Theoria

Is it just me, or have Mark Bauerlein’s posts at Brainstorm in recent weeks pushed him from his adopted position as the “reasonable conservative in the radical academy” to just plain nutbar? Don’t get me wrong: Crash was a terrible movie – I agree with him there. But just because a movie is a sanctimonious piece of liberal crap loved by sanctimonious liberals doesn’t mean that sanctimonious liberal professors shouldn’t be able to write all they want about it in College English! I much prefer that it be in College English than in a journal I actually read. (Note: while typing this, Mark replied to Luther’s smart comment. Unfortunately, Mark used the much maligned phrase “use and abuse” – likely a holdover from his time at The Valve; as an aside, Bauerlein might be interested in “augmented reality glasses” as they would save his sensitive eyes from scenes of police brutality in Los Angeles as portrayed in Crash.)

This raises two “important” (the meaning of “important” is greatly skewed after a week of reading somewhere between 1500 and 2000 pages of undergraduate writing) questions: why did it take him so long to join the ranks of the nutbars at Brainstorm (sanity is in short supply there – seriously: what’s with that creepy woman who pretends to be her secretary? or the old man who goes to more dinner parties than I eat meals?) and when will Marc Bousquet (if you aren’t reading his posts, you should before he gets Brainstormed) jump the shark into nutbar-hood?

Real content resuming soon – a post on animals in Hobbes’ Elements of Law, Natural and Politic before the end of the week. Cursory database searches reveal quite little consideration of the animal in Hobbes – the Descartes industry seems to have that one locked down. Anyone aware of “Hobbes and animals” work? (It is nice to be writing for myself again.)