Ameliorate *This* Livelihood

Nitsuh calls BS on that one McSweeney’s piece floating around (it’s an online submission and a quick read):

It’s not that I don’t get jokes about students being pointy-headed and namby-pamby and whatnot. (Yes yes clever.) But ultimately, there’s a rhetorical thrust to this piece that’s just as often associated with, say, racist uncles at Thanksgiving, and that thrust is this: all your liberal impulses, multiculturalism, interest in social justice, and sensitivities are basically meaningless and silly for the reason that Big Scary Black Guys Are Going to Rob, Kill, or Rape You, and where will your namby-pamby liberal values be then, huh?

I’m sure the author of this piece believes he’s coming at it from a different direction, but in the end, the whole thing winds up pretty much indistinguishable from an email forward you might get from that tea-partying uncle — the only difference being that the uncle might believe the whole thing was true, and add a few lines at the bottom about how this is why he carries a concealed weapon, can’t believe you live in the city, and can’t stand “political correctness.”

I thought roughly the same thing as Nitsuh upon reading this, and especially given my recent engagement with someone on similar terms, feel it merits a reblog.  This sort of thing shows, at the very least, that if you want a comedy bit to appeal across the ideological spectrum, it can’t help to pick on the professional eggheads.

Filed under: academia  McSweeney's  Nitsuh Abebe