The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Thersites:

Hee hee.

I was last year offered an opportunity to write for a reference publisher; the gig is an introductory book on Jane Austen. The deal was $5000 for the whole. I went to my dissertation advisor and asked him what he thought about it. He said, "You can get paid for books?" He'd written 12 himself... darn good ones, too.

Oh well.

You know what pisses me off about diploma mills?

I'm a PhD who teaches at a community college. Largely by choice. Anyhoo, every year I go to commencement and I see students who have gone through the most incredible shit to win a 2-year degree. Stories you would not believe. People from families where a college degree was always a crazy dream, even from a CC. Every year I watch some of these students' families literally weep tears of pride that they have a son or a daughter or a mom or a dad who finally Did It.

The idea that someone could buy what some of my students bled and sweat and sacrificed for makes me nuts. The idea that they are in our government makes me sick.

I'm worried that we're at the point at which rality has in fact lapped satire.

Last year it was 'blood for oil'.
The year before it was 'PNAC empire'.
The year before it was 'Bush knew!'.
A decade ago it was starving children & poisoning the water.
Now it's "AWOL/deserter!".

All of these are still operative, actually--with the exception of #4, and that's possibly only because I don't know what the heck it refers to.

Hey, I got credentials myself! This means I get to wear a ridiculous yet colorful medieval outfit during boring commencement ceremonies. Also, it entitles me to purchase a large regular coffee for only a buck fifty.

Yeah, J. Scott, I'm against the Bush administration using the tactics of the Baath party. (Which Baath party were you referring to, anyway?)

But whatever. You seized on my parenthetical. Not my main point. What I said was that it is patently ridiculous to state that NOW "we have to reshape the Middle East." The shape of the Middle East was quite literally drawn by the West. The shape of Iraq was, certainly.

9/11 was the pretext for the Iraqi adventure. Not the trigger. This "reshaping" idea is ancient, and has never worked yet.

It has been considered imperative policy to "reshape" the Middle East by the "west" ever since the, um, Crusades. It hasn't really worked out very well yet.

Iraq itself has been "reshaped" throughout the 20th century, not least by the US.

What we're doing in Iraq has squat to do with 9/11. History in fact began earlier.

(And I'm getting rather testy about 9/11 being used like this, BTW, having a bit of a prejudice against seeing mass human suffering used to further preexisting political agendas. I'm funny that way.)

I was never told to bring the potato salad, Aunt Nancy. That's why I brought the anthrax. And the peach cobbler.

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