“Poor Evelyn,” wrote Cecil Beaton on the occasion of his friend Evelyn Waugh’s demise. “Died of snobbery.”
Poor Herman died of stupidity – the sort of stupidity that makes one wonder how he survived for as long as 75 years.
“Poor Evelyn,” wrote Cecil Beaton on the occasion of his friend Evelyn Waugh’s demise. “Died of snobbery.”
Poor Herman died of stupidity – the sort of stupidity that makes one wonder how he survived for as long as 75 years.
As if one needed any more reasons to loathe Liberty U.
***************
He does tend to stir the creative imagination. Also really great writing. This, says Scathing Online Schoolmarm, is unbeatable. Highlights from a tightly organized, tonally controlled, brilliantly concise, little masterpiece:
no pollster left to lie to him
listened to the lethal quackery
harmful and bizarre
result of a country run by a crackpot
dereliction of duty, son.
fevered with viral hot spots.
Of late, Trump has been itching for a riot.
Nixon is a notch higher in the hell-scape
He’s Trump with a pious veneer
a timely bootlick.
*******************
And see what he’s about in his final paragraph? See all the ys, all the ee sounds that come off the page? The writer knows how to make prose poetic, and therefore much more coherent and powerful.
But there’s another image, equally satisfying. Trump could play one last gambit in the dictator’s checklist and refuse to leave office on Jan. 20 — election or no election — as required by the Constitution. If he does this, a weary nation would be rewarded with a presidential perp walk, as Trump is escorted out of the White House and into infamy by the military police.
If you lack the alliteration, assonance, perfect-wordism, and tonal cool this writer enjoys in abundance, sorry. Not everybody gets the style goodies. But you can learn a lot by reading him carefully.
One of America’s most prominent conservatives, Steven G. Calabresi, is calling for impeachment and removal, asap.
It would have been nice if Trump had postponed going full Kanye West until after the election. Unfortunately, he is breaking apart far faster than one might have anticipated, and this endangers us all.
… which is so unDershlike; but maybe he – in the face of newly-released documents accusing him of sex with an underage trafficked girl – has decided to take Elizabeth Dye’s advice and shut up.
A strange man, Harvard’s Dersh. No one in public life brings more passion to the defense of genital mutilation (male and female); and few in public life stand so starkly accused of repeated sex with a minor on a privately owned island reportedly given over to orgies. A strange melange of real and alleged enthusiasms. A strange person to represent more prominently than anyone else Harvard Law School.
… plagiarized 96% of her university thesis.
(I think this means one hundred percent? I mean like let’s say she came up with her name and some acknowledgements all by herself; that still leaves the entire document.)
Here she is crying her eyes out like a big girl and saying fuck! everyone does it around here….
******************
(UD thanks Chris.)
Another powerful rabbi shares not only his gift for science, but his love of Donald Trump.
[Shmuel] Kamenetsky said it doesn’t matter how the president talks. “That’s because he’s a gvir, a wealthy man,” he said. “Wealthy, powerful people have a way of speaking and acting that is not refined. That’s not a reason not to vote for him.”
… is a for-profit college (and if you read University Diaries, you know about those skeezy joints) whose founder – a Tennessee state senator – seems to have stolen gobs of federal grant money in order to pay for every stage of the beautiful cycle of life (wedding, honeymoon, divorce). In a heavily religious press event (no questions, please!), Robinson and her spokeswoman describe a martyr for whom we are asked to pray and pray and pray. Pray away the Hey did you really use $600,000 of taxpayer money to buy a Louis Vuitton handbag, a Jeep Renegade, a Jamaican vacation, and an end to your personal debt? Pray it away! Give God the burden!
************
* More on the Center for the Absorption of Federal Funds here.
Sinners! Thou shalt die in sin. Sound this warning out to all: Praise hydroxychloroquin Or thy servers all shall fall! Tweet it with Immanuel: Facebook, die! In Jesus name. Brother Trump shall tweet as well: Let the deep state take the blame.
Three Israeli politicians call for the state to legitimize preemptive newbie strikes, and many other policies and points of view that are difficult to hold so long as the scurrilous irreligious in that country continue to “subjugate eternal Jewish law to the ratification of attorneys and the state attorney’s office.” Israel’s rabbis say many things that might seem hateful; but everything they say comes straight outa eternal Jewish law, which is ever so much better than whatever some … whaddaya call em? … state attorney (?) thinks.
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