Toxic Leader or Toxic Commentary?

What is it about President Bush that so rankles the Left?

Whensoever someone argues that he's the worst president ever, I always find it fascinating and immediately dismiss them. After all, we've had some pretty awful presidents and I've got very little time for historical ignorance. Much of it is from people who ought to know better. 

The most recent example from our Claremont bubble of people dislike the President is from Jean Lipman-Blumen, who is, according to a recent blog post, "the Thorton F. Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Organizational Behavior at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA." Professor Lipman-Blumen tries to argue in The Huffington Post that President Bush is a "toxic leader" in that he left us worse than how he found us. Oddly, Professor Lipman-Blumen seems to forget that only a few months passed after he was elected and the attacks of 9-11. To date, there hasn't been a single attack on American soil since the President took the reigns and it hasn't been for lack of trying on the part of the savages. And yet he's left us worse off?  

Lipman-Blumen bandies about such armchair psychiatric phrases as "neurotic" and "narcissistic" and suggests that the reason so many Americans followed President is that we are preprogrammed to follow authoritarian leaders. 

In addition to the usual attacks on President Bush for detaining terrorists at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, many of whom were later picked up right back where they were found -- the battlefield! and  despite the far worse behavior of F.D.R., a president who interned entire groups of people on the sole basis of race and whom the professor cites admiringly despite his efforts to turn America into a socialist, anti-freedom state during the New Deal, we're supposed to think President Bush is a "toxic leader." I don't buy it. 

 Of course the post itself provides an excellent window into why the "leadership" courses at Claremont McKenna are largely bunk. 

Battlestar Galactica Tonight, CMC Prof. Amy Kind Quoted On It

And I'm so frakking excited! 

I currently watch two TV programs: Battlestar Galactica and Lost. (I'll return to Lost when it 

I got hooked on Battlestar Galactica hearing Dan O'Toole, Ilan Wurman, and a few other members of the Claremont Independent talk about it.  Back when I worked for RedBlueAmerica.com with former Claremont Review of Books writer Ben Boychuk, my other boss, Joel Mathis, currently of the Philadelphia Inquirer, wouldn't shut up about how great the show was. Joel is something of a lefty and so my thinking went, it really can't be as good as he says it was. Boy was I wrong! (Joel wrote a post about the show back at RedBlueAmerica.com which you can still read here.)

The thing I like about the show is that it tackles real issues all the while having bad ass special effects. The shows premise is much like the original one. After a horrific surprise attack on the twelve colonies wipes out the majority of life, the last remnants of humanity try and find their way to Earth, a planet where they might start afresh, while genocidal, religious humanoid looking robots try to exterminate the rest.

The show, written after 9-11, is much more violent, dark, and gloomy than its younger incarnation. Unlike much of television which is dominated by preechy moralism about what to do and not do, Battlestar Galactica doesn't let you off the hook. By taking religion seriously, it is able to delve deeper into the human experience than most secular shows will. By having the Cylons, the genocidal robots, be religious extremists, there can be little doubt that there is some kind of commentary on Islamic terrorism (though to be fair, it's actually the humans who are the first to use suicide bombing.)  The show probes such issues as civilian control of the military during times of crisis, life after death, identity, war, economics, and survival. 

I confess to being a sci fi libertarian.  In fact, in middle school, much of my politics was influenced by the works of Robert Heinlein, in particular. I've watched all of Firefly and Serenity enough times to have both of them almost memorized. Yes, yes, I know.

Apparently, Professor Amy Kind also finds the show interesting, so much so that she's actually written essays on its philosophical implications. Professor Kind was recently quoted about her views on Battlestar Galactica. Ms. Kind's thoughts on Battlestar Galactica and identity can be found in Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy, ed. Jason T. Eberl, Blackwell, and which you can read here. She's got another essay, titled, "You Can't Rape a Machine," in another analogy of Battlestar Galactica and philosophy.

Here she was in the press. 

Amy Kind, an associate professor of philosophy at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif., has written three articles about thoughts and issues within 'BSG,' mostly concerning the quest for identity.

'I think one of the things that the show is presenting to us is a sort of skeptical challenge, about who we are, and can we really know who we are?' Kind said. 'A lot of science fiction, especially shows like ‘Battlestar Galactica,' picks up on issues I find fascinating, connected to the same things I find fascinating about philosophy: what it is to be human, how we should live our lives, how we interact with other creatures.'

Many of those questions (What makes us who we are? Is it mind alone? What if our memories have been altered?) were posited in the stories of Philip K. Dick, she said, known to many as the basis of the movies 'Blade Runner,' 'Minority Report' and 'Total Recall.

So how will it end? 

Kind has her speculations, such as that the final cylon could be either Adama or his son Lee, and believes that the last shot of 'Revelations' was indeed our Earth, though at some unspecified other point in time. But mainly, she wants resolutions after 'Revelations.'

'Let's don't go ‘Sopranos,'' she said. 'I'm don't need a bow, but let's tie it up. Let's finish a sentence.'

Yes, let's hope it doesn't end that way. 

P.S. For those of you who are going to criticize me for liking Professor Kind's writings on Battlestar Galactica, let me just point out one thing to you. It's not listed as her "work" on her website. It's listed as "just for fun." How refreshing that we have at least one non-government humanities professor that doesn't conflate the two! 

Do You "Man Date"? With Update

Professor Peter Nardi's "research" at Pitzer College sounds like it could have been written by The Stag Hen, Claremont's Opinion knockoff. But it isn't. He's actually one of the world's experts on bro-mance. Seriously. Here's the link from The New York Times. The article is from 2005, but I recently came across it and thought you'd enjoy it.

While some men explicitly seek man dates, and others flatly reject them as
pointless, most seem to view them as an unavoidable form of socializing in an
age when friends can often catch up only by planning in advance. The ritual
comes particularly into play for many men after college, as they adjust to a
more structured, less spontaneous social life. “You see kids in college talking
to each other, bull sessions,” said Peter Nardi, a sociology
professor at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., who edited a book called
“Men’s Friendships.” “But the opportunities to get close to another man, to
share and talk about their feelings, are not available after a certain age.”

Whoa. It is too easy to mock this.

Update: A reader from another generation emailed this comment. 

"Re: Man Date: What do you expect from a generation that had to have play dates, engages in solitary shooter games, and walks around with ear buds. It's a wonder that they have friends or even get laid."