{"id":1285,"date":"2012-07-24T08:07:40","date_gmt":"2012-07-24T12:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/?p=1285"},"modified":"2012-07-24T08:07:48","modified_gmt":"2012-07-24T12:07:48","slug":"annoying-liberal-habits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=1285","title":{"rendered":"Annoying Liberal Habits"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
\n<\/em>July 22, 2012<\/p>\n

Once when I was in college, I had a professor (George Meese) invite me to some sort of academic paper-review function. I don\u2019t remember exactly what it was, but I think the point was a paper that a professor had written. Other professors (who presumably had read the paper) were there to ask the author questions. Well\u2026 \u201cquestions\u201d only in the grammatical sense that they ended their long-winded statements with a question mark. Mostly it went something like this: The person began talking by introducing him\/herself (including full educational credentials), opined about something only marginally related to the topic, embellished said topic with stories of personal triumph, dropped in a word like \u201cpedagogy\u201d or \u201crubric\u201d to bring the educational crowd back in, and finished it all with a \u201cdon\u2019t you agree?\u201d to ensure the answer. It was horrible.<\/p>\n

On the way out, Professor Meese asked me what I thought. I told him exactly what I thought. Which is to say, it was BS. He was startled for a second, and I realized he was asking about the actual topic of the review. I started to backpedal (because, frankly, I was so caught up in the meta-properties of the event I really hadn\u2019t thought at all about the topic). He kind of held his hand up to stop me and said, \u201cWait. What do you mean?\u201d And I said, \u201cAre all \u201creviews\u201d like that?\u201d He smiled and said something like, \u201cNot all. But too many.\u201d (He was a good teacher — that wasn\u2019t the lesson I came for, but he was pleased I had learned something of value.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, that sort of bloviating, \u201cI know it all and you simply don\u2019t have the capacity to understand\u201d behavior is stereotypically associated with those who self-identify as liberals (say, college professors). And it\u2019s annoying as hell. But if Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld taught us anything, it\u2019s that it\u2019s not exclusive to your political ideology. So I intended to call out our state attorney general, Bill Schuette, here. He has taken a pretty hardline against the Affordable Care Act\/Obamacare law to the point now of actively circumventing it <\/a>(and patronizing the citizens of Michigan in the process). If calling him a liberal doesn\u2019t change him, perhaps I will have to draw him in a tweed jacket, smoking a pipe, and driving a Volvo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News July 22, 2012 Once when I was in college, I had a professor (George Meese) invite me to some sort of academic paper-review function. I don\u2019t remember exactly what it was, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlive-media-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1285"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1289,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285\/revisions\/1289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}