Limbaugh Babies Go To College

As I sit at my computer nursing my Achilles Heel, I wonder what the heck is happening at our prestigious universities. The story begins at “24 Hour Fitness.”

I love the PiYo (Pilates + Yoga) class and attend regularly. At the last class my good friend Ali advised me to take off my sneakers to better experience the freedom of the movements. So, I did that, and everything was fine until we assumed the “plank” position, with one leg raised. Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in the other heel area and the result is the injured Achilles tendon that pains me now. Although Ali is Egyptian, I reject the suggestion that this was a terrorist act, but….. I’ve been watching a lot of “24” and beginning to wonder. Where’s Jack Bauer when I need him?

Which brings me back to college life: First, I must apologize to the “Valley” for the headline of my recent post “USC Valley Girl.” It turns out the ditzy cheerleader is actually a Hill girl from Palos Verdes and a grad of Peninsula High. Could that explain it?

Anyway, Rush has been spreading wisdom on talk radio long enough to have influenced the thinking of the current generation of college students. One such is Andrew Jones who graduated from UCLA in 2003. Jones has long antagonized UCLA officials and professors by his unique activities, such as the “affirmative action bake sale” where cookies were priced based on the affirmative action status of the buyer, 25 cents for minority women up to 2 dollars for white males.

Now head of the Bruin Alumni Association, Jones is currently attempting to expose liberal bias on campus by offering up to $100 for student’s reports on classroom behavior of radical professors.

Just for fun I checked out the web site www.uclaprofs.com to see what the fuss was all about. The welcome message from Jones explains that the UCLAprofs project is dedicated to exposing UCLA’s most radical professors who are “actively proselytizing their extreme views in the classroom, whether or not the commentary is relevant to the class topic.”

Jones gives a few examples: “Douglas Kellner rages about a “Bush Reich,” the vicious anti-Semitic troika of Gabriel Piterberg, Saree Makdisi, and Sondra Hale peddle hatred of Israel and Zionism, while Peter McLaren teaches the next generation of educators how to politicize their own classrooms.”

The “dirty thirty” is the list of the 30 worst of the worst prof’s. Heading the list is Peter McLaren, professor of Education, whose webpage features a revolving red Communist star and noble Che Guevara iconography while The Internationale, the anthem of Marxist socialism plays. McLaren’s specialty is “critical pedagogy” that teaches students to “reach the point of revelation where they begin to view their society as deeply flawed.” A prime example of McLaren’s anti-American blamestorming:

“Over the last five decades the US national security state funded and advised right-wing forces in the overthrow of reformist governments in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Indonesia, Uruguay, Haiti, the Congo, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Syria, Greece, etc.; the US has participated in proxy mercenary wars against Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Portugal, Cambodia, East Timor, Peru, Iran, Syria, Jamaica, South Yemen, the Fiji Islands, Afghanistan, Lebanon, etc.; they have supported ruthless rightwing governments who have tortured and murdered opposition movements such as in the case of Turkey, Zaire, Chad, Pakistan, Morocco, Indonesia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Peru; and, since World War II, the US military has invaded or bombed Vietnam, North Korea, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Laos, etc. My emphasis is on linking these acts of barbarism to the political history of capitalism.”

This guy is educating the next generation of teachers. Heaven help us.

Another beauty is Karen Brodkin, Anthropology/ Women’s Studies prof, who is a militant lesbian feminist who has no patience for those who see women’s issues in a broader context than her own. Brodkin has hitched her star to the whiteness studies movement, and her most famous work, “How Jews Became White Folks: And What That Says About Race in America” is one of the top books in the field.

Her primary thesis is that racism is the core of our national identity and our economic system. Brodkin’s contention is that no accomplishment of a white person is “strictly the results of [their] own efforts.” And the beat goes on and on.

Writing about these people is making my foot hurt!