When I expressed my disgust with the lunatic fringe on campus that published the North Star, I also said, “We do have conservative students here — I expect that the majority are more conservative than I am — but they also trend towards being more the reasonable, rational, educated sort of conservative.” Sometimes I fear that’s just my optimism speaking out, but then today I just got this nice letter from the College Republicans.
See? They’re not all far right wackaloons. The t-shirt isn’t exactly to my taste — a teddy bear holding a pistol with a word balloon that says “College Republicans believe in the right to bear arms” — but I can accept it in the spirit of reconciliation in which it was offered. Of course, I’m not going to wear it…even a loose shirt is uncomfortable with the trench excavated in my back right now. The cookie was tasty, though.
It’s a nice gesture, but then you didn’t have any hard feelings for them, specifically, in the first place. And you were proven right. That’s nice. So, you’re ahead with a cookie and it’s Friday.
If I didn’t think you had more grading to do, I might say that your weekend is off to a great start.
QFT
Yeah, well done, College Republicans.
One has to assume that they know the North Star doofuses have their facts all wrong.
I was a Republican when I was in college. Of course, the Republicans were the anti-war party back then. And in favor of establishing the EPA.
Hooray for people who can realize that just because someone says they are your political fellow-traveler* doesn’t make them immune from questions like ‘why do you think that professor stole your newspaper?’ and ‘you do know that not all scientists reek of formaldehyde, right?’
* Though my limited impressions of the students who write for conservative campus papers set up as rivals to the mainstream campus paper is that they are the campus equivalent of the far-right fringe if one is to reduce politics to a single axis.
Oh dear. Remember what happened the last time you posted about a cookie …
You ate the cookie?? Did you at least have the Royal Food Taster check it first?
If you start having unexplained desires to shoot holes in random objects, or realize you can’t actually read for comprehension the small copy of the Constitution you suddenly and for no reason started carrying around with you, please run to the emergency room as fast as you can before you find yourself alone in a dark room watching Hannity with the blinds closed, rocking back and forth and mumbling “Benghazi… Benghazi” over and over and over again.
I am totally gobsmacked! I’ve been so deluded think all Rebs were latent Conservopods, rejecting any Liberal as Liars and Bullshitters. The fact that a group of them “reached out” to shakehands, and not slap, is totally inconceivable. I do hope they know they just put their foot onto the slipp’ry-slope. Tomorrow they’ll be radical lefts. Here’s hopin. /snark
Seriously, It is hopeful to see a Republican group reach out to a Professor who was so lambasted recently. Good to see Hope there.
I am curious about what a “conservative cookie” is. What’s in it? How is it different from a “liberal cookie”? When I googled ” conervatve cookie”, I saw lots o links to “alternatives to pro-abortion Girl Scout cookies” .
As previously mentioned, I’d be wary of cookies gifted by individuals who might not have my best interests in mind.
At UBC back in the 1980’s, the Engineering students backed their rivals, the Arts students cookies, and the Arts students foolishly ate them. They were laced with phenolphthalein. While I suspect the story I was told that “it would turn certain yellow fluids purple, leading to a few calls to Health Services the next day” is an urban legend, I am aware that it is a good laxative.
@10
Hey, if you want a good laxative I can point you in the direction of this pizza place near the Wheaton, IL college (yes that one).
It would have been nice if rather than engaging in what is essentially a PR stunt, they had explicitely expressed their views towards what that wretched newspaper represents and contains within it as well as the accusations that have been flung towards you. But yeah, it’s a nice gesture…
And the T-Shirt was another nice peice of evidence that authoritarians don’t ‘get’ funny. But still good on them I suppose. I wanna be more upbeat about it but to me, any continued willfull association with the republican party makes you complicit in so much terribleness…Decent people would have left, at least in the last 5 years or so
Oh yeah, and what azhael said in #12…
“the trench excavated in my back right now”
I’m afraid I don’t understand what this means — did I miss something? (Sadly enough, I often do…)
@15 — a minor surgical procedure.
@16 — Thanks for the explanation! I hope PZM is feeling 100% soon.
They even spelled your name correctly!
Hey, if bears and other animals were actually as well armed as those who would hunt them, I maybe possibly just might consider it “sporting”.
PZ:
Should that not read “the right to arm bears”? That would at least be moderately funny – even if it is a very old joke.
Can these more reasonable “young republicans” be made allies in the battle against the hate mongering newspaper? If they would be willing to speak out strongly against it, that could perhaps make a proper difference.
@10
Phenolphthalein would not turn your urine a color (assuming it would get to your urine) unless your urine were pH 10 or so – and if it were, your problems are much greater than just urine color. It’s also a strong laxative so again, urine color is well down the list of concerns about ingesting this stuff. The story is probably a variant on the methylene blue urine stories – methylene blue will turn urine green to much amusement, presumably only on the part of the unethical perpetrator.
@4 Kevin Kehres
It is sobering to realize that Richard Nixon was the last liberal in the White House and that today he would be beyond “Looney Left” by the Democratic Party’s standards.
I hope you recover swiftly and as painlessly as possible, PZ.
And I hope that the relative sanity of the majority of Republican students isn’t brainwashed out of them by the vocal minority. (Tpyos made me type ‘vile’. Perhaps I should have left it?)
Reasonable republican, that is a code word for ex-republican, once they become sufficiently reasonable.
I’m confused a bit. If people advocate stupidity, bigotry and evil, but are civil about it. you can accept that?
I don’t advocate excessive rudeness on anyone’s part, but it seems weird not to have – politely – refused such an awful T-shirt. They’d join (some reluctantly, perhaps) in getting you fired for any (or no) reason at all if they could, after all. “Sincerity” means something different to Republicans and conservatives, especially in these Teabagger days.
@11 Alverant
Are you talking about Barone’s? I had a bad experience there once myself…
Strange you bring up Wheaton College, back when I was a kid growing up in the area (30+ years ago) we’d frequently go on school trips to see the Perry Mastodon on display there, and we’d talk with folks from the geology department. Despite the fact that Wheaton is one of those “no dancing, courting, drinking or having a non-Jesus-related good time” schools, their treatment of the sciences was always pretty even-handed. Even the recorded message that played with the mastodon stated that the thing was thousands of years old, and only interjected one “ain’t it great what god has done” at the very end of the presentation. I wonder if it’s as equitable today. Video of the old mastodon exhibit below, just as I remember it….
“educate sort”
(In a non-partisan way… it’s like any post pointing out someone’s grammatical error will inevitably contain at least one of its own)
Olav
Probably not.
They won’t; they never do.
Once again proving the prescience of Garry Trudeau.
I remember when we were kids, my brother had a problem with a urinary tract infection. The doctor gave my parents some medicine, and the next day my brother felt well enough to go to school. At some point in the day he felt worse, and the nurse got him to provide a urine sample. She almost called the ambulance when she saw the urine was a bright purple….
I don’t remember what the medicine was, but it did result in an often retold family story.
So will eating a bowl of “Kaboom!” cereal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaboom_%28breakfast_cereal%29
It’s obvious that they’re a bunch of RINOs.
(But seriously … good for them.)
Sorry, no. Just no. A liberal wouldn’t undermine peace negotiations as an electoral tactic. Nixon remains an evil stain on history and we shouldn’t get misty-eyed about him because the current crew seem so unhinged.
A t-shirt is the perfect expression of the right to bare arms.
Isn’t tithing the right to bear alms?
What we see here is another aspect of tribalism.
You clearly criticized one small group which happens to be a small subset of Republicans/conservatives. And we have people like Fox News and your campus Republicans jumping to the conclusion that you are painting all of them with the same brush…even though you said no such thing, or even implied it. But to the tribalist, a criticism of some of US is an attack on all of US. (US as in Us v. Them, just to be clear).
@playonwords
What I want is the right to arm bears.
Make hunting a level playing field.
Sibling gave me a T-shirt from his university, which just happened to be my uni’s rival.
I graciously accepted it, and wore it in public (unlike the hat I got sibling from my uni) —
— to a paintball game where I stood up and screamed ‘shoot me!’