.With the tendency, post Nov 2, to assign red or blue colors to every segment of American society, no locale is more universally “blue” than the college campus. If you find an admitted Conservative on a college campus you can bet he’s either attending a football game or repairing a faulty Xerox machine. BobLee takes some comfort in this territorial absolute.
Here in North Carolina, we are almost solidly red. You are probably thinking that John Edwards likely carried his home precinct. Heck no, John’s home precinct went 80% Red. One of the few “blue” specks in North Carolina is Chapel Hill, an academic “mill town”. The University of North Carolina is Chapel Hill. This quintessential “college town” is synonymous with its state-supported liberal arts institution in the same fashion that Berkley IS Cal or Cambridge IS Harvard. The Chapel Hill crowd does truly love to be mentioned with those other two by the way.
Conservatives, as a matter of policy, deride and lampoon the pompously arrogant (or arrogantly pompous?) campus humbugs that inhabit these academic communities. Lampooning helps overrides the fear that they exert unfair influence over the eager young minds that wander into their ivy-covered lairs … naïve flies trapped in sinister webs woven by these tweed-jacketed spiders.
Undeniably a percentage of young people do succumb to these “Perfessers” hawking ideological cure-alls from the Chautauqua wagon of their classroom pulpit. But I take a different stance towards this bunch. They serve a quite valuable role in the rite of passage of adolescents into young adults.
View the traditional college experience as a “gauntlet” to be run between Point A “having my parents’ guidance and direction” to Point B “deciding for myself when some self-important buffoon is blowing BS up my pants leg”. Self-important buffoonery is as prevalent on college campuses as cheap beer and roommates with bad hygiene. Any “celebrity status” for a collegiate magpie ends at the campus property line. They wither in the competitive marketplace of ideas like a vampire exposed to sunlight.
Parents delivering their children to the typical college campus must realize that they are dropping their loved one into a percolating stewpot of sensual, sensory, and socio-political temptation. The purposes of the college experience are to learn how (1) to make wise mature decisions, and/or (2) to be accountable when he/she makes unwise immature decisions. There will be ample opportunities to do both over the four+ years.
The majority of you ran this aforementioned gauntlet and survived. The Florsheim folks say the average age for fitting a young man for his first pair of corporate wingtips is 25 … Good-by Birkenstocks – Hello Brooks Bothers.
For university “development officers” the toughest sells are with alumni in their 30s. This demographic is the most aggressive in asserting “I am not giving my hard earned money to support those fruitcakes, nuts, and squirrels.” Fundraisers must convince them that the campus radicals, while indeed vocal, are an insignificant aspect of the overall college experience.
Any environment housing 20,000 young people between 18 and 22 will attract drug pushers, hookers, and ideological wing nuts. A military base attracts drug pushers, hookers, and pawnshops. Radical ideologies are the “pawnshops” of a college community; a convenient haven when one is feeling sorry for one’s self, and looking for someone to blame because “life isn’t fair”.
Everyone comes to a socio-political intersection along the road of life. He/she decides how they view society and their place within it. Isn’t it better that they encounter these options in the pretend world of college?
“No … they are too impressionable” you counter. Every parent’s nightmare …
your son/daughter gets “Patty Hersted”; coming home festooned as a longhaired maggot-infested raging Bolshevik denouncing you and everything you have worked so hard to accomplish and provide for him/her. Take a deep breath … cut up their evil capitalist credit cards, have them make their own car and insurance payments and remind your self that you survived a similar stage. I didn’t say this was easy, simply a rite of passage (for both parent AND child).
Campus wuzzles have marginalized themselves to the brink of total insignificance in much the same way as network news anchors. Think about it … “Cal Berkley Sociology Professor Bruce Bloviate released a ludicrous report today declaring that blah blah blah.” generates the same eye-rolling “what NOW, yawn!” response as “Dan Rather/Peter Jennings reported blah blah blah.” Neither group could spell “credible” if you spotted them the “cred” and the “ibl”.
The occupation of “college professor” carried prestige as recently as 20 years ago. Tod
ay the likely response is “so Ringling Brothers had filled their quota of clowns, huh?” Those legitimately drawn to the once noble profession of “teaching” can thank the bloviating radicals who have hijacked the term. When “helping young people learn how to think” became “telling them what to think”. The leftward shift of learning lost its luster.
Kids go off to college today for the same reasons you did and those reasons are much more carnal and social than they are ideological and political.
I have friends with “conservative think tanks” (who invented that term?) who run covert ops on college campuses to thwart and confound the loonies. I also have exterminators visit my home periodically to spray for creepycrawlies in my crawlspace. Both the exterminators and my campus commando buddies have job security. Keep the loonies confined to the campus and out of the real world; and keep the cockroaches in our crawlspaces and off our kitchen counters.
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Do You Remember
What “nationality” was Floyd R. Turbo?
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Memo To Prez George … Yo, Dubya, I love ya man but PLEASE at least do a Google search on that next Homeland Security Chief. Bernie Kerik was as yucky as a full frontal nude shot of Michael Moore. Even my cat threw up a hairball on that one. The DNC have “real” and “total BS” dossiers on every prominent Repub on Earth. At least make’em use the “total BS” ones next time.
If you were wondering, BobLee hisownself matriculated at The University of North Carolina and ran that gauntlet with nary a liberal bruise on him. It can be done.
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