Coo-Coo On Campus

America’s universities have gone crazy. Decades of dubious African-American Studies, Queer Theory Studies, Womens’ Studies, Gender Studies, and the like have produced a nearly uniform dippiness in students, faculty, and administration. That students and their parents would spend upwards of $50,000 per year to study such things is bad enough, but that’s their business. That government spends our tax money on them in the form of grants and subsidized loans is far worse.

Those applying for admission to the University of California are asked to identify themselves as either “male; female; trans male/trans man; trans female/trans woman; gender queer/gender non-conforming; and different identity.” They’re asked their sexual “orientation,” which assumes they were born either homosexual or heterosexual, but it also asks: “what sex were you assigned at birth, such as on an original birth certificate?” This is reflective of the assumption among progressives that homosexuals are born that way, but men and women are not.

According to the progressive mantra, sex has nothing to do with genitalia, chromosomes, anything physical or scientific, and has little to do with reproduction either. Rather, it has everything to do with feelings. Feelings trump logic, history, biology, evolution, and creation. 

Speaking of feelings, students attending at least twelve campuses experienced panic attacks recently, triggered by seeing “Trump 2016” and “Build The Wall” drawn in chalk on a sidewalk. According to campusreform.org, the “victims” who read these messages have been offered counseling. Administrators have banned political chalking entirely. Students complained about how much water is wasted to hose off the chalk.

He's talking about seeing "Trump 2016"in chalk on his campus

There was some craziness when I attended what is now UMass Lowell in the 1970s. A professor recruited me to attend a class called “Sociology of Women and Sex Roles” because no men signed up and she wanted some male perspective in discussions. I didn’t have to do the reading and I only had to show up twice a week though the class met three times. I had a full-time job on the second shift and couldn’t make the third class. One of the books we discussed was “The Bitch Manifesto” which was still being studied in 2007 according to a quick net search. I wouldn’t be allowed in today without first renouncing my heterosexual-white-male-privilege.

It got crazier in the 1990s when my wife finished her undergraduate degree in Social Work at the University of Southern Maine. I accompanied her to a graduation party in Scarborough where several lesbian graduates lived, one of whom was her friend. Upon arrival, attendees were assigned badges declaring whether we were gay, straight, or bisexual.

In 2010, I wrote what I considered a tame review of Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues but I it got me fired from one of the papers carrying this column. The publisher received so many complaints about my use of the word “vagina,” he said he couldn’t defend me anymore. It didn’t seem to help when I explained that those readers’ taxes subsidized the play when it was produced annually on multiple campuses of the University of Maine, not to mention hundreds if not thousands of other campuses across the country. I was hired back a few weeks later when the controversy died down.

Science departments used to be anchors of sanity at universities. They’re infected now too by millions in government grants for dubious research on alleged human-caused climate-change. I hope I live long enough to see the day when it’s finally exposed for the power-grabbing hoax it is. I also look forward to Mark Steyn’s day in court, the legal preliminaries for which have dragged on for almost five years. Penn State University climatologist Michael Mann, author of the infamous hockey-stick graph purporting to demonstrate anthropogenic global warming, has sued Steyn for defamation after he accused Mann of fraud. Steyn refused to apologize and wants a trial to further expose Mann’s specious research. Given Steyn’s brilliant mind and biting wit, that promises to be the best legal theater since the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Mark Steyn

I wanted to get this out before Maine Attorney General Janet Mills comes after us climate-change “deniers.” Together with sixteen other Democrat AGs around the country, Mills is on a witch hunt to criminalize research into what they all insist is “settled science,” as if there were any such thing.

Political correctness on campus has gone way beyond ludicrous. One longtime friend who is very loyal to his alma mater was pushed over the edge when its administration dictated which Halloween costumes were allowed and which were not. He’s a thoughtful guy and has been left-of-center for the many decades I’ve known him. Now, however, he’s supporting Donald Trump in hopes that he would counteract it. I was shocked.

Around, around, and around it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows.

Addendum: Response by Michael Mann in Conway Sun, one of the papers carrying this column:

Hope And Change It Back

Obama said he would fundamentally transform the United States and that’s one promise he’s keeping. I hardly recognize it anymore.

Denee Mallon keeping vigil outside HHS

For example, The Associated Press reported last week about an Obama Administration Health and Human Services review board just ruling that we taxpayers can pay for a confused, 74-year-old army veteran who calls himself Denee Mallon to mutilate himself because he thinks he’s a woman. Medicare can fund his delusion, the Obama Administrations’s delusion, and the LGBTQ lobby’s delusion that he can fundamentally transform himself into a female. I don not share his delusion, but I’m forced to subsidize it. So are you.

The Associated Press didn’t report it that way though. The old wire service adheres to the GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders) homofascist “Media Reference Guide” for reporting on such stories. The AP used an upbeat tone throughout in keeping with the fantasy that everything related to homosexuality is “gay” and “glad.” I reported on the GLAAD guide in my May 6th column in case you missed it. The confused Mr. Mallon was dutifully referred to by the AP as “her” and “she” even though he’s male. Previous, more sane HHS rulings against taxpayer funding for such mutilation were referred to as “unjustified.” GLAAD spokespersons were exclusively quoted by the AP on the ruling. Not quoted were critics like me, who are appalled at Obama Administration priorities that let hundreds of other veterans around the country die on fake waiting lists while the LGBTQ “community” celebrates the “groundbreaking decision that recognizes the procedures as a medically necessary and effective treatment for individuals who do not identify with their biological sex.” The AP reported as if no one could possibly object to any of this as an outrageous waste of taxpayer money.

Want another example? The Mainstream Media ignored, or gave scant attention to the report that the US economy shrank in the first quarter of 2014. Evidently the Administration’s “Recovery Summer” of 2010 that was to follow Obama’s trillion-dollar stimulus of borrowed money for allegedly “shovel-ready” projects will have to be postponed again for the fifth straight year. Obsequious mainstream media news outlets that didn't ignore it altogether dutifully reported the economic decline was caused by an extremely harsh, cold, snowy winter that froze America’s you-know-whats off. Our shrinking economy had nothing to do with Obama’s brilliant Keynesian, drunken-sailor spending policies. Oh no. The president is still doing everything he can to reverse failed Bush policies that are really to blame for the economic mess we’re in.

And what caused this extremely harsh winter that caused our economy to shrink? It was “Climate change,” which used to be called “global warming.” That name-change became necessary when global temperatures refused to conform to Al Gore’s predictions that they would continue to go up in our planetary “fever.” The foolishness is just too obvious when progressive geniuses attribute the record-breaking cold winter we just had to “global warming.” The polar ice cap was supposed to have disappeared by now, but it hasn’t. The Himalayan glaciers were supposed to melt and they’re not. The oceans were supposed to rise and they’re not.

But what good is it to point all this out? The debate is settled. Mr. Hope and Change told us so, and my continuing to ridicule the massive delusion of human-caused global warming just makes me a flat-earther, a “denier,” a crackpot. Some true-believing progressive think people like me should be arrested and imprisoned. Will the Obama Administration issue its own Media Guide for what can or cannot be said about the Chicken Little Climate Change Cult? Is the NSA monitoring crackpots? Is the IRS? Of course not. Why would I even think such things?

It’s not likely they worry about a small-time columnist like me in the northern New England sticks, but others have been feeling enormous pressure to go along with the “settled debate.” Earlier this month, eminent Swedish meteorologist Lennart Bengtsson was invited to join the London-based GWPF (Global Warming Policy Foundation) an organization that dares to question the on climate change “consensus.” Immediately, he was besieged by a firestorm of criticism from the American climate-change cultists so severe that he feared for his health and safety and resigned.

When National Review columnist Mark Steyn dared call the sacred hockey stick graph venerated by the Climate Change Cult fraudulent, CCC high priest Michael E. Mann filed suit against him for defamation. Steyn could have avoided the suit by apologizing, but he refused. Rather, he’s raising money for his defense because he wants to put Mann on the stand and question him about the dubious data behind his sacred graph while he’s under oath.

I can’t wait. Maybe after the trial, I can begin to recognize my country again.