Billboard, bitches
Is it wrong that the idiocy of Stanley Fish makes it hard for me to take any contemporary academic literary criticism very seriously?
What I told you back on Sept. 28, 2008, was that within a year of the day he left office George W. Bush would come to be regarded with affection and a little nostalgia. The responses (over 300 before the comments were closed) to that prediction were overwhelmingly negative; even the very few who agreed with me attributed what they took to be a sad fact to the stupidity of the American people. The other 290 or so said things like “No way”; “Are you kidding?”; ”Are you mad?”;“What a ridiculous and insulting premise!”; “I’ll miss him like a rash”; “This must be a satire”; “Bush is a sociopath”; “George Bush has destroyed this country”; “History won’t forgive him”; and (a popular favorite) “I hate the man.”
Well it’s a bit more than a year now and signs of Bush’s rehabilitation are beginning to pop up. One is literally a sign, a billboard that appeared recently on I-35 in Minnesota. Occupying the right side (from the viewer’s viewpoint) is a picture of Bush smiling genially and waving his hand in a friendly gesture. Occupying the left side is a simple and direct question: “Miss me yet?” The image is all over the Internet, hundreds of millions of hits, and unscientific Web-based polls indicate that more do miss him than don’t.
This is dangerously close to Andrew Malcolm territory.
(h/t Atrios)
Fish should stick to just being a cad. He’s dangerously close to invisible mustache of freedom.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:16 am
Yeah, I saw that over at the NYT. Most of the comments seemed to belie his contention that Bush will be fondly remembered.
He’ll be remembered for wrecking this country.
And I thought one of the comments was particularly good about Bush having taken eight years to create havoc and wreck and Obama being lambasted for not having corrected it in 14 months!
This is the comment:
“Yep, Obama still hasn’t taken the country out of the ditch Bush drove it into. Imagine, he’s had almost 14 months to fix 8 years of recklessness and he still hasn’t got it all done. That Obama, what a failure, and in retrospect, Bust still ruined the economy and botched up the war on terror. So you miss Bush.
Good thinking, Stan. ”
March 9th, 2010 at 11:18 am
Sweet Jesus, that’s stupid.
He should just go live in a gimp cage in Pamela Geller’s basement.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:19 am
...and when we turn our attention to f’real scientific polls, voters don’t miss Bush.
Granted, that’s a Zogby/Newsmax poll, so you probably want to take it with a brick of salt. But still…
March 9th, 2010 at 11:19 am
Wow – I thought that billboard was a joke; who in the right mind could take it seriously?
March 9th, 2010 at 11:20 am
I propose the Olympic Test to verify this theory. Not too long ago, Chicago campaigned to get the Olympics. Obama helped with this campaign. When Chicago lost out, numerous right-wing groups and individual pundits cheered simply because they believed the loss diminished Obama’s prestige.
A few years ago, New York campaigned to get the Olympics. George W. Bush helped with this campaign. Find me a left-wing group or pundit who cheered NYC’s loss simply because it would be a loss for Bush.
-dms
March 9th, 2010 at 11:20 am
Did Fish remember to ask people if they missed Bush specifically or if they missed having a non-black President? ‘Cause that’s my suspicion.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:21 am
With all this pontificating and thoughful gas-baggery of the pundits, has any news organization actually done a real poll simply asking if the US population actually misses Bush?
An actual poll would be news…
March 9th, 2010 at 11:22 am
Dear Chimpy:
I ain’t missin’ you at all
since you’ve been gone away…
Stay gone, please. And take the Cheneys with you, wouldja? How can we possibly miss them if they won’t go?
Sincerely,
low-tech cyclist
March 9th, 2010 at 11:26 am
Stanley Fish is a moron. Wish he switched places with Hunter S. Thompson.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:26 am
I am going to put up a billboard that says “Stanley Fish is a douchebag.” Because if a billboard says it, it must be true.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:28 am
@SpotWeld: See this recent post over at the GOS.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:29 am
To the Chimpster Formerly in Chief: How can we miss you if the problems you left us won’t go away?
March 9th, 2010 at 11:29 am
I think I understand why so many people thought Terri Schiavo was doing just fine, cognitively speaking.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:29 am
Is it just me or does that picture on the billboard make Bush look like the clown that he is? I first thought the billboard was a joke because of that.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:29 am
What all of the promoters of this billboard fail to mention is the location; smack dab in Michele Bachmann territory.
At this time I would like to remind everyone to thank FSM for both the Minneapolis-St Paul metro and the union friendly Iron Range of MN for counterbalancing the political sentiment that exists in other areas of our state.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:29 am
Reminds me of the scene in “Jaws” where Shaw and Dreyfuss are giggling drunk and comparing old scars. Yeah, funny how you can “fondly recall” moments of terror and panic years later. Fuckers. We are still in the goddamn water, flailing, while the sharks yet circle.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:31 am
I had forgotten about that Miss Me Yet billboard. Did anyone ever find out who paid to put it up?
March 9th, 2010 at 11:31 am
http://www.pollingreport.com/BushFav.htm
March 9th, 2010 at 11:31 am
I miss him like I miss all that money stolen from me by the new democrat tax system
March 9th, 2010 at 11:31 am
OK, lemme get this straight. One billboard in Minnesota, lots of Internet hits, and unscientific polls equal Bush rehab.
Seriously, is Stanley Fish that fucking stupid, or does he just assume it’s his readers who are?
March 9th, 2010 at 11:31 am
There’s a sort of scientific poll I hear (can’t remember, one of the dirty hippy blogs), by Zogby, for Newsmax(ick!), testing out Fish’s theory. Obama beats G.W. Bush, 48% to 38%. Not what they were hoping for, I think. You could look it up.
Edit: Somebody above answers Spotweld with a link to the GOS post with these results.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:33 am
How could Richard Nixon have possibly won the 1968 election?
I don’t know ANYONE who voted for him…
March 9th, 2010 at 11:34 am
Please don’t tar the rest of us (academics or critics) with Stanley Fish.
Some of us have always thought he was an idiot.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:36 am
Dear George:
Yes, I do! You did well, but there’s still something of the USA left. I’m sorry you couldn’t have stayed in office long enough to finish the job.
Sincerely,
Osama bin Laden
March 9th, 2010 at 11:37 am
Well I think Bush will be rehabilitated in the public memory. Not that he deserves it. Not at all. He will be rehabilitated because the Villagers have a vested interest in rehabbing him: by doing so they lessen in their own eyes how wrong they were about everything.
How else do you explain Karl Rove being given a position as a puundit and being allowed from that positin to argue that poor old Bushwas smeared by liars who claimed he mislaed us into a war? The whitewash has started and the corporate media will rewrite history.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:37 am
The Internet is unscientific??
Good god that changes everything.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:38 am
“I’ve got hearsay and stuff I’ve pulled directly out of my ass… those are kinds of evidence…”
March 9th, 2010 at 11:38 am
Well? This is Movement Conservative Logic at its finest, Doug. You come up with something you want to be true. You find an anecdote or two that supports it. Presto, it’s true!
I believe, although I’m kind of shooting wind here, that it’s because most of them are inundated with Christian theological logic. It’s pretty much the same thing – find a quote that supports your position, pretend there is no context. I guess if you’ve heard arguments like that from authority figures you respect all your life, you just pick up the same process.
EDIT: Forgive me, I left out a step, because this guy did. Usually you’re supposed to come up with a reasoning that sounds really swell but employs little or no actual logic. See, you don’t need logic – you’re about to prove it with these anecdotes! Rhetoric, ya know? Just has to sound good.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:40 am
35% or so of the people will always miss GWB. They’re the same ones that made “Dancing With The Stars” a runaway hit TV show.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:43 am
@ABloomquist:
That’s true. And the best part is, even sitting there, most people still look at the sign and think, “No.”
March 9th, 2010 at 11:46 am
@Zam:
And I miss Bush like I miss the clap your mama gave me.
Is that “Democrat” enough for you?
March 9th, 2010 at 11:49 am
I missed Bush the day he walked out of office.
/28-percenter
Seriously, in a pool of 300 million people, no shit you’re going to find a minority contingent that misses him. If you’re a multi-millionaire Republican mega-donor with lots of quasi-legal employees, a gun fetish, and a large income from capital gains, you probably miss him like hell.
After Clinton took office, there were hordes military contractors and tax evaders that swore up a storm. After Carter beat out Ford, I’m sure there were a fair number of former plantation owners shitting themselves at the idea of a new Kennedy/LBJ.
The crooks are always glum when the sheriff rolls into town.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:49 am
Providing this is not snark, you either:
1) make more than $250,000 a year
2) did not actually file your taxes
3) incorrectly filed your taxes
My tax refund is double what it was last year thanks to the evil stimulus bill that ‘raised’ my taxes (married joint filer, $65k household). Almost everyone I know who is similarly middle class has experienced similar results – either their tax burden was the same or went DOWN.
Therefore, you are either full of shit or a whiny ass titty baby screeching about a modest uptick in the marginal tax rate. Or both.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:50 am
@Ash Can: “Seriously, is Stanley Fish that fucking stupid”
That should be the next billboard.
Unscientifically, I’ve heard that most people answer in the affirmative.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:51 am
@Daddy-O: You know, it’s funny you should bring that quote up, because FOX News polls had McCain beating Obama by, like, a dozen points in Indiana in ‘08.
Of course, when the media elite cheers for the Republicans, they’re never wrong.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:52 am
@some guy:
hahahahaha Bush got a boost when he left office and has become more unpopular since.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:52 am
@Pangloss:
i’d pitch in 10 bucks for that. put a big picture of him with the phrase “i’m a moron”, then email him the picture as proof that all the people who belittle him as an idiot are actually correct.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:52 am
@Zam:
Wow, you pay your taxes early !
March 9th, 2010 at 11:54 am
Just to put this in perspective, about 30% of the billboards along I-35 have the message “I could locate Africa on a map before I was born!” They’re almost all owned by ClearChannel and there isn’t a conservative message they won’t push.
Everytime I drive that stretch I want to put up a billboard with a cute cute little baby that says: “When I’m 16, I’ll realize I’m gay! Will you still love me then?”
March 9th, 2010 at 11:55 am
Hey, it’s Tuesday. Aren’t we supposed to be driving some presumptively gay / arguably crazy Blue Dog out of Congress? I checked my memo from Rahm and it says so right there…
March 9th, 2010 at 11:59 am
It’s sad because I have a degree in exactly what Stanley Fish does. Of course, I’m a systems programmer for a living, while Fish is apparently a gaping gasbag for a living.
In any case, it appears neither of us has any training for what we’re doing, but I will say that I am quite sure I’m better at systems programming than Fish is at political prognostication because if I was as dead-ass reliably wrong as Fish is, I would have lost my job years ago.
Whereas wingnut welfare is the gift that never quits giving. Even to the most undeserving sub-mammalian imbecile who gets “in” to the system.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:59 am
@Zifnab:
The coolest part of Obama’s inauguration day was after the ceremony when they covered Bush and Cheney’s trip to the helecopter and we all realized they were finally GONE!! I felt so good as the helecopters left to the sound of the crowd singing ‘Na na na na. Hey Hey Hey, Goodby!’ The TV talking heads didn’t know how to respond to that. They had a sad.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
I loathed Stanley Fish back in the day when it was just Milton and postmodernism he fucked up…
March 9th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Zam,
Take your balls out of the hot water. The tea is ready.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
@Pangloss:
Yes, we call them “some of the people all of the time,” to use Abraham Lincoln’s terminology.
Ed
March 9th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
But NYTimes is liberal, so if they’re saying something good about conservatives and bad about liberals, it MUST BE TRUE!
Someone buy that hack a helmet, since he’s obviously a little too braindamaged.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
I never supported Bush, he was a secret liberal who abandoned the principles of conservatism. Also he was our greatest president too and all true Americans miss him already.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
@dmsilev:
I had that conversation with a few of my right-wing friends back around the time the Olympic bid lost and the consensus was that President Bush hadn’t really campaigned that hard for New York City so it didn’t count as a loss for him, and anyway everybody knows that New York City is liberal.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
@gbear: Gbear, is there a video of this event. I was unaware of the “na na na na na” chorus. I would give large sums of money to see this. But I’ll take it free on youtube.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:09 pm
@John S.:
Reading comprehension fail meets weird-assed metaphor construction. “All the money stolen” is zero, since most of us got tax cuts.
So you can’t miss it.
Therefore, the writer doesn’t miss Bush!
Ed
March 9th, 2010 at 12:09 pm
I miss Bush a lot.
I’m a comedy writer and one of my people does a killer impersonation….
March 9th, 2010 at 12:09 pm
@ABloomquist:
The Iron Range has been solidly Dem for as long as I can remember, not one R, although a few Dems are not what you would call populist like Tom Rukavina. Reading the letters to the ed in local papers, you’d think it was predominately wingnut country here.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
@Ed Drone:
Win.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
@slippy:
I was watching the live coverage so I don’t know about video. It was great. You could hear the singing over the chopper because EVERYone who saw the chopper was singing it.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
We read Stanley Fish’s book on class for one of my college courses. The collective savaging we gave it was epic.
Stanley Fish, if a bunch of undergrads can point of the many, many, many ways you are an idiot, UR DOIN IT RONG.
P.S. You’re even worse that BoBo “salad bar at Applebee’s” Brooks.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
gbear:
When they showed Bush getting into that helicopter, and they showed it flying away, and they kept shifting to a camera with a LONGER telephoto lens so they could keep it in the shot…
I thought they’d NEVER stop showing it. It must have taken a half an hour for the Obamas to stand there with the Bushes, awkwardly, and finally have them enter the helicopter, wave them goodbye, and for the helicopter shot to return to whatever it returned to…didn’t they show them getting on the plane, too?
It took FOREVER. I can’t decide if they wanted to make sure he was gone, or if they couldn’t quit him.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
John—please don’t judge us all by that measure. But I understand the temptatio: Fish has formed a family that has also been responsible for some doozies—his wife, Jane Tompkins, I believe, wrote an essay lauding her own teaching: the example being how she had her class go out and pick cotton so that they could understand what it was like to be a slave so that they could then ‘understand’ Morrison’s Beloved.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
I usually lurk, but in the area I live (the Illinois valley) someone put up one of those “Miss me yet?” billboards and most people around here (even Republicans) think it’s pretty much a joke. At least we hope it is. Of course whomever put it up prefers to remain unknown so we can only guess at their intentions.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
The tune should be obvious.
Dear Chimpy ‘tis at you,
I hereby throw my shoe,
It’s thee I dis.
You’re the election thief,
The idiot in chief
You’ve screwed us up beyond belief
On thee I pis.[1]
You claimed to speak for God
While on the laws you trod,
You hypocrite.
You lie just like the sod
Your syntax it is odd
Your cowboy accent is a fraud
You’re an upper class twit.
At oversight you sneezed,
Your greedy friends to please,
And the economy crashed.
Iraqis you did croak,
You’ve left our grandkids broke,
You treated war like one big joke
At the journalists’ bash.
You tortured prisoners
Appointed Hizzoners [2]
Far right extreme.
For the polluted air,
Taxes that are unfair,
And inept cronies everywhere,
God save the Queen.[3]
Your place in history
Will be no mystery:
You are the worst.
Upon your neck we’d hope
To find your head but nope,
You’d nee
eed aa proctoscope[4]Of fools you’re first.
[1] Unless of course you happen to be on fire.
[2] Okay, it’s a bit of a stretch, but rather clever in a groan-inducing way, don’t you think?
[3] Whoops, wrong song! heh heh.
[4] Sorry about that.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
The worst thing about the Inauguration, besides Roberts’ fuckup of the Oath of Office, was Dick Cheney’s wheelchair.
He’s walking now, isn’t he? He must have made a MIRACULOUS recovery. Funny, though, how he was too sick to stand for a BLACK DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:17 pm
@gbear: That song was a truly awesome moment.
Didn’t make up for anything… but it was good to hear.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
@Kryptik: “Someone buy that hack a helmet, since he’s obviously a little too braindamaged.”
It would have to be big enough to fit on his rear end.
@gbear: As I watched that helicopter take off, I drained my glass of champagne and poured myself another one. :)
March 9th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
I left my two cents at the clusterfuckofanarticle:
This is the way the world ends…...... blah blah blah…
March 9th, 2010 at 12:21 pm
@John S.:
And if someone can’t live quite nicely on almost $21,000 a month & then bitches about paying a little bit more in taxes, he’s an whining idiot & a poor money manager.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
@gbear: I tried counting on the way back from Duluth once. I got too depressed to finish.
The thing most people outside MN don’t know is that Bachmann accurately represents her district.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
@wonkie
The Karl Rove < = being given a pundit position thing is trivially easy to explain, and is only slightly and tangentially relevant to the "Villagers" vested interests and approach to Bush.
Karl Rove is a pundit for…FOX NEWS, which doesn't even try to hide anymore that it's a propaganda outlet for the GOP and right-wing causes.
Your point about the Villagers OTOH has considerably more validity. Many of them cannot reconcile their self-image as respectable journalists and pundits, and how abysmally and thoroughly they were seduced, cowed, bamboozled, and swindled and coopted into acting as virtual propaganda mouthpieces and cheerleaders for the disasterous, cynical, mendacious undertakings of the first four to six years of the Bush Administration. Many of them (and more particularly their publishers/hosts) also fear abandonment by the entire GOP/conservative-leaning portion of their potential market audience, and also dislike turning on the conservative politicians and contacts they so carefully cultivated access to during that era.
And some of them, like David Gregory are simply a willing tool for forwarding conservative frames, and others of them are simply smiling fools mindlessly forwarding conservative frames in the interest of "balanced coverage", like Wolf Blitzer.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
@Daddy-O:
You know, I never thought about that.
But now that you mention it, I can see him in my mind’s eye after the inauguration, standing in a room full of staunch conservatives, no press, and laughing about how he pulled off his little petulant stunt.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
@slippy:
Here’s the video, the singing is at about the 5:00 minute mark. Fair warning, you have to listen to Tweety and Peggy Noonan (who shares a perfectly revolting story about Ronald Reagan calling the White House a “little bungalow”).
March 9th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
@IndyLib: bad link
March 9th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
@joeyess:
Well hell, I’ll try again. Hey, hey, goodbye Shrub.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
It’s always been a mystery to me why the Times publishes Fish. He wrote a couple of interesting basic crit books, but has otherwise just been an insubstantial sophist, churning out vapid opinion books (masquerading as literary criticism) through the mutual back-scratching mafia of academic presses. He’s the very model of a useless, self-congratulatory legacy professor; he’s the Sarah Palin of academia. Someone with his lack of intellectual rigor could never get hired in today’s academic workplace. Yet someone at the Times somehow got the idea that he was not only academically reputable but an important cultural critic. Well, news flash for the Times: he’s neither. He’s a talentless hack who has made a career out of blather, enthralling only a tiny cult of second-rate pomos. Unfortunately, many are too stupid to understand what he writes well enough to notice it’s absolutely without substance. The Times shames itself by publishing him.
March 9th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
@gbear:
gbear or somebody, please translate. What the hell does that message mean?
March 9th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
@Citizen_X:
Advocacy for pre-natal education?
It’s weird, to put it mildly.
-dms
March 9th, 2010 at 12:50 pm
@Ed Drone: (yes, Ed was just commenting other folks’ posts)
And taxes are not stolen money. The government does things like pay for police, firefighters, soldiers, teachers, roads, bridges, schools, judges, courts, tanks, planes, warships, parks, park rangers, libraries and a whole bunch of other things. We may not agree 100% on the amounts for some of the services, but how many of those services would we really want in the hands of private industry. If anything, taxes in the US are way too low.
In addition, if some functions were transferred to private industry, won’t they send us bills? They would be providing the service in order to make a profit. And wouldn’t those bills be akin to a tax?
March 9th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
Yes, a bit of pearl-clutching on how it was ‘disrespectful.’ Of course, the same doesn’t apply to depicting the President as the Joker or Hitler.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Fish, by the way, was one of the principal dupes in the Sokal hoax. And he made an even bigger fool of himself defending Social Text for publishing Sokal’s spoof.
A proven, certifiable idiot.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
I found a picture of the sign.
The billboard is cute. And definitely should be covered by the umbrella of free speech.
But that does not mean that I am yearning for the return of George W. Bush.
Regarding polls: There are a few people in Russia who show up on every poll saying they wish Stalin was back in charge. Go figure.
It is just a billboard. It is just advertising. It is not evidence.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
It’s funny really, with all of the difficulties, people at each other’s throats, all of it, one of the more reliable ways to see the bright side immediately is to think back and say “Well, at least that idiot isn’t President anymore!”
March 9th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
@Seanly:
And when that happens, shitty service is sure to follow simply to assure that the bottom line and the stock holders are happy.
Goddamnit! Why don’t people get this?
March 9th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
I happen to live in a tiny rural town north of Dallas. When I stopped in our ersatz 7/11 a few weeks ago, I noticed someone had put up a “miss me yet?” flyer behind the counter. I didn’t comment, but it wasn’t there the following morning when I stopped in again. Keep in mind, this store does a brisk business selling beer, Skoal, night-crawlers, and camouflage baptismal gowns. Not exactly a liberal oasis. Nobody misses W.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Fish is clearly on to something here. This logic makes South of the Border about eleventy billion times more popular than Disneyworld. I know where I’m going next family vacation.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
I think I’d miss a rabid skunk a little more than I miss GWB. Seriously, I’m trying to be generous here.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Stanley Fish is Exhibit A in the bankruptcy of academia in literature. I would rather eat poison than read his penny ante thoughts.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
All that Fishian douchebaggery, and search=”Katrina” pulls up nothing. Figures. He’s trolling his own blog.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
@Citizen_X:
Sorry. It was a sarcastic reaction to all the ‘I had hiccups before I was born! I had fingerprints at 3 weeks! I could hear my mom crying in despair at 2 months!’ pro-life billboards that are everywhere along the main rural highways in MN.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
@gbear:
I’m still convinced those were White Sox fans come to see their man be sworn in. They’ve been using that song at Sox games and in their commercials ever since I can remember.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
When I saw the story about that billboard awhile ago I thought “I wish it was around here somewhere because I would risk jail time to spraypaint a big HELL NO! on it”.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
There isn’t really a billboard claiming that an unborn child can locate Africa on a map. I lied.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Yeah, from the same 12 percenters or however much never stopped believin’, even during the worst parts of Bush.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
No. It is not wrong. I was 40 and studied “Literary Theory” in a highly-rated American Doctoral Program. It was the biggest collection of prima donna idiots ever, and they marginalize themselves and lord it over their Grad TA Doctoral candidates. By the time any of them get out, nobody could care about their ideas or the expression of their ideas.
Fish is the Ann Coulter of “English Studies”. He shows his wee-wee in public and writes “poop” on the board while Coulter shows her depressingly male-looking genitals by raising her skirt and writing “treason” on the Board.
Then when the teacher comes back in, they both say, “Teacher, the liberals were insulting President Bush
”
But the whole Academy has not produced anyone who is interesting or who will speak directly to the conversations we do have since 1964 when Randall Jarrell was writing for The Saturday Evening Post.
Poor Randall Jarrell probably killed himself by deliberate traffic accident in 1965.
March 9th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
How can we miss George when all the problems he caused are still with us?
Can one miss a forest fire that’s still raging?
March 9th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
@gbear:
Some friends and I travelled from ATL to DC for the inauguration. It was a glorious day, even though we were in a cab to a bar because we couldn’t get close enough to the mall during the ceremony (and strangely enough, when we got to a bar near Capitol Hill, it was full of folks and their kids), but if you went out onto the streets during the helicopter leaving, you could hear EVERYONE all over the District singing the “Goodbye” song, it was really like a movie soundtrack or something.
What a great day for drinking that was…I actually had a 15 year old buy me a shot with his mom’s permission, and it was the only time I’ve ever felt ok about underage possession of alcohol. We all needed a relieving drink that afternoon. We were all Obots that day.
March 9th, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Well, I wonder if Dick Chaney would “miss him” if they went hunting together.
Uncle Bob
March 9th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
I have a simple response to the author: Clown.
Nobody will ever see Bush in a positive light. The few who like the guy are clueless and most likely partisan fools who buy into anything Rush and that ilk tell them to buy.
Bush is a WORSE, two term version of his daddy, a President that basically did nothing for the people and both mangled the English language. Outside of that, Bush 1 at least had the gumption to understand that occupying Iraq was folly.
Reagan gets his props solely because people look at things in very superficial ways and he was the most superficial president ever. Really, dig deep and Ronnie was a big failure too. A lot of the debt issues and messes we still are cleaning up started with him. All because he didn’t want liberals spending money on social programs so he left us in debt.
This idea that the GOP = good and the Dems = bad is ridiculous but even Bill Clinton deserves much blame for deregulating radio and television like he did. Thanks to him, I have to put up with lame music stations and even crappier talk stations where there is zero free market of ideas happening.
March 9th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
My unscientific poll of the comments section of said article leads me to conclude that Stanley FIsh is an idiot.
March 9th, 2010 at 2:38 pm
No, Bush hasn’t been rehabilitated yet. To be considered rehabilitated, first he would have to be charged with the crimes he committed, then he would have to be tried and convicted. Then he would have to serve his sentence. Maybe then he would be rehabilitated.
March 9th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Never heard of Fish but will add his name to my Clueless Asshole database.
This comment was appropriate:
March 9th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
This is not “idiocy”. It is propaganda, Big Lie variant, masquerading as “idiocy”.
March 9th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
well, the standard answer is that someone can be good in one field and an idiot in another, and that it is a fallacy to assume otherwise. there is no “transference” property, whether the subject is mathematics, politics, morals or management. so, yes, you should not conclude anything about Fish based on what appears to be his fondness for trolling the op-ed page of the NYT. and as far as that goes, he’s made a pretty good career out of being a professional troll/contrarian. certainly better than, say, ann althouse, who is a pale, if tipsy, imitation. and if it is all about the page views, it makes sense to me that the NYT would keep him.
that said, should you want to conclude he’s a politics jackass because he’s made a living as a troll, i see no objection. i can’t imagine that he would ever put his actual political beliefs out for public consumption.
March 9th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Are there no taggers in Minnesota? It would take all of 10 seconds to spray paint a bigass NO! on the billboard. Freeway bloggers rise up!
March 9th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
I think it’s mostly due to the fact that Obama is such a horrible POTUS. If he was better at his job, you wouldn’t be seeing these sort of articles.
March 9th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
@Makewi:
Keep on believing that one…he’s not the best but he sure as hell ain’t “horrible.”
March 9th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Horrible. Terrible too. The worst. Completely disconnected from the will of the people. So bad that in only one year the people are ready to throw the bums out. So yeah, he sure the hell is “horrible”.
March 9th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
@gbear: Yup. There is one on Central with the pro-fetus campaign on it. I always have the impulse to add, “I will be born in eight months, and then you can forget about me and slash all funding that would help me have a better life.”
March 9th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
I thought I’d miss Bush, I really did, but then Sarah Palin came into our lives and Jon Stewart found plenty more material, so… yay!
March 9th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Well, to be fair, I’ve been ready to throw the bums out for about seven years now but, no, Obama’s not helping.
Damn, there was supposed to be one of those @maweki things there.
March 9th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
@asiangrrlMN:
There used to be a billboard in my neighborhood that said “Schizophrenia: There is help!”
I always wanted to climb up on it and write “For ALL of you!”
I didn’t.
March 9th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
@Makewi: Wow, long time no troll!
March 9th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
hmm Nixon wasn’t rehabilitated until the ‘90s when Newt Grinch and company bodily step forward to show America that there are more crooked and self destructive politicians than Nixon. So what Republican will offer themselves to make Bush look like a sober statesman? President Paulin?
March 9th, 2010 at 5:43 pm
@arguingwithsignposts: Not that long. Probably just seems that way because of the ongoing national nightmare that is the Obama administration.
March 9th, 2010 at 5:46 pm
@Makewi:
Two unfunded wars, Katrina, 9/11, Guantanamo, Warrantless wiretaps, Hank Paulson, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, the financial collapse …
get back to me in 8 years, you stupid troll.
March 9th, 2010 at 5:51 pm
@arguingwithsignposts:
Poor baby, still refuse to move into the present tense I see. You see in the here and now, many of those things you list have been continued under your unicorn riding savior. Which makes me laugh.
There will be no need to wait 8 years. Obama has 3 more and the Dems will hold Congress for less than a year.
March 9th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
But…but…but…but…Obama is “horrible”! And “the worst!”
January’s job openings 7.6% higher than December’s.
Yeah, “the worst.”
March 9th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
@Tonal Crow:
but…Obama is “horrible”! And “the worst!”Well Obama actually is horrible… if your dismal pathetic life sucks shit and you want it to be that way for everyone else too.
March 9th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Wow. Worst copy/paste and edit availability fail ever.
March 9th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
@Makewi:
You seem to be confusing Obama with the GOP members of Congress.
Get it right please.
March 9th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
@Makewi:
Unicorn riding savior? Who is that? George Bush and his flight suit?
C’mon, you are wrong and will see when your pathetic excuse for a party nominates Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney for their Presidential nominee.
In the end, America isn’t totally unhappy with Obama. Believe the talking points if you wish, but the only person here who seems out of touch with reality would be you and your posts.
March 9th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
@gbear: Oh, man. That is the awesome. I love it! There was another on Central about how if I never had leprosy, I can thank animal research. I wanted to add, “But the animal cannot talk back because it died of leprosy.”
March 9th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
@gbear: Whatever happened to the site fixup? I thought it was aimed, in part, at fixing this kind of fail.
March 9th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
@The Populist:
It won’t matter who the GOP nominates. Obama is destined to be a one-termer.
March 9th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
@Makewi:
We shall see because many thought Bush would be a one termer as well. I can’t think of one GOP nominee that would make sense for people to vote against Obama.
Now I may agree CONGRESS may add more GOP seats, but Obama should be a two termer.
Bush 1 lost because he was oblivious to the recession he oversaw. Obama will be able to point out things are getting better under his watch. Throw in a loudmouth like Romney, Palin or Huckabee and he wins.
The only GOP I think Obama should fear is somebody like the governor of Indiana. Outside of that, you will see I am right when the election time comes.
Using your logic, Reagan should have been a one term prez. He had some of the same issues but without tea baggers and Fox News screaming like idiots all the time.
March 9th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
DougJ: Yes, it’s wrong. It’s like saying The New Republic makes it hard for you to take liberals seriously. Fish has for a few years now sought to position himself between David Horowitz and Camille Paglia as a critic of the academic humanities. He’s never been, say, as smart as Harold Bloom or as honest as Bérubé, to name a couple of other lit. PhD’s with soapboxes.
You want a good book of academic lit criticism from the past year? I just read A Novel Marketplace: Mass Culture, the Book Trade, and Postwar American Fiction by Evan Brier, who teaches at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. Good stuff, albeit briefer that I’d like thanks no doubt to the poverty of university presses. Brier’s not likely to be offered an NYT column anytime soon.
March 9th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
The GOP will never again win the Presidency UNTIL they dump their George W. Bush fetish.
I do not see this happening any time soon. I have little choice but to think this is because they, unlike the Democrats, are TOO MUCH in lockstep.
If one of them steps out of line and criticizes a Bush policy, or a fellow Republican for being TOO neocon-ish, or for NOT supporting waterboarding or any other illegal activity performed by Bush, or criticizes Rush Limbaugh, they are made pariahs. By their fellow Republicans. Bada-BING-bada-BOOM.
For this reason alone, the GOP can not expect to gain the White House again. They have to run too far to the right in their primaries to ever come back to the middle in the general election. Easy pickin’s for ANY Dem candidate to fillet and carve them up.
March 10th, 2010 at 1:17 am