Dark Bilious Vapors

There are often calls in the blogworld for academics on one side or another to denounce vicious person X who is in some indeterminate sense on 'their side'. Unless X is in a position of real political power, e.g. a Senate Committee Chair, these calls seem thoroughly misguided to me. Conservative academics are under no more obligation to denounce vile commentators like Coulter than social democrat academics are to denounce the extremists on their flanks, the Ward Churchills of the world and the like. Frankly there is too little time in the day to be spent trying to find out if some Labor voter from the University of Woolloomooloo said something false that I should be distancing myself from.
--Brian Weatherson

Len on 05.17.05 @ 06:36 AM CST