a clear effort to avoid the message.  That was not what I did.  Loomis was someone who could not take any criticism of her little library fiefdom.  She hated free speech and hated due process, two vital cornerstones of democracy.  I wasn’t surprised Tobin had chosen to focus on the “bitch” comment and didn’t give a damn that someone could be banned for life from his neighborhood library without due process and for the crime of having written a critical open letter devoid of prohibited vocabulary, sexual innuendo, and physical threats.  Tobin’s pathetic reaction was typical apathy.  

Clearly, Tobin had never heard about The American Dissident because it was next to impossible for me to interest gatekeeper librarians like those at her university to subscribe to it and thus heed the ALA’s library bill of rights, as in “libraries should provide material and information presenting all points of view.”  That statement formed an integral part of Loomis’ collection development statement and was the focus of my open letter.  Why was Tobin so indifferent to that?  Well, she wouldn’t say.  

The academic/literary establishment hated criticism with its regard.  As for college libraries, normally I had to find a professor willing to suggest the journal to the college librarian.  Finding an open-minded professor willing to counter the taboo on vigorous debate and diversity of opinions was next to impossible nowadays.  Since founding the journal in 1998, I’d managed to bump into one such professor at Endicott College.  And I’d contacted so many, many of them.  Also, Poets & Writers magazine and NewPages.com amongst others refuse to even list the journal.  Also, the NEA and state cultural councils refuse to accord it any grants, despite its 501c3 nonprofit designation.  Institutional subscribers, however, did include New York Public Library, Concord Free Public Library, as well as Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Michigan, Buffalo, and Brown universities.  Tobin would not respond to any of those things.  

Again back to the “bitch” deflection ploy, I would not call Tobin an “uptight bitch.”  However, I would call her an ideologue who didn’t give a damn about the principles of democracy.  That would be much more appropriate… and civil.  Also, she evidently placed career on a much higher pedestal than bold truth telling.  For those inflicted with ideological indoctrination, fact and reason were immaterial. 

And thus Tobin wrote her final non-response, addressing little if anything at all addressed in my responses, and manifesting total lack of appreciation for debate.   

Sorry, but don't have the time or inclination to respond to you anymore. Not because of my career, or because you call women "bitches" with crazy frequency ( a simple Google search reveals this, to answer your origin question), but mainly because my gut politics that say you are a nutcase, and my intellectual instincts say, given the hilarious ironies of each thing I read from you, that you are just not worth arguing with. It is a waste of my time, entirely.

Goodbye.

Well, the crux of the Rectenwald controversy at NYU was debate and free speech.  Tobin and her Working Group wanted to turn both cornerstones off.  Period.  I did not have the habit of dismissing women with whom I disagreed with the term “bitch.”   Yes, I called one woman a “bitch.” And now and then I might have used the term.  How nonsensical of Tobin to turn that into “you call women ‘bitches’ with crazy frequency.”  How the hell did she come up with that one?  I did not hate women.  Did Tobin hate men?  When reason failed, employ ad hominem!  That’s something I never did.  Now and then I might include ad hominem but always accompanied with reason.  I spoke freely. Tobin spoke PC-career and ideologically.  There was a world of difference between the two.  I sought truth; she sought ideological compatibility.  Sadly, she refused to even contemplate the reality that careerism was inevitably a muzzle on free thought and speech.  

She labeled people who disagreed with her ideologically-mind-forged manacles, to use Blake’s term, as “nutcase.”  How original!  I’ll have to add that to the list.  When one couldn’t out-reason an opponent, just call him a “nutcase.”  Demonization 101 was the course Tobin should be teaching. Was calling me a “nutcase” any different from my calling Loomis a “bitch”?  Well, yes, because I included plenty of reason to justify the latter, whereas Tobin did not regarding the former.  Tobin’s evoking my "bitch" comment clearly served to deflect away from Loomis’ misdeeds.  One word, “bitch,” eliminated any intellectual curiosity on Tobin’s part to examine the evidence put forth.  One word, “bitch,” enabled her to remain in her intellectual safe-space cocoon.  Beware the Word Police are out there! Well, I for one would not be intimidated by them.  In fact, using prohibited vocabulary now and then served to fight against the dictates of the Word Police.  

Tobin failed miserably to provide any cogent examples to back her assertions.  She failed to respond to the points made, for example, about her treating 18-19 year old minority students as children, who had to be protected from free speech.  Intellectual discussion was not a waste of time, unless of course one was on the intellectual-losing side.  Well, it was fun while it lasted.  I informed Tobin that our “dialogue de sourds” would appear in the next issue of The American Dissident and told her to check it out next April at the New York Public Library.  Sadly, NYU’s student newspaper would never publish it!  Moreover, I knew I had the legal right to use her emails.  I’d already checked.                                                  

Furthermore, unlike academic literary journal editors, I not only brooked criticism, but encouraged and published the harshest received with my regard and that of The American Dissident in each and every issue.  I suggested she walk down to the New York Public Library and request the librarian to cancel the subscription because she was offended and so nobody could read it at that library.  That’s the kind of thing the Tobins tended to do, wasn’t it?  Shut people up with whom they did not agree.  Wasn’t that what she and her Working Group wanted to do regarding Rectenwald?  And thus I concluded in my email response:

These things said, I am not in the least bit angry or surprised by your responses and non-responses.  I’ve had much experience with academics like you over the past several decades.  Unlike you, I found our “conversations” intellectually stimulating.  I always find such “conversations” stimulating.  Attached, I include another such "conversation" I had a few years ago with another ideologically-manacled female.  It forms part of my manuscript, “Dissident X—Conversations with the Established Order and Other Parodias de Discursos and Diálogos con Sordos.”  Perhaps you could help me find a publisher?  And, oh my, I hope I didn't use the word "bitch" in it…

More recently, inspired by the infamous Hillary “bitch” quote, I wrote another email to Tobin.

From: George Slone 

Sent: Monday, January 29, 2018 9:05 AM

To: elayne.tobin@nyu.edu

Cc: Rosalyn Becker

Subject: Hillary said the B-word... Oh, my!

To Professor Elayne Tobin, aka Dr. Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, But Names Will Hurt Me Even More:  

Thought of you the other day because, well, your ex-hippie feminist idol, Hillary Clinton, recently said the B-word in public:  “Thanks for your feminism, for your activism, and all I can hope is you keep up the really important, good work.  And let me just say, this is directed to the activist bitches supporting bitches. So let’s go.”

So, am I now also permitted to use the B-word?  Or are only elite multimillionaire socialist females parading around as feminists permitted to do that?  

Anyhow, no hatred here at all.  Just raising the specter at NYU of Vigorous Debate, cornerstone of democracy.

No response was ever received…