An Exciting Trial Offer

Academics are smarter than the rest of us. Or so they keep telling us. Whether it’s Noam Chomsky railing on the USA as a “failed state” or the late Edward Said—may peace be upon Him—excoriating Israel for its pesky desire to exist, the academic community has a long history of believing that it has far more political wisdom than average Joes.

Never mind, of course, that manifold academics have fallen head-over-heels in love with all kinds of odious totalitarian movements: Communism, fascism, Islamofascisim, &c. They loved Pol Pot even more than they loved pot. Yet the Howard Zinns and “Skip” Gates of the world still think that the world would become a Valhalla if they were in charge.

In fact, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” recall that William F. Buckley Jr.—the king of Larchmont Lockjaw—once quipped that he would rather be ruled by a government made up of the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone book than by the combined faculties of Harvard and MIT. Or words to that effect.

Well, we’re not so sure. Although we have a hunch that Mr. Buckley is correct, we must admit that no one to our knowledge has ever given an academic cabal full control of an entire country. (Ah, would that Trotsky had made it to power!)

As such, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” propose a trial offer. In order to determine whether academics really do know better than everyone else, we suggest that a cabal of professors take over the government of the USA for a period of two weeks.

If, at the end of this fortnight, peace on earth has occurred and happiness declared by all, we’ll know that the PhDs were correct. If, on the other hand, we all wind up in “reeducation” camps and “diversity” gulags, we’ll know they’re full of garbage.

It’s an interesting proposition, is it not? And it’ll at least ensure that our tenured radical friends will shut up and read The New York Review of Books in silence.

This leads to the obvious question: Who’s going to be in control? Well, we came up with a list of the following academic eminences:

Cherished Leader: Cornel West
Vice-Cherished Leader-ess: Judith Butler
Jacques Lacan Esteemed Chair of the Dyadic Mirror Phase: Slavoj Zizek
Karl Marx Department of Peace Through Terrorism: Michael Hardt
Yasir Arafat Memorial Lieutenant of Foreign Affairs: Joseph Massad
Office of Institutional Discrimination and Hating Whitey: Houston Baker
Official Spokesperson: Ward Churchill

We know what you’re thinking, dear reader: It’s a bit of a reactionary list. After all, there aren’t too many women in power; how “un-diverse” is that? Further, we doubt that our academic pals would esteem such a hierarchical arrangement: What’s wrong with a “power collective”? And surely the selfless Stanley Fish is wondering why he isn’t in charge.