July 20th, 2016
Choices…

… choices…

July 20th, 2016
A Measured Response.

Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, said in a brief statement that “Mr. Trump and the campaign do not agree” that Clinton should be executed for treason.

July 15th, 2016
Apparently, political advertisements also leave a chemtrail.

John McCain’s Republican challenger in Arizona, a woman named Kelli Ward, has long believed in a federal plot to poison Americans with the chemical trails some aircraft leave in the air.

Yet Ward’s keen sense of the endurance of certain visual effects fails to extend to the traces old attack ads leave in the mediasphere. Maybe Ward thought Mitt Romney’s 2008 attack ads against McCain had vanished into the Celestial Contrail and become fair game… Whatever her motives, her campaign simply, er, repurposed them…?

Kelli Ward, one of U.S. Sen. John McCain’s three Republican primary challengers, may have found a way to overcome her campaign-funding struggles: just tack her name at the end of an old Mitt Romney attack ad against McCain from the 2008 presidential race.

*****************

Stealing and signing with your own name is a gesture quintessentially postmodern, an instance of Appropriation Art, in which artists like Sherrie Levine re-photograph canonical early twentieth century photographs and sign them with their own name. But just as Sherrie had to deal with a bit of copyright static, so Kelli is in receipt of legal correspondence from a Romney rep. Something about “blatant infringement” of “protected work”…?

******************

“How could anyone do anything so dumb?” asked Mr UD this morning when I told him about it. “Didn’t she know she’d be caught?”

*****************

Without wanting to get too conspiratorial (in this UD defers to Ward and her man Donald Trump), UD will point out that if you reshuffle the letters in KELLI WARD you get (roughly)

LIKED RAWLS.

I.e., Ward is a secret John Rawls lover. John Rawls! The famous left-liberal political philosopher! Could Ward’s inner struggle between right and left account for her otherwise unaccountable behavior?

July 15th, 2016
Scathing Online Schoolmarm Says:

Extremely good writers can take what you know, re-charge it, and scare you.

July 14th, 2016
Tetchy techies….

… in a collective bad mood because of you know who.

July 14th, 2016
From the Republican Convention

Buttons seen on arriving women delegates.

‘YOU’RE A WOUNDING SON OF A BITCH’
— Louise Bryant

**********************

‘Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.’
— Sylvia Plath

***********************

‘WHAT IF SHE ACTUALLY ENJOYED HER DEBASEMENT?’
O

July 13th, 2016
Tweets for English Professors.

Trump/Gingrich: a presidential ticket that would have more infidelity than the collected works of Philip Roth & John Updike combined.

Jeet Heer.

July 13th, 2016
A Nightmare from which Historians are …

trying to awake.

July 13th, 2016
The Republican Convention – AKA…

The Nunberg Trials.

July 13th, 2016
With the Republican Convention Down to the Short Strokes…

… organizers are working on smoothing out any contradictions between a ferociously anti-pornography platform and a presidential candidate whose namesake hotel hosts the annual eXXXotica Expo.

July 13th, 2016
“[T]he potential is there for Cleveland to be a complete shit show.”

What? With Bikers for Trump providing security?

July 13th, 2016
UD Begins to Discern the Lucy Van Pelt Strategy.

[Trumper Warning]

Every week or so, a new high-profile woman (Megyn Kelly, Elizabeth Warren, Ruth Bader Ginsburg) pulls a football out from under Donald Trump.

Like Charlie Brown, he can’t help going for the thing, kicking the air as it’s pulled away and landing on his ass.

UD thinks it’s time for the strategy to go international. Malala Yousafzai held the ball out for Trump last December, but he didn’t go for it because he hadn’t yet won the nomination. UD hopes whoever’s coordinating the LVP strategy thinks to tap Malala again. Whiff time.

July 11th, 2016
O Holy Knight!

[Trumper Warning]

[Sing it with me.]

O Bobby Knight

The nominee is calling

From coast to coast you’re the best he could do

Yes you’re a star

But you are not six-sided

So no one here will mistake you for a Jew

We need you so

Our polling stats are falling

Punch up our show

As you punched out your teams

Throw us a chair!

O sucker punch our children!

O Knight Divine! O night when Trump is crowned!

O Knight Divine! O Knight, O Knight Divine!

July 6th, 2016
UD has already predicted Trump’s inaugural poet:

Frederick Seidel.

Now for her vice-presidential prediction:

Look for a Trump/Shkreli ticket.

Their synergy is highlighted here:

Perhaps the only accident that could hurt Trump’s numbers would be a hot mic that revealed him as thoughtful, empathetic, or even kind… [His] rise, in business and in politics, is based on exploiting others’ weakness.

July 5th, 2016
Paul Ryan: Trump Star Tweet “Anti-Semitic.”

Atta boy.

« Previous PageNext Page »

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories