2/09/2010

For Conservatives, Everything Old Is New Again, Part 1:
Few things depress the Rude Pundit more than having to re-fight battles that seemed won and arguments that seemed settled. But, see, the goal of the right wing in this country is not just to halt progress, but to drag us backwards, to some fantasy world where they were correct about everything. It never existed, that conservative paradise, and that's why we've moved beyond the knuckle-dragging beliefs of the past.

Every day, though, we're reminded that conservatives so idealize the past that they probably wish they could Superman the earth backwards and make the bathrooms re-segregated and the women re-tied to the domestic sphere. Of course, their taxes would be a hell of a lot higher, but, you know, that clouds the picture. Even the recent past is part of this strange, myopic vision of white utopia. For why else would Republicans right now be talking about privatizing Social Security? Or cutting taxes further? If the plunge in the stock market and the ratcheting up of the debt under George W. Bush didn't put those notions to sleep like the incontinent dogs they were, then nothing will. Christ, someone's even put up a billboard in Minnesota of the smiling bastard ex-president with the line "Miss Me Yet?" on it. That ain't nostalgia. It's psychosis.

Trawling the filth-encrusted area under the refrigerator known as Townhall.com, the Rude Pundit came across some scribblings by minor league fuckbag Mike Adams. Adams is a criminal justice professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington (also known as Dawson's Creek). His "column" today (if by "column," you mean, "used scrotum hair wax") is titled "Texas Gay&M University." And it's such a retro attack on queer studies at colleges that Adams could have written it between sessions of bobbing on Allan Bloom's knob back in the 1980s.

Like an infant boy that just discovered his penis, Adams says, oh, heavens, Texas A&M's English Department now has a class titled, "Gay and Lesbian Literature." This causes Adams to jack that little dick, especially the part of the syllabus that reads, "Intolerance of others’ viewpoints will not be tolerated in the classroom." Yep. Because the lit professor doesn't want people saying, "Fag" or "Breeder," Adams proposes his own class, "Homosexuality and Other Bad Lifestyle Choices." In this class, you'd learn "How homosexuals burden the health care system and why the Democrats don’t talk about it," among other lively topics.

First off, it seems odd that Texas A&M is just getting around to teaching a queer lit course, considering most colleges have done so for a decade or two or three. Why is that even remotely worthy of discussion at this point? There's lots of non-gay and lesbian lit courses. We call them "every other lit course." Second off, Adams fancies himself so subversive because he's calling out them gays and feminists on campus - and he'd professor. Wild, huh? And he's a creationist. As he says on his syllabi, "Rather than seeing you as the mere product of random mutation, I see you as a unique individual endowed by his Creator – not just with a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – but with a purpose." He'd probably just call himself a "skeptic." But, hey, UNCWers, learn about criminal justice from a guy who thinks you were poofed into existence and that homosexuality is a choice.

Adams is wrong in so very many ways throughout in his homophobic little rant, but none so much as in the skeevy way he slips in blatant gay-bashing language at the end. He says his proposed anti-gay class "will likely offend some homosexual Aggies who have been regrettably dubbed as 'Faggies' by their less sensitive fellow students." In case you don't know, "Aggies" are what the students of Texas A&M call themselves. And it's obvious that Adams doesn't understand the douchebag nature of some college students at all. Dude, since time immemorial, whenever another university plays Texas A&M in football, the opposing school's fans call the Aggies the obvious insult of "Faggies." It may not be right, but it sure as hell didn't just happen now because the English Department started a gay and lesbian lit class.

Conservatives don't have much use for history because, time and again, it proves them wrong.