So Long to Mort Sahl!

I'm relieved to see that Mort Sahl will no longer be "teaching" at the Claremont Colleges, as reported by The Berkeley Daily Planet. (I use the term "teaching" very charitably, as you'll see.)

As you know well, I have been a critic of bringing Sahl to Claremont ever since it was announced. I have even received some hate mail from several gentlemen -- I use the phrase loosely -- from Canada who were shocked that anyone could have a differing opinion than the comic genius, Mort Sahl. All in all, I thought the joke was on Claremont for bringing Sahl to come and "teach", though he did have a funny line or so about l'affaire Petropolous.

In The Berkeley Daily Planet, Sahl revealingly conceded that the reason he was brought to Claremont McKenna -- screenwriting -- was a ruse. The whole article is worth reading because it shows the absolute nuttiness of Sahl.

[Sahl] ghostwrote screenplays, wrote “additional dialogue.” The past two years, he’s taught at Claremont McKenna College, in Southern California: “Two classes: ‘The Revolutionary’s Handbook’ and ‘Screenwriting.’ They wanted screenwriting. It’s all a facade; I really talk about the same thing. I try to bring them a fresh perspective to those stones unturned about American history.” He joked about the student body “running around with an Apple under their arm and an i-Phone in their hand, not understanding they’re carrying the instruments of divisiveness.” He won’t be returning this fall. “Two years is enough. Claremont’s too isolated. I’ve had a call from the University of Chicago, another from UCLA. Time to move on, do something else.”

Claremont's too isolated, huh? Isolated from what? And does that explain why Sahl went missing from his wife? Maybe we had better, cherchez la femme.

Ms. Emily Meinhardt CMC '10, you'll remember, has gushed about Mort Sahl's class to just about anyone who will listen. In the comment section of this blog post, she wrote,

CMC should be honored to have Mort Sahl on campus. To borrow from Hillary Clinton's book title, he is truly living history. More important than his speechwriting for Kennedy was his invovlement in Jim Garrison's investigation of JFK's assasintation. By helping in that effort, he was doing something truly revolutionary. I don't buy all of the conspiracy theories that he presents to the class-- but he isn't expecting that of us. He's is opening the eyes of blissful, optimistic government students who think that democracy (especially American democracy) is always good and for the people...and all that mushy stuff that de Tocqueville and Publius hold so dear. He is instilling doubt in his students...and making sure that they question society and their government.

That questioning of your government, to the point of paranoia and conspiracy theory-nuttiness was something that Sahl made his calling card. And it's something that Meinhardt insisted upon later in a piece she wrote for the left-wing periodical, The Port Side. I tore that argument to shreds here and did a little fact checking to boot in one of my best posts. Sorry liberals, Kennedy was actually killed by Lee Harvey Oswald.

Today, in the article she wrote for The Forum, she writes,

The comedian-turned-professor was brought in by the Gould Center to teach interdisciplinary courses, covering such topics as classic films, jazz music, JFK’s assasination, and the social-political revolution of the 1960s. During his time in Claremont, Sahl was frequently spotted at Collins dining hall and Pomona’s Coop Fountain. Students at his new appointments will surely benefit from Sahl’s wit, observations, and life experience. [Emphasis mine]

"Surely benefit from Sahl's wit, observations, and life experience"? Well, at least one student didn't benefit, if ratemyprofessor.com is to be believed. Here's what one person wrote,

He is one of the worst, if not worst, professors I have ever had. He rambles about something completely unrelated to the topic (Screenwriting), and then yells at the class for not reading the textbook. In fact, most of us HAVE read it, he simply does not discuss it - just like he has spent less than 2% of class time teaching us to write screenwriti[sic] [Emphasis mine.]

I'm not quite sure why this was tagged in a "News" section, given Ms. Meinhart's reluctance to be objective about Mr. Sahl in the past, but I guess I'll just let that one slide. After all, the utterly august Forum would never, ever, absolutely never publish an opinion as news, especially from its copy editor.

Did Walter Cronkite Lead the U.S. to Defeat in Vietnam?

"At a 2006 news conference, Mr. [Walter] Cronkite said, 'The editorializing that I did on the Tet Offensive in Vietnam and I think helped speed the end of that war, that was -- that I'm proudest of.'" [The Wall Street Journal (June 18, 2009)]

"If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." -- Lyndon Baines Johnson, in response to that editorial. He decided to work towards ending the war.

You can watch that heated editorial here and his commentary on that later.

Have you ever wondered that everything you believed about something may have been entirely wrong?

I wonder it often, so much so that I find myself drawn to evidence and research as I constantly vet my ideas. I try to settle them or they vex me insistently. I cannot sleep until I have settled much of it in my mind.

On The Forum, I have criticized the now deceased Walter Cronkite for his big, statist, and utterly unoriginal government views, but I omitted one of my stronger – and more provocative arguments: That Walter Cronkite, the voice of one of only three major American networks, was in part responsible for the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, that may have culminated in the deaths of some two million Vietnamese civilians and giving Communism a needed victory. We left some good people to die and still others to take to their boats in one of history's mass exoduses.

In the past, Patrick Atwater CMC '10, in the comment section of another post, has justified the utterly wasteful expenditures for precisely that national greatness reason. The thinking behind this is rather sad: We can't let the communists get to the moon, but we can let them take over a country.

In any event, I have been going through the masterful book of Colonel Bruce B. C. Clarke about the Battle of Khe Sanh, Expendable Warriors. Colonel Clarke was the Director of National Security Studies at the U.S. Army War College and argues rather forcefully that the U.S. and its South Vietnamese allies won the bloody Battle of Khe Sanh and inflicted a serious blow to Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese military, but that the battle was lost due to the political ill will that activists manufactured in the U.S.

Historian Athur Herman, in an April 7, 2009 Wall Street Journal review of John Prados's book about Vietnam, puts it best:

Far from seeing reality more clearly, however, the antiwar left constructed a fictionalized version of what was happening in Vietnam. The totalitarian Ho was portrayed as an Asian George Washington; a decisive victory like Tet was painted as an American defeat. The average American soldier was depicted as a murderous brute. Likewise, the bombing of Cambodia to prevent that country from being overrun by Hanoi -- a move that Cambodia's leaders and members of Congress knew about and approved -- was branded as secret and illegal; and the American incursion into Cambodia in 1970 to break up North Vietnamese sanctuaries and wind down the war was presented as a move that widened it.

Then, in 1975, when a massive North Vietnamese army overran the South in blatant violation of the Paris treaty and the North's former allies, the Khmer Rouge, took over Cambodia, certain members of the left celebrated the communist victory as if it were their own -- which, in political terms, it was. When Saigon fell, the headline to Sydney Schanberg's New York Times story read: "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life."

Now we know better. We know of the 65,000 South Vietnamese murdered when Hanoi took over and of the thousands of boat people who died fleeing the communist regime and of the perhaps 250,000 who died in re-education camps.

One of those who helped the Vietnamese resettle in the U.S. was my (incorrigibly left-wing) grandfather, Colonel Carl W. Lundquist, who was responsible for resettlement project at Fort Indiantown Gap. More than 32,000 Vietnamese and Cambodians were resettled under his watch.

History needn't have gone this way, but it did. And Walter Cronkite did everything in his power to make it come out as a defeat when it was anything but. So reports Accuracy in Media,

His role in the Vietnam defeat is being reported as if it were a highlight of his career. Yet, his misreporting helped create the conditions for a premature U.S. military withdrawal, leading to the loss of the lives of 58,000 Americans in vain, not to mention the millions of additional deaths caused in Vietnam and Cambodia by the Communists. Cronkite's public verdict that the 1968 Tet offensive was a "defeat" for the U.S. is widely seen as a turning point in American support for the war. Cronkite falsely claimed that the Vietcong had held the American embassy for six hours and that the offensive "went on for two months." The facts show that Tet was actually a major defeat for the communist enemy.

For those looking to see how Cronkite's biased converage had huge ramifications on American policy vis a vis the Soviet Union, follow this link.

Commentary on Banning Trays, Charging for Takeout

Several observations and thoughts about eliminating trays from all of the dining halls.

1. In the past, we have been told it was the "health code" that said we couldn't use Tupperware containers. Is there any evidence for this supposed contamination?

Instead: How about making the trays optional for students who eat only one meal a day in the dining halls? Or for the football players who need more food?

The reason that they are banning all of the trays at all of the colleges, according to a source at one of the dining halls, is that students ended up going to the places that allowed them to have trays so it's less than clear they actually saved that much food in the aggregate.

2.. The Treasurer's math, as Huang lays it out here, is kind of deceptive. One of the most expensive sources of food is the Athenaeum, which allows students not on the meal plan to eat for free. Maybe they could consider doing something about that? There are a quite a few seniors who eat every meal there. They also provide everyone with a desert that few end up eating.

3. Maybe something else that would reduce is the requirement that you have to be on the meal plan if you live in the dorms. That gives Bon Appetit a lock on the money they would get and little incentive to make food that students actually like and so as not to waste it.

If it were an option to live in the dorms and not be a part of the dining hall, I would gladly opt out. Indeed, given that I'm often sickened by the dining hall foods, my doctor is going to be writing me a note to get me out of the meal plan. (I think I may have a glutten problem.)

Dean of Faculty Greg Hess said last year that CMC wasn't going to continue expanding if not everyone could fit in the dining room and enjoy the social experience. For students like me, on the 8 meal plan, eating once a day in the dining hall is made much easier by the trays. As I pointed out in a post using data from George Posner, CMC already has one of the more expensive meal plans on campus. Per meal, it cost $9.25 on the sixteen meal plan, $11.30 on the twelve meal plan, and $15.17 on the eight meal plan.

Banning trays makes it very difficult to enjoy the social atmosphere of the dining hall and eat a balanced meal. Think about the awkwardness of getting up in the middle of meal with a professor or date. It's hard enough to eat a balanced meal. Does the college really want to encourage self-conscious girls not to go up and get all the food they need at a sitting?