Just Another Radical Obama Appointee
Just what we need — another new Obama appointee with a controversial past and radical inclinations.
Several weeks ago, the president announced his intention to make three appointments to the National Council on the Humanities. One of them is Cathy Davidson, an English professor at Duke University. Davidson’s curriculum vitae includes some very impressive-sounding credentials: past president of the American Studies Association (ASA), past editor of the American Literature journal, and vice-provost of Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke.
But one thing she probably won’t voluntarily mention at her confirmation hearing is that she was a member of Duke University’s “Group of 88.” These faculty members became known across the nation when they tried to exploit the infamous Duke lacrosse team scandal to make a political statement about race relations and white privilege.
In that incident, three lacrosse team members were accused of rape by a stripper hired to dance at a party. Her allegations seemed questionable from the start and were eventually proven false, but not before the team’s season was canceled, the coach was fired, and the three accused players left school in a cloud of suspicion.
The 88 faculty members signed an open letter titled “What Does a Social Disaster Sound Like?” which depicted the school as a hotbed of racism and suggested that the “results of the police investigation” were secondary to the “anger and fear of many students who know themselves to be the objects of racism and sexism.”
Nearly a year later, in January of 2007, Davidson published an op-ed in the Raleigh News & Observer that tried to finesse the group’s original intent without backing off from the original’s condemnatory tone. By that time, it had become obvious that the lacrosse players were innocent, which she begrudgingly noted. But much of her language appeared to suggest that their innocence was irrelevant; she discussed, among other similar statements, “the glaring social disparities implicit in what we know happened on March 13 [the night of the alleged rape],” and “Duke again came to symbolize the most lurid and sexualized form of race privilege.”
“Will future rape victims dare to step forward after such a spectacle?” she continued as if there really were a rape victim. “Will African-Americans with legitimate grievances be willing to demand justice in the wake of this public debacle?”
The op-ed was hardly out of character for Davidson. While much of her scholarly writing is not political, some of it reveals that she views the world through a prism of gender and race grievances, and that the U.S. holds no special place in her heart.
In a “presidential address” to the 1993 American Studies Association convention, she derided American exceptionalism — the idea that the U.S. is a special nation due to its founding on principles of liberty and equality under the law — as “exceptionally ignorant of anything other than the Puritan tradition founded on Plymouth Rock.”
I’m just waiting for Obama to have Hugo Chavez join his cabinet. After all, the two of them think so much alike. And I wonder if Raul Castro is available these days? Obama could us him to replace Van Jones. There certainly isn’t a shortage of socialists or communists out there for Obama to choose from.
I do not understand why we allow such appointments.
Seriously, every recess he does this. Why do our reps stand by and allow it to happen? No it is not his right to appoint whom ever he pleases to run and influence our country.
The GOP needs to take a stand, question and not allow. Allowing such is why we have such a freakin mess going on in our country now.
Its time to laugh these Progressives into submission with big time humor which exposes their insanity. New animated short feature (episode 1) does that: http://www.marcrubin.com/hairmerica.ivnu
“Turkish pants and Tiffany hoods; Japanese Elvis impersonators; Shamu the Whale; the lesbian subject in Arab culture; … the “white” problem in American studies; Pueblo figurative ceramics; low-rider cars in northern New Mexico; Haitian Rara celebrations; American Orisa worship; Spiderwoman Theatre; … “The Boyz in the Hoods: Academy Bashing as a ‘Popular’ Culture” and another on “Discourse and Dat Course: Postcoloniality and Afrocentricity.””
I’m sure Obama feels that an emphasis on “studies” such as those mentioned above will slingshot American students far ahead of the pack of Asians and Europeans with their fussy “mathematics” and “science” curriculum.
Wow, you’ve just nailed graduate school at virtually every university in America. Read ‘em and weep.
You don’t need to worry about competition from European universities. The Scottish ones (once the intellectual powerhouse for the whole world) sold the pass a couple of decades ago. Even the best of the rest, in England and Ireland, have succumbed to the same disease as the US universities.
“….anti-colonialism, as it is also known, ‘is the doctrine that rich countries of the West got rich by invading, occupying and looting poor countries of Asia, Africa and South America,’ ”
If the United States acquired its vast wealth only through colonialism and *theft*, then why is it the original “owners” of these allegedly stolen resources hadn’t already made something of these resources on their own?
Bro. John do you know how Saudi Arabia got its oil? The government was not involved.
Great another sleazy “I’m smarter than all of you” liberal put in a place of “power” by the Freak in Chief.
Hang on folks it’s going to be a rough and tough deal to right the ship after the current “folks” are done ruining this country.
Typical of baby boomers and their cultured epigone. It’s their turn to rule, by age and numbers.
When’s Barracky boy gonna start appointing some of his boot lickers to Congress? This guy can do ANYTHING!
“Another indication of Davidson’s political biases in the ASA was a caution to society members that they “probably should not take a job at any university where everyone is a married, white, heterosexual male — even if you too… are a married, white, heterosexual male.”
Does she similarly draw a parallel between being black, female and homosexual?
I would ask this question: Since liberals think that we need to spread the wealth around and distribute resources fairly, why aren’t they happy about the way Native Americans were treated? Shouldn’t liberals be thrilled about the idea that thousands of European immigrants were given access to resources previously hoarded by a handful of Native Americans?
This administration has trashed the Constitution. For reference The Federalist Papers #47,48&49
Readers should not minimize the importance of NEH to college and graduate education. It is all about state worship, as I demonstrated here in a short blog about the mission statement of NEH and its origins, not in the Federalist papers, but in German philosophy. See http://clarespark.com/2009/09/26/nea-neh-and-cultural-freedom-not/. And you should know that getting one of these grants or fellowships can make your academic career on the road to tenure or a book contract. Davidson’s appointment means that no libertarian or pro-capitalist/pro-American projects will be funded.
Clare, there is no reason for our government to be a source of capital, and more so, the only source of capital, which is the Socialist’s dogma. The government cannot create any capital so it must tax it from those who do create it and when that capital comes from only one source, which our government despises, profit, then they restrict business opportunities where the individual can devise and manufacture a product that has a demand, The government increases unemployment by forcing production cost out of the market and are well on the way to poverty. They also create monopolies rather than competition buy not allowing economics to run under its onw rules of conduct. These rules can be abused by both government and individuals but not without repercussions. When are we going to recognize that the workman is worth of his hire and that whether you work for profit or for wages — which is your profit — the increase comes from just one source, customer demand, and the government does not have access to a second source. The amount of capital available to a business has no effect on customer demand but the capital in the customer’s pocket, availability of product and price have a lot of influence on the demand.
When the dust settles from our government’s largess it is still robbery.
“He appears to have a radical agenda and naturally appoints people who will further that agenda.”
Appears? Are we still at “appears”? It is only the few remaining appurtenances of American democracy which impede the Obama fanatic from imploding the entire American social, political, and economic system. He is a radical of the first order, and continues to trample the Constitution at every opportunity.
Boy you’re right about the “appears” bit. When are all too many on the right going to stop tip-toeing around the subject and declare that the Marxist, Statist/Stalinist post-modern “post-colonial” deconstructionist Emperor has no clothes? Fear of being called racist? Of being labeled a MaCarthy-duplicate intellectual know-nothing? It’s time to begin calling a spade a spade (un-pc pun FULLY acknowledged.) “If it walks like, talks like, looks like, etc…” Or, alternatively: “A man is known by the company he keeps.” You can dance it any way you want to dance it, but Obama’s actions inescapably lead to only one possible conclusion. APPEARS!!!??? “Appears” indeed…we need people with a stiffer political/ideological backbone. I am an unrepentant advocate of the Hunter S. Thompson maxim of never being afraid to “challenge the bastards on their own turf.” (h/t “Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas)
Virgil, MaCarthy’s sin was that he challenged the Communists and nothing more. That bad rap on McCarthy is one of the reasons we have Obama.
“National Endowment for the Humanities”
Abolish it. It’s a total waste of taxpayer monies.
Yes Morton, he is a trampler. I suspect he has long yearned to be a world class trampler trumpeting the wisdom of Marx and Mao and Lenin to his coterie of arrogant fools.
Davidson threw the fundamental tenets of natural justice under the bus in the interests of her political agenda.
The fraud-in-chief never slows down with his radical agenda. Then he looks right into the camera and lies to the American people about “reaching across the isle.” In case he hasn’t noticed, the isle has grown so wide that reaching across is now impossible. Pray that conservatives come to their senses about such hogwash and that will mean ignoring the media’s antics to guilt them out.
Susan, if your are being robbed at gun point do you compromise with the robber about how much of your money he can take? Neither can we compromise with this Socialist agenda. We must reject it or bow down to it.
And there you have it, our President and his racial lens at work
According to my memory of Dept. of Justice stats, upwards of 30,000 white women are raped by blacks every year in the U.S. and a “statistically insignificant” number of black women raped by white men meaning perhaps 100, 200 or so.
In spite of this, white liberals and black Americans see what it is they want to see in a nearly perfect example of Orwellian doublethink but without the “think” part. As shown in the case of the Duke lacrosse players, Davidson’s and liberal’s ideas of what is in fact happening in this country in terms of an oppressiveness of crime is the opposite of reality. No surprise such a disconnect from reality based on the idea that whites are incorrigible and endemic racists is wrecking the fabric of the nation.
If whites war against each other, it’s man’s inhumanity to man, if they war on Aztecs, it’s racism. Technological advantages then take on a tone of immorality and unfairness nowhere to be found in other arenas of thought. If the New England Patriots are 15 point favorites in the Superbowl that’s just the way it is. If Europeans are 15 point favorites in the great competitions that turned Africa into colonies and pre-Columbian America into the United States, then that is not man’s inhumanity to man, but white supremacy.
There is a crucial element lacking in liberal thinking and it is called common sense. You can always tell how racist a culture was by looking back into its history in film or literature at a time before political correctness when the ruling culture pretty much had free reign to express its racism if such existed. In viewing Nazi expressions of hatred in Germany and then looking at American literature and film of the same time period, there is obviously a dismissal and segregation of black folks in America but no sign of massive amounts of hateful racism in the expression of America’s cultural zeitgeist.
The reality on the ground may have been somewhat more brutal but the point is that when a culture feels unconstrained in its ability to express itself, racism will show if it is monumentally oppressive and if such was not the case in America in 1940 then why all this assumption that we are today such haters and oppressors of black folks?
The “social disaster” Davidson refers to is all but over and it can in fact be argued somewhat persuasively that this shoe is now on the other foot as all the current claims of “white privilege” and “racism 2.0″ to update the native hatred whites have for minorities is just a lot of hot air. We will be a lot better off when Obama and his odious wife and minions are back in Chicago doing their closed mouth, “I didn’t mean I wasn’t proud”, “race pimping” on a somewhat smaller and less destructive stage.
James I know what you say is true. My Aunt, who taught school at various times on the Hopi reservations has noted the oppression of the Hopi by the Government. This was not because the government hated the Hopi but because it was the government. You understand a lot of this so I won’t go into detain. You reference to current history at the time it was becoming history does not support the Liberal accusations that have been manufactured to further their agenda. The history is still there and the truth can still be found. There is nothing in the Liberal agenda that will support the love of the truth.
way back in the dinosaur times when I was in school we learned of something called the 13 COLONIES- YES!! USA we are oppressed, we have been victimized by the British Spanish The French and Portugese conquerors of our lands- let’s all whine and cry- stick our hands out for money- THEY OWE us reparations!
An important problem for America is that a significant portion of its privileged and educated class sees the culture and society that has given them professional life as a monstrous abomination. Have we ever seen this in world history?
“radical” does not mean “person I disagree with.”
Since Obama refuses to release a record of any of his past, from birth certificate to 2 college and law school transcripts, we don’t know for sure that “Turkish pants and Tiffany hoods; Japanese Elvis impersonators; Shamu the Whale; the lesbian subject in Arab culture; … the “white” problem in American studies; Pueblo figurative ceramics; low-rider cars in northern New Mexico; Haitian Rara celebrations; American Orisa worship; Spiderwoman Theatre; … “The Boyz in the Hoods: Academy Bashing as a ‘Popular’ Culture” and another on “Discourse and Dat Course: Postcoloniality and Afrocentricity” wasn’t part of his studies, or at least generically similar.
Within the context of the contemporary university, Professor Davidson is not radical at all, but well in the mainstream of doctrinal orthodoxy. To me, this is the most depressing part of this story.
Well, if Republicans have the balls to defund the National Council on Humanities, it won’t matter what her beliefs are.
To Tehag & Virgil Xenophon: One, the VANGUARD members of the baby boomers, especially those from the Bible Belt States, are full of Constitutional Conservatives, people steeped in the proud culture of our exceptional U.S., and hard workers. We’re the ones you see so many of at the Tea Party rallies. We are stubbornly clinging to what’s left of our freedoms, & all you younger people are going to have to be there & informed, so we can pass the baton to YOU! The boomers about 4 – 10 years behind, born from about 1950 and later, became more influenced by the evil Progressive syllabus changes in our school systems. They are the ones who can’t be proud because they’re taught how BAD we were as a nation, & how exploitive, & how we should not sing our militaristic national anthem, or use fossil fuels, or cut trees, blah, blah, blah. They must be taught the truth from our original history, not from the revisionist’s books. Virgil, how did a literature-loving person like you stay so grounded in our nation’s strengths & not bow to the god of PC? TALK HARD, MY FRIENDS, BUT DON’T JUST PREACH TO THE CHOIR. Teach your peers; our nation depends upon it.