Friday, March 22, 2013

Pathetic Professorial Punditry

In a 19 March column in the Lexington Herald-Leader (Lexington, Ky.), Mike Rivage-Seul, emeritus professor of peace and social justice (whatever that is) at Berea College, vented his spleen upon Pope Francis, citing his misbehavior during the so-called “Dirty War” in Argentina 1976-83, in which lots of folks just disappeared, not that folks didn’t disappear routinely in that part of the world. He described Francis as a (gasp) “compassionate conservative,” about as lethal an attribute as one can imagine on most college campuses these days.

Describing the divine bearing on the pope’s election, the professor wrote, “Evidently, she [the Holy Spirit] concluded, ‘I’ll let them elect a clone of John Paul II if they like. But then I’ll take over and allow the scandalous crimes of that clone to become evident. As a result, he’ll have to resign.’” FYI, the going thing on college campuses and gaggles of seminaries these days (a gender-diversity thing) is the designation of the biblical Holy Spirit as feminine (named Shekina), not masculine, as documented in the Bible…a sort of spiritual glass-ceiling response.

This gives professors a warm/fuzzy feeling, perhaps something like “fellow-feeling,” mentioned by the professor in a February column, in which the he wrote, “The 20th century, once so full of promise, turned out to be the bloodiest in the history of the world. And the West was responsible for it all… .” The U.S. just didn’t have the same degree of “fellow-feeling” that the Nazis and the Japanese had, thus all the carnage by the corrupt West. An example of fellow-feeling might accrue to the 200,000 Korean “comfort women” enslaved and raped by Japanese soldiers during WWII to keep them from having sex-deprived headaches during their butcheries.

Rivage-Seul is carrying out an assignment by the Holy Spirit, just making those “scandalous crimes” become evident, presumably with a view toward getting a pope, as he noted, with a “feminine spirit” and “outside the ranks of the College of Cardinals,” never mind that the “oldest profession” is carried out with a “feminine spirit.” Okay, a lot of folks have harped on the pope’s lackluster performance vis-à-vis Hitler’s treatment of the Jews in the 1930s-40s, so why not slam Francis for not taking a bullet in Argentina?

Also in the 19 March issue was a piece by Michael F. Cairo, associate professor of political science at Transylvania University, who claimed that the Iraq War was/is responsible for the turmoil, trials and troubles in the Middle East today, meaning that Francis was innocent but George Bush was the culprit, never mind that Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites have been butchering each other for a thousand years. Indeed, Saddam spent the 1980s gassing the Iranians and his own people (okay, Kurds) and then invaded Kuwait long before the Iraq War, with a view toward taking over the whole oil-rich Arabian Peninsula.

Cairo wrote, “The Bush administration destroyed any chance of negotiation with Iran by including it in the Axis of Evil… .” He claimed that Bush scared the Iranians into thinking he was about to do a number on them. This got Obama off the hook. Obama claimed back in 2008 that he would have a tete-a-tete with Amadinejad and they would make things all better. He never did that but it was Bush’s fault and Cairo knows it.

Cairo also didn’t mention that Obama was gung-ho for the Arab Spring and even wasted a bunch of Libyans to prove it…bombed ’em for seven months, but that didn’t affect the turmoil in the Middle East…did it? He also told Mubarak, Saleh, Qaddafi and Assad they had to go…or else, but the “or else” never came through (except for hopelessly weak Libya); therefore, more turmoil…all Bush’s fault, naturally.

Cairo did mention one thing Obama has done—the DRONES. Now that might just upset some Middle Easterners enough to make them cast aspersions at this country and shoot each other more intensely in the bargain. Remember how they shot each other in Pakistan when they heard that a Koran had been (gasps-s-s-s) flushed. It wasn’t, of course, but the deed was done. The perpetrator of that BIG LIE, Michael Isikoff, now works for NBC, where all “progressives” like the professors are welcome. Revising history is such fun.

Cairo said that Saddam’s reign of terror kept the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds manageable. Yeah…and he only had to kill off 400,000 (mostly Shiites and Kurds) for that excellence. Egad! Progressive professors are a real laugh.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

No comments: