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Thursday, June 17, 2004
LES C*NTES d'HOFFMAN
[Update. See post directly below for background.] "However, CU Regent Susan Kirk said media outlets are making a bigger issue of the word and its context than is necessary. 'We are making an issue about a scholar being scholarly in a deposition, which is what we would want," said Kirk. 'Betsy Hoffman would never disparage women. I am an avowed feminist and I am embarrassed of all of them (feminists).' Kirk said she has also heard the term being used with a positive connotation, such as in New Zealand and Australia, where it is used as a term of friendship for men or women." UD hasn't yet excitedly googled New Zealand/Naughty Bits to find out whether this is true, but she will. [Update: Search time, one minute: "Likewise, in Australia, ‘cunt’ isn’t as harsh a word as it is the U.S. When Chopper calls someone a 'silly cunt,' it’s an Australian term of endearment."] Meanwhile, the Tale of Hoffman is spinning wildly out of control, with media outlets everywhere jumping on the Bad President bandwagon [there's another Bad President story brewing - the president of the University of Hawaii has just been fired - but so far the reasons are too mysterious for a blog entry]. "Oooh - look what she said! Did you hear what she said??" President Hoffman herself broke down in tears the other day at a damage control news conference. Anyway, Susan Kirk nails it. Hoffman's big sin was "being scholarly." UD has spent a good bit of time describing today's business model university; she has also tried to remind you what a scholarly professor at a scholarly university might look and sound like. How an actual scholar rose to a management position at a major American university is beyond UD - and in any case, it sounds as though President Hoffman is about to be shot down precisely for having inadvertently revealed herself to be a thinking person - but this is another opportunity for us to track the ways in which anti-intellectual regents like ol' Jim down there in the previous post, cynical lawyers, puritan feminists, mercenary litigants, and a lascivious press cooperate to destroy free thought. |