Dizzying mixed metaphors/figurative language in this sentence. Anoint, fraternity, crash, BUTTERING!? Summers was, famously, a president, so it makes sense to have that allusion here; but what is the writer doing with it? Priests, not presidents, are anointed. Promote instead of anoint?
Crashed careers is nicely alliterative, but jammed right up against soft slithery buttering it just makes a mess.
Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=82112
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
November 24th, 2025 at 10:46PM
More basically, you can’t butter up TO someone. You can only butter someone up.
Another question that I have about your objections to these Epstein-adjacent academics who took his tainted pedophile money – why is this a bad way to deal with malign rich people? I understand the symbolic “bad look” problem, and the danger of laundering a reputation this way (which appears to have been among Epstein’s intentions in giving his money in the first place), but isn’t it also the case that taking these people’s donations parts them from their money and puts that money in better hands? I am reminded of an incident a million years ago when Ron Paul got a donation from some white supremacist and the media clamored for him to return it, and he denounced the donor but kept the money and said something to the effect that, “that’s $1000 less for this guy to do his work with.” His money is better off with me, essentially. Why is that not also true of people like Epstein? Is his money worse off with MIT Media Lab or the Poetry Foundation than in his pocket?
November 25th, 2025 at 11:34PM
Rita: Not a good move – the money is always tainted by association, and has to be repudiated, not used.