Trustee Nancy Padberg and her anti-intellectual idol, Rush Limbaugh

     I recall that, at a board meeting years ago, SOCCCD trustee Nancy Padberg (of San Clemente, that old hotbed of Bircherism) proudly noted her membership in the Rush Limbaugh Club.
     Wow. Limbaugh is an idiot. But his particular variety of idiocy is anti-intellectual. He's the sort of "conservative" who was never educated—he dropped out of college in favor of a radio career—and who has come to believe, as have so many before him, that academia comprises clever but conniving elitists who make it their business to contemn the hardworking, commonsensical little guy.
     That mindset is a variety of conspiracy thinking, a paranoid thing.
     Ever read Richard J. Hofstadter? Two of his classics are The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964) and Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963).
     Those books are indeed classics, endlessly cited and referred to. —But only by intellectuals, natch.
     Two excerpts:

     American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years, we have seen angry minds at work, mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated ... how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But, behind this, I believe, there is a style of mind that is far from new, and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style, simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. (PSAP) 

     The case against intellect [in the puritanical American tradition] is founded upon a set of fictional and wholly abstract antagonisms. Intellect is pitted against feeling, on the ground that it is somehow inconsistent with warm emotion. It is pitted against character, because it is widely believed that intellect stands for mere cleverness, which transmutes easily into the sly or diabolical. It is pitted against practicality, since theory is held to be opposed to practice, and the "purely" theoretical mind is so much disesteemed. It is pitted against democracy, since intellect is felt to be a form of distinction that defies egalitarianism. Once the validity of these antagonisms is accepted, then the case for intellect, and by extension for the intellectual, is lost. Who cares to risk sacrificing the warmth of emotion, solidity of character, practical capacity, or democratic sentiment in order to pay deference to a type of man who at best is deemed to be merely clever and at worst may even be dangerous? (AIAL)

     Rush is very much a part of the paranoid and anti-intellectualist traditions in this country. He sees conspiracies. He demonizes "liberals." He relies on Straw Men. He occasionally appeals, fat-headedly, to the Bible. He takes hillbilly drugs and hums hillbilly tunes. He enjoys football.
     Most of all, like his predecessors, he eschews (because he despises) reason. He relies on fear and fallacy. He is a classic demagogue.
     So Nancy Padberg loves the anti-intellectualist barbarian Rush. As it turns out, she was even the President of the local Rush Club, so enamored is she of the fellow. But she's on the board of trustees of a college district! College: the traditional home of the "pointed-headed intellectual."
     To the uninitiated, learning about "college trustee" Nancy's love of Rush is like discovering that the Prez of the American Philosophical Association is also a member of the Orange County Paranormal Society. It's like finding out that the head of the Philharmonic Society is a freakin' Dead Head.
     WTF.
     Yeah, but this is Orange County.
     I've never bothered to look into the RLCOC (pronounced “rilcok”)—not sure why. But, today, I somehow came across the club’s website. It's a mess. Much of it is literally unreadable, owing to inappropriate font colors, etc. It piles element upon element without rhyme or reason. It has never met a photograph (of one of its geezers) that it didn't like.
     How fitting. Must be run, and consumed, by oldsters who don't know about the interweb and such. (My folks seem to think the internet is an actual place, maybe in Irvine. They fear it and its dark tentacles that (they imagine) seek the unsuspecting dollars of the elderly.)
     Looks like our Nancy is no longer a club officer. The RLCOC website proudly displays a photo of the “Rush Limbaugh Club OC 2011 Officers”:

That's Nancy at left; that's Floyd the barber at right

     The caption: “Past President Nancy Padberg installs Officers Saturday, 11 December 2010.”
     The website is all that you might expect it to be. It provides a link to a hilariously paranoid video from Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network:

“WAKE UP AMERICA! Watch this scary video”:

     For fun, you might explore the site. Here are some of the titles (etc.) that can be found on its motley and headache-inducing pages:

From the RLCOC website

• Bush's Achievements [!!!]
• Obama Dispatches Union Thugs to Intimidate American Citizens
• Rush Limbaugh At CPAC: Doubles Down On Wanting Obama To Fail
• MAXINE WATERS (CA-D) ADMITS LIBERALS = SOCIALISTS!
• Obama Civility Flashback: He laughs at Wands Sykes Jokes: It's not hatred and vitriol when it comes from the left
• Bill Clinton fakes crying at Ron Brown's funeral [Gosh, didn’t Brown die fifteen years ago?]
• [Darrel] Issa: O'bama's [sic] Among 'Most Corrupt Administrations' [Issa? Now that’s rich!]
• America's Ruling Class – and the Perils of Revolution
• Barack H. Obama IS NOT A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN
• Obama Removes Jesus from Easter Message
• America Hangs by a Thread
• "Chickification" of U.S. military is "turning people soft"; there's "no room for that on the battlefield."
• Bringing An End To This False Prophet Obama!

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "we are saying thank you"

Thanks
by W. S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is.

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Be a pepper....

Courts, police say pepper spray 'defensive' only (San Fran Chronicle)

     The law frowns on police use of pepper spray against nonviolent demonstrators.
     More than a decade before last week's videotaped incident at UC Davis, a federal appeals court ruled in the case of North Coast logging protesters that officers can legally use the caustic chemical only to prevent harm to themselves or someone else….

UC Davis student: Pepper spray like 'hot glass was entering my eyes' (LA Times)

     “It felt like hot glass was entering my eyes. I couldn’t see anything, I wanted to open my eyes but every time I did, the pain got worse,” David Buscho said during a rally Monday on campus. "I wanted to breathe, but I couldn’t because my face was covered in pepper spray.”
. . .

     "I am here to apologize," an emotional [Chancellor Linda] Katehi said after struggling through the crowd to a small stage where some of the students sprayed by campus police had just described their ordeal. "I feel horrible for what happened."….

Katehi: Campus Police Were Told Not To Use Force Against Students (Sac Bee)

     As the tent city on the University of California, Davis, tripled in size, Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi insisted Tuesday that the school's police department defied her orders when it used force against students in last week's pepper-spray fiasco.
     "We told the police to remove the tents or the equipment," Katehi said in an interview with The Bee in her office inside the administration building, which remains locked down to the public.
     "We told them very specifically to do it peacefully, and if there were too many of them, not to do it, if the students were aggressive, not to do it. And then we told them we also do not want to have another Berkeley."….

Occupy Education: Required Reading over the Thanksgiving Break

REBEL GIRL was going to hold off until the holiday was over but dang — she's not the kind of teacher who doesn't give at least some reading over a long weekend. Nope.

So here's your homework. It will be followed up with responses from the likes of Clio Bluestocking who chimes in on Learning Outcomes:

Outcomes assessment — that is, ensuring that students are learning what they need to learn in order to advance to the next level or in order to have mastered basics of a subject — is generally a good idea. Some oversight on the process is good, too, especially if it is meant to improve performance not punish the performer. All fine and good, except that we, the instructors and the departments, tend to already do this. It's called "a test" or "a quiz," and "peer evaluation" and "department evaluation" through classroom observation. What seems to be demanded, however, seems to be not what the instructors and department have determined is a good means of evaluation, but what someone somewhere else had determined is a good means — even if their means has proven to be a patented failure in actually assessing mastery of a subject. The result becomes a huge waste of time in which the whole official "outcomes assessment" becomes a cynical exercise to produce numbers, while the actual assessing of learning and instruction becomes this renegade shadow activity addressing the actual problems we see in our classrooms — the ones that take time and money to actually fix.

...and Historiann, Dr. Crazy, Notorius Ph.D., tenured radical, Clio's Disciple, The Clutter Museum and other Ivory Tower rabble rousers.

But here's the text that stoked the fire: from the New York Review of Books, Anthony Grafton's wide ranging "Why are They Failing?" considers the eroding engagement of students, the rise in student debt and the decrease in education funding, the shifting priorities of administrators and much more.

excerpt:

...Is the higher education bubble about to pop? I don’t know. The more thoughtful writers warn against monocausal explanations. Bowen and his colleagues, for example, test the effects of student loans on attrition rates. They conclude that it is not clear that debt is a primary cause of student failure. Still, these developments are interwoven, in the experience of many students if not in the intentions of legislators. Imagine what it’s like to be a normal student nowadays. You did well—even very well—in high school. But you arrive at university with little experience in research and writing and little sense of what your classes have to do with your life plans. You start your first year deep in debt, with more in prospect. You work at Target or a fast-food outlet to pay for your living expenses. You live in a vast, shabby dorm or a huge, flimsy off-campus apartment complex, where your single with bath provides both privacy and isolation. And you see professors from a great distance, in space as well as culture: from the back of a vast dark auditorium, full of your peers checking Facebook on their laptops....

...The system runs, in part, on its failures. Administrators count on the tuition paid, from borrowed money, by undergraduates who they know will drop out before they use up many services. To provide teaching they exploit instructors still in graduate school, many of whom they know will also drop out and not demand tenure-track jobs. Faculty, once they have found a berth, often become blind to the problems and deaf to the cries of their own indentured students. And even where the will to do better is present, the means are often used for very different ends.

In many universities, finally, the sideshows have taken over the big tent. Competitive sports consume vast amounts of energy and money, some of which could be used to improve conditions for students. It’s hard not to be miserable when watching what pursuit of football glory has done to Rutgers, which has many excellent departments and should be—given the wealth of New Jersey—an East Coast Berkeley or Michigan. The university spends $26.9 million a year subsidizing its athletic programs. Meanwhile faculty salaries have been capped and raises canceled across the board. Desk telephones were recently removed from the offices of the historians. Repairs have been postponed, and classroom buildings, in constant use from early morning until late at night, have become shabbier and shabbier....

To read the rest — and you should as it will be on the test — click here.


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1998: Should SOCCCD cops have guns?

SC Police Chief Harry P

     Earlier today, in response to a post about the UC Davis “pepper spray” incident, one reader, contemplating the possibility of student protests at Irvine Valley College, wrote

Our campus police carry guns, don't they? I've always thought that unnecessary. I hope there is a policy in place of how to handle student protests peacefully.

     Not sure about policies. The district’s board policies can be found here. The district’s “speech and advocacy” policies can be found here.
     Upon reading the above comment, I recalled a board discussion about campus cops and their pistols that occurred about a dozen years ago. I wrote about it at the time.

     Found it!
     What follows is from the ‘Vine, #7, September 16, 1998. (The ‘Vine was the Dissent's sister publication.) It’s an excerpt from a longer article about the Sept. 14, 1998, board meeting.

Give us our new guns:

Glock 18c

    The “gun” issue emerged once again. At the last board meeting [at which the gun issue was addressed], campus police chiefs [Harry] Parmer and [Ted] Romas asked for money to replace the police forces’ old and relatively unsafe 38s with au courant 9 mm weapons. Their presentation established that, if campus cops are going to have guns, then they should be new 9 mm jobs, not the old 38s. Trustee [Dorothy] Fortune—who, before she decided to call herself a “fiscal conservative,” was active in the Democratic party—emerged that night as a strong proponent of defanging campus cops. (It turns out that most community college cops are gunless; indeed, ours is the only district in OC that arms its cops.) As I recall, then-Chancellor [Kathie] Hodge and Dave Lang agreed with Fortune, which must have been painful for them. In the end, the cops went home without their new guns, but they managed to keep their old ones.

Dave Lang

    Surprisingly, the issue was back on the agenda [for this month’s meeting]. Fortune once again spoke to the issue. In her remarks, she demonstrated her uncanny knack for really pissing people off, for, in effect, she called Parmer and Romas liars. You see, after the October board meeting, she called up the Orange County Sheriff’s Dept. and talked to a “fellow” there. She asked him about the safety of 38s. “They’re safe weapons,” said the fellow. (Of course, Parmer and Romas didn’t exactly say that 38s are unsafe; they said that 9 mms are relatively safe.) The Fortunate One concluded that she had been lied to or misled by Parmer and Romas. “That’s what you get when you only listen to people with a special interest,” she added. “Let’s spend the money on students, not on guns,” concluded Dot.

S&W model 64

    In response, chief Romas acknowledged that 38s are not unsafe; but the district’s 38s are old, he said. Lang jumped in to express both his respect for Romas/Parmer and his inclination to disarm them. “Why are we the exception among community college districts in the area?” asked Lang. [Trustee Steve] Frogue opined that it is unwise to leave cops unarmed. [Trustee John] Williams, finally finding a topic he cares about, stated that it is a “travesty” to suggest not arming police officers. Apparently addressing Mr. Lang, he said, “Get real.” “Stop living in an ivory castle.” (Yes, an ivory castle.)

    [Trustee Teddi] Lorch noted that the presence of guns is a deterrent. Fortune shot back by suggesting that the worst thing that happens on our campuses is the theft of car radios (well, not quite), so the cops don’t need guns. “Even the radicals (i.e., Frogue’s racist friends and their equally polite JDL adversaries) who sometimes come to our board meetings aren’t that bad,” she said.

    At that moment, I felt Dave Lang’s pain.

    Student trustee Marie Hill noted that she has seen men removing their shirts and revealing tatoos on campus. “Gang members,” she said. So cops gotta have guns.

S&W Model 500

    Frogue explained that, if only people knew the details—details, he implied, that were suppressed by the press!—of the Lorches’* fabled encounter with violence (?), they would understand the need to arm campus cops. (Huh?) Idiotically, Lorch explained that only someone who has experienced what she experienced knows whether campus cops should have guns. “You don’t know until you’ve experienced this yourself,” she said, thereby marking the nadir of the evening.

*Teddi Lorch and her husband

Whatever happened to....

Trustee Lorch: she "retired" in 1998, to be replaced by her friend Nancy Padberg. As we reported at the time, Lorch planned to apply for the district's head HR job. That's exactly what happened. Her former trusteeship and her friendship with Padberg made it all look very bad. When she didn't get the job (Chancellor Cedric Sampson didn't want her), she sued the district for age discrimination or some such thing. Oddly, the district settled, giving Lorch the head HR job. She's still got it.
Trustee Frogue: he's the fellow who was dogged by accusations that, in his high school history classes, he often denied the Holocaust, made racially insensitive remarks, etc. Ultimately resigned (summer of 2000).
Trustee Williams: his ignominy is sufficiently fresh that it requires no review. Ultimately resigned about a year ago.
Trustee Fortune: she eventually resigned amid charges that, for some time, she had ceased living in the area she represented. (She was rumored to be living in Central Calif.)
Kathie Hodge: eventually, she continued her administrative career at the North Orange County Community College District.

P.S.: When I was first hired at IVC in 1986, I was told that a campus cop once accidentally "discharged his weapon," and the bullet went through several walls before it came to rest. No one was hurt.

Notorious O.C. political kingmaker dies (OC Reg)

Watching Fox News makes you stupid

Fox News Viewers Know Less Than People Who Don't Watch Any News: Study (Huffington Post)

     Fox News viewers are less informed than people who don't watch any news, according to a new poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
     The poll surveyed New Jersey residents about the uprisings in Egypt and the Middle East, and where they get their news sources. The study, which controlled for demographic factors like education and partisanship, found that "people who watch Fox News are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government" and "6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government" compared to those who watch no news.
     Overall, 53% of all respondents knew that Egyptians successfully overthrew Hosni Mubarak and 48% knew that Syrians have yet to overthrow their government.

     Dan Cassino, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson, explained in a statement, "Because of the controls for partisanship, we know these results are not just driven by Republicans or other groups being more likely to watch Fox News. Rather, the results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all."
     This isn't the first study that has found that Fox News viewers more misinformed in comparison to others. Last year, a study from the University of Maryland found that Fox News viewers were more likely to believe false information about politics.

UC Davis English Department

from their webpage:

The faculty of the UC Davis English Department supports the Board of the Davis Faculty Association in calling for Chancellor Katehi’s immediate resignation and for “a policy that will end the practice of forcibly removing non-violent student, faculty, staff, and community protesters by police on the UC Davis campus.” Further, given the demonstrable threat posed by the University of California Police Department and other law enforcement agencies to the safety of students, faculty, staff, and community members on our campus and others in the UC system, we propose that such a policy include the disbanding of the UCPD and the institution of an ordinance against the presence of police forces on the UC Davis campus, unless their presence is specifically requested by a member of the campus community. This will initiate a genuinely collective effort to determine how best to ensure the health and safety of the campus community at UC Davis.

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