What was that about my head?
Okay, I really try to keep the politics out, but now they’re smearing my people.
In a statement trying to rebut the fact that he owns seven houses worth $13 million, a spokesman for John McCain states that he “… is not an arugula-eating, pointy headed professor-type …”
This dovetails nicely with the disturbing few seconds of Michael Savagery I caught as I flipped through radio channels in deep Western MD late this afternoon. In it, he referred disparagingly to “college types”. He may have been trying to change up the language from the press release, but that’s as maybe.
This is anti-intellectualism, plain and simple. Do you find education valuable? Do you find the life of the mind rewarding? Do you put any stock in thinking? Then you’re a geek and a nerd and not a real man and John McCain and the rest of the conservatives want nothing to do with you.
And Mike Judge’s vision creeps a little closer to documentary status.
Oh, I almost forgot.. evidently McCain is so out of touch that he identifies “professor-types” as exemplars of wealth.
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I completely agree with you — it’s just sickening — but I think the “pointy-headed professor type” is meant more to suggest a secular humanist liberal intellectualist elitist stereotype (as confirmed by “arugula-eating”: nice touch there), supposedly inimical to true manly red-blooded American values. Not so much as an exemplar of wealth, which would be his and Bush’s kind of people.
Or does he really think professors as a class are wealthy?
I don’t quite get the impression that he thinks professors as a class are wealthy, but, all the same, the comment [i]was[/i] meant to deflect from accusations that McCain is out of touch because of his level of real estate wealth.
Let’s be extra-clear here. The accusation isn’t that he’s out of touch because he’s wealthy. Another of the McCain campaign’s responses was about Obama having made $4 million last year (though McCain said you need to make $5 million to be rich), and if it were just about “wealth” this would mean something.
The accusation is that McCain is out of touch because he doesn’t think there’s a problem with the economy. And why would he think there’s a problem? After all, he owns seven houses worth $13 million.
Actually, the thought suggested, to the typical Republican, by such phrases as “pointy-headed professor” is this — including the contrast between disciplines.
Last time we had a professor with a PhD as President we got the income tax and World War I.
So maybe it’s just as well that we didn’t get President Newt Gingrich …
Professors rank below criminals in many peoples’ opinion. Sketch of proof follows.
On 23 Jan 2006 our car (a ‘95 Camry), legally parked at Caltech, was totaled by Charles R. Martin, the City Attorney and City Manager of Temple City, who several eyewitnesses saw flee the scene, to his mansion in San Marino (California), running more red lights and stop signs in the process. Roughly 2.5 years later, I finally had a Restitution Hearing immediately after the Sentencing Hearing.
In the Sentencing Hearing, “Charlie” Martin, who had destroyed 3 cars in this spree, and then 3 more in Arcadia in May 2008, had his 2nd degree Criminal Misdemeanor reduced to an infraction (”Intentionally making a loud sound in a public place”) and fined $500.
The judge, prejudiced against me for being a professor, refused to award me any damages over what the insurance company said was the value of the car (never minding that it had just been repainted and detailed to be given to my son for his birthday the next day) and that my invoice showed roughly a kilobuck of un-reimbursed rental car expense, and thousands of dollar of my consulting/investigative time to track down related criminal acts by the corrupt politico, which investigation was authorized by the Pasadena City Prosecutor, and resulted in the Police Report being rewritten and the criminal charges filed.
Reporter’s Transcript of Proceedings, Tuesday, June 28, 2008, The People of the State of California vs. Charles R. Martin, p.47, lines 18-28, to p.48, lines 1-6:
The Court: He was paid $3,382.19 from 21st Century. He purchased what he says was an equivalent car for $5,500. And I say this with all respect for Professor Post, but he does seem to be something of an absentminded professor, in that he was not able to give any details about the value of either the old car or the replacement car. And so therefore the court really doesn’t find any basis upon which to depart from the value of the car that was assigned by the insurance company, which was $3,382.19, which has been already paid.
So the bottom line is that the court finds that he is not entitled to any restitution. But I do urge him to pursue whatever other remedies he believes would be advantageous in a civil court. And I do wish him well. And that will be the order of the court.
In fact, after 2.5 years, the Statute of Limitation bars me from suing Charles Martin, or Pasadena, or Temple City, or the Insurance company. I’ve paid $900.00 to an attorney to look for a loophole, but he found none.
The car-killer walked free; I was kilobucks out of pocket. The car-killer has been fired from several City Attorney jobs, and fined by the DA for conflict of interest, before the accidents, where he was never tested for drugs or alcohol. The Pasadena City Prosecutor had promised me and my Physics Professor wife (to whom the totaled car had been registered) that Charles Martin would be tried “straight up” and not plea bargained.
But (truth stranger than fiction) the Pasadena City Prosecutor turned out not to want to go to trial, because the policewoman who wrote the initial Police Report had been illegally wiretapped by the Pasadena Police Department, as she was living with a narcotic dealer whose child she bore out of wedlock. The policewoman sued to city and won $1,000,000 and the City did not want this to be reported in trial. So criminals walk free, Professors get zero, and cops make a small fortune from being in bed with criminals.
So being attacked for Professoring is nothing new to me and my wife.
Oh, and if you google “Charles R. Martin” you’ll find that an attorney of that name, also in Southern California, was declared by a judge to be guilty of Fraud, and falsifying evidence,and threatening witnesses, and had his Private Eye license stripped. Same guy? I was not allowed to ask, in court, nor to submit documents, nor to read my statement. Hey, I’m just a professor. Next case, please?