Now Todd Starnes has republished his hit piece on Town Hall — he seems to be dumping it on lower and lower levels of the self-devouring far right internet. Although, I do have to say that the comments are becoming even more entertaining.

Yes, there are conservative students at Morris. And Myers thinks he should be entitled to hunt them down and kill them. Talk about a sanctimonious jerk.

I want to hunt conservative students? Do I need to get a license, is there a specific season, and is there a bag limit?

Alas, once again, we have a rabid commenter who didn’t bother to read my article. Why should he, when Todd Starnes has told him what’s in it?

He’s a pompous fool, a bully, a merciless self-promoter, and a lousy excuse for a human being. He’s also a state employee who should be terminated immediately and barred from further public. . .um. . .service. Indeed, he should’ve been fired six years ago, when, in another act of scientific inquiry, he desecrated the Eucharist. But as an associate professor, he’s tenured, and absolutely no one would touch him if he strolled into the North Star offices, shot the editor between the eyes, and posted the video on YouTube.

I CAN DO THAT? When I get home, I’m going to have to check my employment contract — I don’t remember seeing that in there. Maybe it’s in the fine print.

Never let it be said that the fever swamp of the right wing has any connection with reality at all.

I told you some guy called me for an interview about the horrible crime committed on the UMM campus: the presumed ‘theft’ of some free newspapers from a conservative organization. They say I now advocate censorship of conservative student newspaper, which is a fine twist on the affair.

Their description of the newspaper was particularly enlightening about Fox dishonesty.

That particular edition included a satire on affirmative action. The professor said the paper was mocking minority students.

Not quite accurate. I pointed out that their mockery crossed a rather nasty line; it had gone beyond mere ‘satire’ into the realm of advocating racism. It included direct accusations that faculty and administrators were racist because they endorsed affirmative action and were committed to correcting historical injustices. And this was the final straw for me, that it included:

…a crime scene photo of Trayvon Martin’s dead face, with the caption Trayvon Martin, victim of racism and fascism, and what does [administrator] have to say about it? Nothing. Not a single thing.

And with that, they have crossed a line. Free speech is one thing, making light of murder and claiming that our chancellor of student affairs excuses it is another. Using dead black boys to “satirize” equality is contemptible. I would advocate the disposal of their flyers if the Ku Klux Klan started papering our campus, and likewise, the North Star has worn out its welcome and must go. Treat their scattered papers as hate-filled trash and dispose of it appropriately.

If Todd Starnes thinks old-fashioned race-baiting, libel against faculty and staff, flaunting the face of murdered black people to intimidate and horrify students, and lying about crimes is merely an implicit part of the conservative agenda, then yes, I advocate kicking such behavior off campus altogether. But then, I guess that’s what conservativism has become nowadays.

We had an incident a while back in which racist signs were posted in one of the dorms; there was no question but that they were disposed of and an effort made to discover who was responsible. The North Star newspaper is simply the fancier version of those crudities, and should be removed from campus in the same way; and we already, in this case, know who was responsible.

Two other points: I can find old copies of the North Star in the science building hallways, still — copies from several months ago. The University Register, which is the official campus paper, gets routinely cleaned up each week — I don’t think I’d be able to find a copy of last week’s paper anywhere. I question whether this ‘theft’ even occurred, and wonder whether this is just a publicity stunt for self-martyred Breitbart wanna-bes; I also wonder whether their threats are inhibiting people from doing standard clean up around campus.

Finally, just a hint to the North Star: if you have to slap a great big warning on every issue and just about every page that your newspaper may contain satire, you aren’t doing satire right.

I had almost forgotten that Ben Stein existed — Expelled seems to have been the last sad gasp of his marginal cinematic career. But he still lives on, whining on the virtual pages of wingnut webzines like The American Spectator. His latest is a discussion of all that is wrong with poor people.

My humble observation is that most long-term poverty is caused by self-sabotage by individuals. Drug use. Drunkenness. Having children without a family structure. Gambling. Poor work habits. Disastrously unfortunate appearance. Above all, and counted in the preceding list, psychological problems (very much including basic laziness) cause people to be unemployed, have poor or no work habits, and enter and stay in poverty.

Impoverished people have personal problems. They may have had terrible childhoods. They may have been the victims of abuse. They are often the victims of their own abuse of drugs and alcohol. But they are not the victims of corporations or of the Federal Reserve. Their sad backgrounds lead them into self-destruction.

It is all their own damn fault. Also, they aren’t actually poor, because they have indoor plumbing. How can they be complaining about their situation if they’ve got a working toilet?

Meanwhile, rich people are good.

But there are just some people who are better with money than others and will wind up with a ton of money. There will be people who strike oil, who create new Internet toys. They fund symphonies and ballets and schools for inner city kids. They are a bulwark against tyranny because they can afford lawyers to fight overweening government.

We want for there to be a high number of rich people who function as a brake on government just as the nobles did on the crown in long ago England.

They fund symphonies! Without rich people of good taste, all those inner city kids might have to listen to is that godawful rap crap, you know. Rich people have a mission to dictate taste as well as to set an example for the poors.

Why is it that I think that the rich are paying lawyers not to fight for equality and fairness and justice, but mainly to make sure that they don’t have to pay as many taxes as they should?

Don’t warry, though, Ben Stein has a solution.

What will make the genuinely poor stop sabotaging themselves? Maybe, just maybe, if we let God back into the public forum it would help. I have seen spiritual solutions work miracles.

Jebus. What an idiot.

Salon was supposed to have an interview with Charles Murray, notorious racist and conservative ass, but he backed down at the last minute, saying he didn’t think he’d get a fair shake from them. So Salon instead posted a series of quotes from Murray’s new book.

He really should have gone with the interview.

On Tattoos: “As for tattoos, it does no good to remind curmudgeons that tattoos have been around for millennia. Yes, we will agree, tattoos have been common – first among savage tribes and then, more recently, among the lowest classes of Western societies. In America, tattoos have until the last few decades been the unambiguous badge of the proletariat or worse – an association still acknowledged in the phrase tramp stamp.”

On Pronouns: “The feminist revolution has tied writers into knots when it comes to the third-person singular pronoun. Using the masculine pronoun as the default has been proscribed. Some male writers get around this problem by defaulting to the feminine singular pronoun, which I think is icky.” Instead, “Unless there is an obvious reason not to, use the gender of the author or, in a cowritten text, the gender of the principal author. It’s the perfect solution.”

On jobs: “Here’s the secret you should remember whenever you hear someone lamenting how tough it is to get ahead in the postindustrial global economy: Few people work nearly as hard as they could.”

On subordination: “But in all cases when you have problems in your interactions with your boss, there’s one more question you have to ask yourself: To what extent is your boss at fault, and to what extent are you a neophyte about supervisor-subordinate relationships? … What you see as arbitrary, insensitive, or hostile behavior on the part of your boss may be nothing more than the way in which supervisors have been treating subordinates from time immemorial.”

On “problematic”: “For example it is appropriate to say that a proposed voter ID bill is problematic because it risks disenfranchising more eligible voters than it prevents fraudulent votes, but not to say that it is problematic because it is racist and offensive. That may be your sincere opinion, but people on the other side can be just as sincerely convinced that it is not racist and offensive and neither side can prove the other wrong.”

On “flaccid nonjudgmental nonsense”: “If he says instead, ‘Marriage works for some people, not for others; it’s no big deal what people choose,’ then my point about artistic merit is unchanged, except more emphatic: You mustn’t indulge yourself in that kind of flaccid nonjudgemental nonsense … To say something like, ‘Marriage works for some people, not others; it’s no big deal what people choose,’ is as idiotic as saying that it’s a matter of opinion whether a Titian painting is superior to artistic dreck, except that in this instance there is a moral dimension to your obligation to think through your judgments that doesn’t burden your judgments about art.”

On marriage: “For ninety-five percent of the population, showing up for family means making oneself available for marriage.”

On manners: “The two who have embodied great manners for me have been William F. Buckley, Jr., the late conservative writer, and his brother James, a former senator and retired judge.”