Friday, May 13, 2011

"I’d prefer not to say this for attribution...only because I’m..."

... only because I'm a weasel.

41 comments:

The Dude said...

Someone got the terminal vapors, it appears! My heavens!

Roger J. said...

Cluthing his or her pearls and catching the vapours indeed--and a craven little coward afraid to put his or her name on a hatchet job.

As Henry the K said, the fights in academe are so brutal because the stakes are so small.

Nothing like an anonymous hatchet job to displace the the grace and courage of academe.

What a loser.

rhhardin said...

hosting this sort of festival of misogyny and homophobia.

The criticism, if you could read it accurately, was of academic promotion practices, not women or homopersons.

Roger J. said...

display rather than displace (although both verbs may be appropriate)

Sal said...

Ha! Titus is an awful misogynist homophobe.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Notice how there is no comment portal in that Leiter post.. Unable or unwilling to trust his readers?

Patrick said...

Seriously, having that post link to your "old" blog, which has been removed, makes it seem pretty bad, if you know nothing else about you or your blog.

Blogger really needs to get on the stick.

Patrick said...

WV:

Meade said...

Unfree speech.

Ann Althouse said...

"Ha! Titus is an awful misogynist homophobe."

Yes, exactly. These people are so dull.

Palladian said...

I hope there's an open bar at your festival of misogyny and homophobia.

LawGirl said...

So, your blog goes down right after being reported as a cesspool of sexism and homophobia? Hmmmmm . . .

LawGirl said...

Oh, sorry, misogyny and homophobia. It is curious, though . . .

Freeman Hunt said...

Ha ha ha. Quote of the day!

She has the free speech right to run whatever cesspool she wants, but is she prioritizing her desire for a widely read blog over her obligation to be a responsible member of academia?

"Free speech is incompatible with academia!"

Freeman Hunt said...

Free speech areas are cesspools. Restricted speech areas are responsible academia.

PaulV said...

nimrod flunked constitutional law?

Automatic_Wing said...

The email is so prissy and self-important that Leiter almost certainly wrote it himself. Anonymous colleague, my ass.

Roger J. said...

Professor A: unless I have completely misread you over the last five years, I am thinking you arent going down without a fight--(just dont ask me for money however, my principles arent THAT strong :) )

dbp said...

An interesting logical loop here: Brian Leiter's blog posts an anonymous comment, which presumably is in agreement with the blog's editor. The comment is actively put forward by that blog, unlike at Althouse where comments are all posted and hardly ever deleted.

Both blogs contain what could fairly be described as scurrilous comments. The difference is that Alhouse neither approves or disapproves of the comments while Leiter clearly takes an editorial ownership.

"She has the free speech right to run whatever cesspool she wants, but is she prioritizing her desire for a widely read blog over her obligation to be a responsible member of academia?"

This had got to be the most lame use of a question mark in history. Oh, I make a big long ugly accusation then make it all right with a meaningless squiggle on top of the dot.

If the Leiter post led to the removal of the Althouse blog, then is there a case of slander here?

edutcher said...

Free speech is too important for just everybody.

Roger J. said...

eduthcher: free speech for me but not for thee comes to mind

Meade said...

PaulV said...
"nimrod flunked constitutional law?"

Unfortunately, nimrod teaches constitutional law.

DADvocate said...

Some how they missed all the comments pointing out the extreme liberalism of all three candidates. Typical liberal ploy, avoid the real issues and revert to name calling and straw man attacks.

BTW - I saw a pix of Raymond at one of the links I found on her. She ain't going to get the deanship because of looks.

DADvocate said...

obligation to be a responsible member of academia

I.E. march in lockstep with left wing political correctness and ideology.

Bruce Hayden said...

I don't think that the comments were all that bad. Maybe a bit cynical for Leiter. My memory was they were really hardest on Nichols, whom I think really deserved the hits.

Reminds me a bit of the law prof a month or so ago who got canned because he would include his dean in his hypotheticals. This dean apparently took it personally, but the prof had been doing it to his predecessors as well.

I don't remember Ann having said anything negative about any of the candidates. We did, of course, her loyal lackeys. Apparently, we crossed some sort of imaginary line that liberal law profs and deans have drawn - likely in secret since they would probably be too embarrassed to have done so publicly.

It is somehow just fine when liberal law profs say much more nasty things about conservatives and/or Republicans, but somehow Ann is supposed to keep her commenters from saying anything the least bit mean about anyone to the left of her in the academic community.

David said...

So how are the lady's tits?

shiloh said...

Ann Althouse, who asks for "comments" from her readers, who then proceed to trash and insult the candidates for Dean of her school! Wow!

Indeed!

AA, you should embrace reality as the truth shall set you free!

take care

Dustin said...

I only read Leiter's crap once in a blue moon, but every single time, there is an anonymous professor speaking in Leiter's voice backing up Leiter's POV.

It's so stupid.

No wonder Leiter does not practice law. I should add, my first lecture at UT Law was from Leiter (though I never took a class from him). It was just some kind of fun sample lecture. He had this creepy grin on his face and talked about monkeys playing with their feces, and how people are fascinated by poop because our parents control our access to it with diapers.

He is a stupid and petty man. I don't think autoadmit is worthy of my attention either (aside from a thoughtful point about rankings that is much smarter than Brian's work on this topic), but Brian is at or below the level of a typical autoadmit troll. That's quite embarrassing for a Longhorn Law man.

Let's face it: his real problem is that Althouse or Reynolds are conservatives yet have careers in the academy. No one could really be this upset by freedom of speech.

Dustin said...

'AA, you should embrace reality as the truth shall set you free!
"

How can we know the truth without freedom to express ideas?

Are we just supposed to presume the truth and refuse to deal with other POVs? That's 'freedom' to you?

Or perhaps you're just crazy.

Freeman Hunt said...

"weasel"

I was thinking more along the lines of wussy. Or the word with the P in it.

Sal said...

Apparently, we crossed some sort of imaginary line that liberal law profs and deans have drawn.

Since Leiter's blog is about legal academia, he probably sees himself as a dean someday. He's performing the age-old ritual of "sucking up."

Palladian said...

"Since Leiter's blog is about legal academia, he probably sees himself as a dean someday."


Notice his blog URL is leiterlawschool.typepad.com. I can just see the marble arch, floating in the clouds of his tiny mind, chiseled with that magical name: Leiter Law School...

DADvocate said...

Separated at birth?

Dilbert's boss?
http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-05-13/

Brian Leiter
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/node/572/cv

Simon said...

Meade said...
"[nimrod flunked constitutional law?] Unfortunately, nimrod teaches constitutional law."

I wouldn't count on those being mutually exclusive.

Jose_K said...

A harvard proffesor published a book : there no such thing as free speech and it is good. so you cant not expect anything else from liberals, so called.

Dustin said...

Also, remember when autoadmit showed that Leiter was repeatedly spamming their search box with his own name and also lots of perverted topic ideas?

Pretty weird fella, this Brian Leiter.

Easily weird enough to make up a letter in support of his POV and then claim it's just some anonymous professor who wastes his time emailing people about comments at this blog.

eteam said...

I'm disappointed we didn't get the racist label tossed in along with the rest.

Althouse is a thoughtful and influential writer, surely she (and her blog followers) deserve the degree of respect which results in being called a racist.

Any wussie can be called a homophobe for incorrect thoughts and ideas. I'm insulted, personally.

Lewis said...

Just got the real homepage! Nothing showing up as posted but at least not the error message!

Ralph L said...

The end of Leiter's comment policy:
"...notwithstanding the reprehensible Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which insulates me from liabilty [sic] for any of the defamation or tortious material that might show up in the comments of my blog--I'd rather not have a site bearing my name be the repository for the kind of garbage that is typical on the blogs that do not moderate comments."

So he's a reader here? And he doesn't want to insulate Althouse from liability for *our* crap.

VanderDouchen said...

It'd your world, Thouse. How do you like it now?

This is the subliminal bhind why I chose not to go to college. I entered the Army at 17 and I've never looked back. Reading is a passion, and I've never needed my betters telling me what to read, nor how to interpret it.

It looks like you've entered the bizarro world of people telling you what to read, how to interpret it, what to write, and what to dissallow to be written. Amazing.

Naughty, naughty, Thouse.

WV: bingolar:

Aye, I'm neigh from Bingolar.

VanderDouchen said...

Reading through the comments, I realized this is a poop thread! In on another poop thread at Thouse!

Dang, life is really good tonight.

WV: hainde"

It's real hainde to have a hammer to drive nails. And TP to wipe your poop. But a bidet is mo hainde. and handless. so maybe not.