Saturday, September 8, 2012

Dear Margaret Wente, Please Make Up Your Zarking Mind!


Disclaimer: This will probably make more sense to the Canuckistanis among us, but I couldn't let this little tidbit of Misery pass by without comment.

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Dear Margaret Wente,

I read with interest your column in this morning’s Groan and Wail.  I was genuinely moved by the gauzy reminiscences of your undergraduate experience, as you came of age during the heady days of Peace, Love, Woodstock, Flower Power, and Peter, Paul and Mary.  But for the love of Leapin’ Lucifer’s Loincloth, would you please make up your Zarking mind?!?
            I mean, one minute you’re accusing professors of all being lazy.  But this morning you were all misty eyed over the profs who used to smoke pot with you.  Last week it was how the affair between government and teachers is over.  Yet here you are this morning fondly remembering the erotic power that co-eds hold over middle aged proffies, and the lucky ones who snagged a professor husband.  There you are lecturing Quebec protestors that their degrees are worthless.  Scratch that.  There you are telling EVERYONE their degrees are worthless.   Here you are proudly telling us the most important lesson you learned in university was that everything important fits in a Volkswagon. (Really?)  Just last month you were telling universities how they are going to be replaced by Massively Open Online Courses.  Now you are recalling how much you learned from the broken heart you suffered when you found your boyfriend in the bathtub with your room-mate.  Seriously, Margaret, how in the hell are you going to make a MOOC out of that?!? (without it degenerating into cheap porn that is)? The mind boggles!
            A lesser man might be tempted to re-examine his faith in the punditocracy.  So in the name of Beelzebub’s Blistering Buttcheeks, I implore you to reconcile this conundrum.  Have you had some form of conversion?  (Are you now, even as I write this, travelling to Damascus by road?).  Are you completely blind to the contradiction?  Are you simply one of those dreary columnists who firmly believe that everyone else should adhere to principles from which you yourself are exempt?  Or is it simply as you pointed out in your column this morning that “Logic humiliated you”.
            Just make up your Zarking mind already!

Sincerely etc, 
Rosencrantz Andor Guildenstern
Department of Hamster Husbandry
University of Tuktoyaktuk

PS :  Tuk U!

9 comments:

  1. Americans have Thomas Friedman, Canukistanis have Wente. In fact, she should demand to be paid as much as he is.

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  2. Hey, Guildencrantz and Rosenstern.
    Your link is broken (just FYI), but being a fellow canuckistanian who can't always look away from a fiery car crash, I'd already read it.
    My absolute fucking favourite Wente line ever? "Logic humiliated me. I just couldn’t get it."
    Plus ça change...

    (For anyone else wanting to point and laugh, the link is here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/margaret-wente-what-i-learned-at-university/article4527764/)

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  3. This is the third reference in a blog that I'm seeing to that "logic humiliated me" line of Wente's. Something tells me she'll be regretting writing it for years.

    This thrills me. :)

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  4. There are quite a few things that fit in a Volkswagen, he said from experience.

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  5. Glad you posted this, RaoG, after all of Wente's previous firebombing of profs and academia I wondered where the hell this latest article was coming from.

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  6. Sorry about the broken link - appears to work now (Thanks Fab?). I can't take credit for the graphic either - it's an old RYS one that I enjoyed. I too felt a certain "I should really look away" when I saw who wrote the column, but I'd already clicked the link, and the head scratching began.
    I know my occasional pleas for a non-schizophrenic approach to higher ed are likely to go unheeded. But this one... was just.. I mean... DAYMn!

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  7. "I blame Margaret Wente" was only meant to last for a week. Realistically, it should be ongoing!

    https://www.facebook.com/events/197062033701823/

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  8. Thank you for directing me to your Margaret Wente post. "Logic humiliated me"? No fooling, Wente. I stopped reading the G&M because they publish her. Well, and because they endorsed Harper.

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