Aggies came in an ruined a computer-networking conference after-party once (well, I only saw one crashed).  It was really painful watching the already overworked staff at the club trying to deal with these guys coming off the street and trying to talk their way into free food and nerdy women to talk up.  Loud yells and inappropriate clothing.

It was really uncomfy-making.  My university would’ve put them on academic suspension if they heard wind of behavior like that, and their standards were pretty low (but they were private, not public).

Perry was described as going to a “land grant university”, which really undersells how extremely redneck A&M is. Let me put it this way: in Austin, it’s occasional said that you spot Aggies visiting from out of town because they have jaw problems that lead them to catch flies.  Perry might as well have said that Bush isn’t a real Texan, since that’s the implication here.

Maybe I’m not getting the joke if there is one, but is there something wrong with going to a mainly agricultural college? I’m guessing you’re saying that people from A&M are over-awed by cities.

From what I’ve read on Wikipedia, if correct, it looks like A&M is a fine university.

@R.T.
Speaking as an Aggie (albeit I’m a flaming liberal, which is a rare breed among Aggies), there definitely is the stereotype of them being rural rednecks more at home on a tractor than in a city that isnt really true at all. College Station is a mini-city in and of itself with well liked public transportation provided by the campus and all the lovely conveniences of city life, wth most of the student population not actually being from small towns or farms/ranches.

However, most Aggies are very, very dyed-in-the-wool conservative and as such cultivate an anti-intellectual, rural, traditional, family-values, etc. attitude about themselves and the community. They like being tractor driving rednecks because it differentiates them from the godless liberal heathens over at Texas University in Austin (their arch-rival). It’s a top notch university, and has amazing academics well outside of just agriculture, but Aggies live in this weird area of cognitive dissonance where they want to be proud of their education and their school but they don’t want to appear to be overly intellectual. Hell, a lot of the Aggie persona is very dissonant, but I guess that goes for conservatism as a whole.

A&M has an agricultural component, but it’s just as much a business and engineering firm as UT.  They put out a lot of teachers as well.

I’ve got lots of friends who went to A&M and they (mostly) turned out alright.  Although, they were mostly nerds and hipsters like me, so we all held a healthy disdain for The Core (a military-themed campus fraternity) and the jock culture.

I don’t think there’s anything you could say about A&M that you couldn’t say about Ohio State or Florida or USC.

Maybe I’m not getting the joke if there is one, but is there something wrong with going to a mainly agricultural college?

It’s a common meme…  One hears terms like “Moo U” for agricultural colleges.  (Although I suspect that since UT is the “longhorns” one may not hear that in Texas for A&M.)

It’s a general classist thing:  The U of insert state name here is considered the flagship universities, the state State Universities are second tier, teaching colleges/agricultural/technical.  Below them are the junior colleges.  College “rankings” tend to perpetrate this.  UT is considered a better school than Texas A&M.

In the end, I’ve found it isn’t the name of the school on the diploma that measures the education, but what you did with the resources available.  Certainly an Ivy League university has more resources than an underfunded public university, but do you really think George W Bush took advantage of his resources at Yale, as compared to Pedro Ramirez, an undocumented alien at Fresno State who was elected student body president?

I believe that Rick Perry is the more Christian-extremist, intellectually incurious, mean-spirited version of George W. Bush. One way to guarantee that George W. Bush doesn’t go down in history as the worst Texan to ever be elected president would be to elect Rick Perry president next year. If this deranged asshole gets to the Oval Office in January 2013, within six months we’ll start pining for the days when more “moderate” Republicans like Dubya were in the White House.

There was a time when I would have said that there was absolutely no situation in which I could ever vote for George W. Bush. I stand corrected. Gun to the head and I’m forced to vote for either Rick Perry or George W. Bush, and those are my only two choices - I probably vote for Bush.

Part of me thinks it would be better for Perry to get nominated than Romney, because I think if Romney can actually win the GOP nomination and the economy remains in the toilet (which seems likely), I think there’s a better than even chance that he beats Obama in the general election. That Romney is, relatively speaking, much more of a moderate than Perry leads me to believe that he’s probably the strongest challenger the GOP can put against Obama. At the same time, as much as I scratch my head wondering how in the hell a guy like Rick Perry could ever get elected president, I thought the exact same thing back in 2000 about Bush. Those who believe the American electorate could never elect someone as awful as Rick Perry need to get out of denial - this country is eminently capable of electing lousy presidents, and has proven so many times.

The GOP nomination is between two people - Rick Perry and Mitt Romney. Every other GOP contender is simply along for the ride at this point (including Michele Bachmann), but one by one they’ll start dropping like flies between now and next February or March. Both Perry and Romney would be awful presidents, but if I had to say which one I thought would suck less, it would have to be Mitt Romney. Rick Perry winning the presidency on November 6, 2012 is pretty much the worst possible scenario for the 2012 election. I think I’ll have to figure out a way to leave this country if it actually comes to that.

Having gone to law school at UT, I was under the impression it was the Texas Tech kids who got the grief. Course there most every student was a well off lawyer’s kid from Houston, so the usual undergrad stereotypes didn’t get much play

Heavens forbid someone points out that rednecks act like rednecks… why that would be politically incorrect!

Can Rick Perry ride a horse? It seems to me that anyone who aspires to ride his cowboy image into the Presidency ought to be able to at least ride a horse. Will Ferrel spoofed George W hilariously for being unable to ride a horse, but alas it didn’t seem to dent his image very much.

Perry seems to be wearing horseriding chaps in the picture above. I did a quick search online for pictures of him actually riding a horse, and couldn’t find any. Anyone know the answer to this one? Ronald Reagan was an accomplished horseman.

Pandagon is giving a weird pop-up login for “gaypolitical ads” on Firefox 6 right now.

Also, gratuitous Aggie jokes are of course fine for a UT (tu) grad, but they do smear a ton of good kids.  I mean I’d rather be in Austin right now, but A&M kids don’t really need that.  There are a lot of really good ones.

Perry isn’t wrong about Bush being a fake Texan, though, is he? For whatever it’s worth. I always thought the genuine rednecks would view a perfumed popinjay like Bush with utmost contempt, but it’s a little late for them to start squaking about Junior now.

I’m not a fan of the bashing on Texas A&M. I know it’s common. I know that, like many stereotypes, it has a grain of truth to it. But I also know it is what every college student says about whatever their rival college is.

When I was at grad school at USC, I heard this stuff about UCLA all the time. Public school. Junior branch of the University of California (because at one time it was the secondary university in the system to Berkeley). Et cetera.

And UCLA responded. USC was full of trust fund babies. You didn’t need grades to get in there as long as you had money. “University of South Central” (because the school sits in a transitional neighborhood south of Downtown LA).

This stuff is fun if you are a college student. And sure, Perry’s playing it up. But nonetheless, I don’t really think people on our side in the political fence who are out of college should traffic in it.

The reality is that despite its agricultural roots and its conservative student body, Texas A&M is a fine school. Depending on the measure, it may even be a top 20 school. It turns out fine, well educated graduates.

99 percent of what comes out of Austin about Texas A&M (and vice-versa) is typical college snobbery.

Sorry, I’ve met a few Aggies.  The stereotypes are correct—if anything, understated.

Sorry, I’ve met a few Aggies.  The stereotypes are correct—if anything, understated.

I’ve met members of ethnic groups with attributes that conform to stereotypes too. These things tend to come from a combination of prejudice AND some kernel of reality.

I don’t think that justifies trafficking in them.

Punditus- seriously, don’t be a cobag.  I’m sure Amanda would not appreciate all the Texas stereotypes that we could easily traffic in, nor the hipster ones, so why don’t we give it a little bitty rest with El Snobbopottamus.

The UT v. Aggie stuff never struck me as actual snobbery. In the end both are nationally known public schools. Fun rah rah school spirit stuff. Quite different than how a UT student would react to an Austin community college student or *gasp* someone who wasnt attending college in some form at all.

I admit that I’m being a cobag, and I offer the following explanation: every time I’ve encountered an Aggie for more than a few seconds, I was afraid for my physical safety during the encounter.  It was a thing, and it took a while for me to piece together the common thread.

So yeah, I’ll work to undo the association.  Thanks for being reasonably nice about it.

There are a lot of regular kids there.  Give them a chance.  There are ultra-steakheads too.

From the US News College Rankings U Texas - Austin is ranked 45th.  Texas A&M College Station 63rd.

It seems like typical snobbery from the more urban, ‘cultured’, and self absorbed. looking down at the rural, agricultural, trade schools.

They really are awful, except for my grandfather, uncle, cousin, cousin’s kid (in 2013), best friend, and father of my goddaughter.

The best thing to tell an Aggie, apart from the fact that their academic and cultural (read: sporting) lives are lies, is that they might as well foment a rivalry with Texas Tech, because we’ve already got Oklahoma. So go nurse that massive inferiority complex manifested in your piece-of-shit fight song, farmer.

UC Berkeley, my alma mater, was once California’s premier agricultural school (JK Galbraith took his PhD in agricultural economics there). UC Davis eventually took over that function, of course, but traces remain.

All I know is when Tex A&M played football up here in Iowa, we left town.  The fans that roadtrip to those games would give most cults a run for their money.  And my spouse is a rabid Cornhusker.

Having gone to law school at UT, I was under the impression it was the Texas Tech kids who got the grief.

Stereotypically speaking, there’s a certain working class honesty of someone who goes to Texas Tech, while the stereotype of a Texas A&M grad is that he went there to join the paramilitary drill team without actually going into ROTC, watch football games, and resented actual learning while just marking time on his way to getting his degree in business administration.

All that said, they do have a great faculty (who, frankly, would probably rather not have to live in College Station), and their fiercely loyal alumni ensure a steady stream of money and support for the university.

Sure, plenty of people defy the stereotypes—two awesome people I know both went to crazy fundamentalist Christian colleges as undergrads. But it’s not like I would endorse anyone going to those colleges.

But talking up how you went to Texas A&M instead of Yale is Perry trying to say, “I’m a real Texan and Bush isn’t.”

I don’t think Rove is an atheist.

When I was in College Station I saw a guy wearing a shirt that said “Beat the Hell Out of Obama.”  In the mall.  Didn’t give me a good impression of Texas A&M, since that’s apparently their slogan about UT as well.

@R.T.

Since I don’t see people pointing out the physical meaning of the joke (apologies if you get that bit, it seemed from your post you thought it meant their mouths were open in awe at the wonders of city life), they mean that the A&M students have “jaw problems” because they are literally slack-jawed yokels. Like Cletus from The Simpsons. Just a physical stereotype associated with rednecks and “white trash”.

I am someone generally disliking of rural America, especially conservative redneck “culture.” And I’ve long known that A&M is a Bizarro World conservative/redneck university. But jeez even I think it’s a piece too far to insinuate its students are less than human.

Re:  Albert Cirrus Comment #24

Rove is an atheist came from Christopher Hitchens. 

http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/31244/

“Karl Rove is not a believer, and he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers quite honestly. I think the way he puts it is, “I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.”

—————————-

Any discussion of Texas academic snobbery is woefully incomplete without mention of holiest Rice

Just to make sure I understood this correctly, Perry’s differentiation and self-promotion strategy hinges on proving that W did not score high enough on the redneck meter, and that Perry is the authentic redneck? Is that it? “George W Bush wasn’t a true redneck. Elect me and I’ll show you what a real redneck is.” Somebody, please tell me I’m reading this the wrong way.

All I know is when Tex A&M played football up here in Iowa, we left town.  The fans that roadtrip to those games would give most cults a run for their money.  And my spouse is a rabid Cornhusker.

Same experience here whenever they come to play Mizzou, also part of the currently misnamed Big XII (now that Nebraska and Colorado have left reducing the conference to just ten schools).

Since I don’t see people pointing out the physical meaning of the joke (apologies if you get that bit, it seemed from your post you thought it meant their mouths were open in awe at the wonders of city life), they mean that the A&M students have “jaw problems” because they are literally slack-jawed yokels. Like Cletus from The Simpsons. Just a physical stereotype associated with rednecks and “white trash”.

I believe that’s where the pejorative term “mouth-breathers” comes from, as well.

Just to make sure I understood this correctly, Perry’s differentiation and self-promotion strategy hinges on proving that W did not score high enough on the redneck meter, and that Perry is the authentic redneck? Is that it? “George W Bush wasn’t a true redneck. Elect me and I’ll show you what a real redneck is.” Somebody, please tell me I’m reading this the wrong way.

You’re not. Rick Perry is just like George W. Bush, only dumber and meaner. He’s the one person who can spare Bush from going down in history as the most intellectually incurious president we’ve ever had. Six months into the Perry Administration we’ll start to believe that things really weren’t all that bad under Dubya, relatively speaking.

Hey, my sister-in-law graduated from A&M, and with a higher GPA than Perry. My brother couldn’t hack it there and became a bike Mechanic in College Station and later got a BA at UT Richardson.

A lot of people think Texas Tech is way cool. Stephen Jay Gould praised its inderdiciplinary atmosphere. When you’re at Tech, you’re at Tech. In Lubbock you take what you can get. UT Students have Austin and A&M students can get away to Houston, but Tech folks are stuck. The University of Houston has recently broken into tier one on the Carnegie survey, so now there at least more choices for in state students who want to get ahead.

Perry totally, totally sucks. He barely passed at A&M, and almost flunked economics. Bush got through as a legacy at Yale, but that’s how it goes. Perry’s supposed to be a self made man. He just barely got out of A&M at a time when its academic reputation was not as good as it is not.

W was a fake, but there is a real inside from W to fake from, there is no inside to Perry.
But none of this matters. Why did the right hate Bill Clinton so much? They hated him because he proved that “if you study hard one day you might become President” was really true. Bill Clinton got above his raisin’. Shouldn’t most of us want to live in an America where many of us get above our raisin’? But no, many would prefer that we have God ordained aristocrats as our rulers. It’s all much simpler that way and you have only yourself as a non-ordained serf to blame for your suffering rather than rising up and doing something in your self interest.

Obama is above his raisin’ too. Shit, he’s half African and his mama was one of those traveling ferrin lovin’ women like my cousin

Heaven forbid we should be led by someone who strives from the depths to go all the way rather than a W who got everything handed to him

But Perry is a different kind of animal. There is no epistemic interior to Perry. Perry is not a Christian because that would entail believing and knowing, which requires that there is something inside him. There is no inside to Perry. He is a four year old no one ever asked an open-ended question to or listened to anything he had to say. He says whatever gets the cookie out of grandma’s jar, but he has on top of this the cunning of a clever adult.

I’m real curious to see how the GOP primary plays out, because it seems that the moneycons and the teavangelicals are moving in different directions on who they want to be the guy. There’s a pretty big reason why Mitt Romney is so far ahead of the other GOP candidates in fundraising thus far - he’s got Wall Street in his back pocket. If the amount of money that candidates raise will determine who becomes the party nominee, then just hand it to Romney now. The problem is… it’s seems like the intellectually incurious teaklanners can’t stand the the guy. It’s gonna come down to Romney and Perry, and I have a hard time seeing anyone else being in the race beyond March (though Ron Paul may stick around longer even after he’s all but eliminated). I honestly can’t say who I think will win between the two. Romney has the money and the Establishment on his side, but Perry will be the teaklanner favorite. It’s anybody’s guess. Either one would be awful in the presidency.

Karl Rove is a man who has made a living creating lies and destroying good people and after years of helping advise one of the most morbidly Christian presidents ever, he comes out as an atheist.  I don’t buy it.  No atheist can be THAT self-loathing.

BTW, I’m also getting this gayblogs popup login thing, it’s really annoying.

Let me put it this way: in Austin, it’s occasional said that you spot Aggies visiting from out of town because they have jaw problems that lead them to catch flies.

Wow.  That’s some cold shit.  & hilarious.

As a recently retired A&M prof in wildlife and land management, I would like to point out that A&M is a leading university in environmental sciences. As an unapologetic “tree hugger” and liberal, I had my issues with a few there but for the most part felt very much at home among the faculty. The christianist kids sent there to argue with us about evolution in the required Bio 101 were another story. Tenure allowed me to take the little shits apart - and I did, with glee.

I figured it was a straight up calling Bush an elitist fake of a working man (tm), no redneck trolling needed.

Pinko Punko - I’m getting the same lof in pop up for Gay politics blogs on both firefox and explorer.  I’m betting it’s coming through from one of the ads.

JJG - yeah, Rice.  I applied there almost 30 years ago now to please my mom, and was shocked to be accepted as I was planning to skip my Sr year to escape middle of nowhere northern rural ID to which we moved for my jr year.  Houston was way too close to my nutty grandma in Lake Jackson even if I could have afforded it.

Gaypolitcalad login popup happening on the iPad/safari as well.  Annoying.

A username and password are being requested by http://www.gaypoliticsblogads.com The s.ite says: “Error 403”

Isn’t Texas A&M where they have that gigantic bonfire every year? And one year it collapsed and killed some people and they were all, “oh no, too bad, but we still have to do this because it’s our tradition.” I mean, they build this thing out of big logs that it takes two guys to carry, and it ends up being several stories high. Or is it someplace else?

Texas A&M’s standing notwithstanding, the fact is that Texas has a lot of smart, decent people. Hell, Amanda’s from there. Also Ann Richards. Also Molly Ivins.

So how come they keep electing these tough-talking dumbbells?

TiminIowa, you are correct:

Aggie Bonfire was a long-standing tradition at Texas A&M University as part of the college rivalry with the University of Texas at Austin.[1][2] For 90 years, Texas A&M students—known as Aggies—built and burned a bonfire on campus each autumn. Known to the Aggie community simply as “Bonfire”, the annual autumn event symbolized Aggie students’ “burning desire to beat the hell outta t.u.”, a derogatory nickname for the University of Texas.[3] The bonfire was traditionally lit around Thanksgiving in conjunction with festivities surrounding the annual college football game.

Although early Bonfires were little more than piles of trash, as time passed the annual event became more organized. Over the years the bonfire grew to an immense size, setting the world record in 1969. Bonfire remained a thriving University tradition for decades until, in 1999, a collapse during construction killed twelve people—eleven students and one former student—and injured twenty-seven others.

The accident led Texas A&M to declare a hiatus on an official Bonfire. However, since 2002, a student-sponsored coalition has constructed an annual unsanctioned, off-campus “Student Bonfire” in the spirit of its predecessor.

Texas is also where there are a few deaths every year because of the habit of practicing football in uniforms in the extreme summer heat, the latest such incident is more noteworthy than usual because it was a football coach this time around:

The children of a North Texas football coach who died on the first day of practice are remembering him as a loving father and coach.

Preliminary autopsy reports indicate that heat combined with a heart condition killed 55-year-old Wade McLain, a father of five.

“He had a big heart, and maybe that played a part,” said his oldest daughter, Stephanie Garcia.

McLain, a defensive coordinator at Prestonwood Christian Academy, collapsed during a break in the team’s second practice of the day on Monday as temperatures soared well above the century mark.

“We always joked Dad would teach and coach until the day he died,” said son David McLain. “But we thought it would be 20, 30 years from now.”

Google Search heat death Texas football practice

“We think it was the worst week in the last 35 years in terms of athlete deaths,” said Dr. Douglas Casa, chief operating officer of the Korey Stringer Institute of health medicine at the University of Connecticut and author of the book “Preventing Sudden Death in Sports and Physical Activity.”

Glenn Jones’ son, Forrest, died days after a voluntary camp for his high school football team in Locust Grove, Georgia.

“I didn’t think anything about it,” Jones said. “He was giving signs. He wasn’t complaining, but he was giving signs something was wrong.”

Casa said until parents demand more specific and enforced rules for high school sports, these kinds of tragedies will continue.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/SPORT/08/04/heat.deaths/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

Digby is skeptical about Karl Rove all of a sudden singing “Kumbaya”, going on Fox News and denouncing the Christian right, saying we’re not a “Christian nation”, because we’re a nation that has Jews, Muslims, and non-believers (and others, I’ll add).  Digby’s take is that Rove is being a pure anti-Perry political operative:

The Bush Peeps hate Perry but its possible Rove is being genuine here. In his autobio (I think) Rove recounts how Bush saw himself as defeating the religious right. I know this seems absurd to all of you from the outside looking in. After all they were part of the same party and they both supported each other. In order to empathize, just think how JFK or Stevenson could think themselves opposed to Segregationists while simultaneously running on tickets with them and securing their support.

Ari Fleischer’s famous “watch what you say” quote was actually in reference to a bigoted comment made by a republican as much as it was in reply to a question about Bill Mayer. The sentiments expressed by some mainstream repubs during 911-mosquegate were generally marginalized during George II’s reign, especially in regards to the first amendment.

But the Bush folks hating Perry may very well help Perry. The “Bush was not a real conservative” meme is quite popular in RWing land. His economic policies were actually liberal, so the free market is not blame for the crash, so the argument goes…not unlike your own dixiecrats were dinos meme.

More problematic for Perry is his time as a Dem and support for Al Gore. If the Bush team wants to derail Perry during the primaries, this is where they should focus.

I don’t think Rove is an atheist.

Karl Rove is a man who has made a living creating lies and destroying good people and after years of helping advise one of the most morbidly Christian presidents ever, he comes out as an atheist.  I don’t buy it.  No atheist can be THAT self-loathing.

Allow Nick to explain:

“Therefore, a prince doesn’t need to have all the qualities [pious, faithful, honest, humane, religious] mentioned earlier, but it is necessary that he appear to have them. I’ll even add to this: having good qualities and always practicing them is harmful, while appearing to practice them is useful. It’s good to appear…religious…as long as one keeps in mind that when the need arises you can and will change into the opposite.

…he must appear to all who see and hear him to be completely pious, completely faithful, completely honest, completely humane, and completely religious. And nothing is more important than to appear to have that last quality.”
—Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince

Karl Rove is a man who has made a living creating lies and destroying good people and after years of helping advise one of the most morbidly Christian presidents ever, he comes out as an atheist.  I don’t buy it.  No atheist can be THAT self-loathing.

Only if you assume that atheism or religious belief is the sum total of the reasons someone does anything. Personally, if I were sufficiently driven to manipulate people to gain power (for myself, or on behalf of someone else) that I was willing to but my morality aside, my atheism wouldn’t mean squat if I felt one of the better ways of manipulating people was through their religious beliefs.

You also assume that Bush was “morbidly Christian”. The actual evidence of him having any real faith, as opposed to appearing to have faith so as to appease the people who made up his base, is actually pretty thin on the ground.

Karl Rove is a man who has made a living creating lies and destroying good people and after years of helping advise one of the most morbidly Christian presidents ever, he comes out as an atheist.  I don’t buy it.

Rove didn’t just come out and declare his atheism this week, it’s been a pretty well known (though not often discussed) fact among DC politicos for some time. Undoubtedly has some pretty nihilistic motives, but I don’t question his ability to think rationally. He’s one of the most savvy Republican political strategists since Lee Atwater, who was his mentor.

No atheist can be THAT self-loathing.

Ever heard of Christopher Hitchens?

While the ugly smear that atheists are by their very nature evil people is patently false, so is the assumption that atheism cannot coexist with self-loathing or a cynical hatred for humanity. Most of the atheists I’ve encountered in my life are good and decent people, but that doesn’t mean that atheists are exempt from having a certain percentage of vile assholes among their ranks. Rove’s atheism doesn’t surprise me in the least, because if he were a true believer, I don’t think he would have been anywhere near as successful as he was at foisting Bush policy on America. The man epitomizes the words “evil genius”.

Hitchens at least has some salvageable viewpoints despite sounding like an idiot on other viewpoints.  Rove has no salvageable viewpoints unless he doesn’t believe in god.  So it’s more like that I don’t want him to be an atheist.  I have trouble classifying terrible people like Stalin or Rand as atheists, I think they invented their own cult with themselves as a god or a prophet.  In Rove’s case I have two theories.  1. He’s really a Christian and at the same time a pathological liar who will lie about everything including about their own faith just to keep up the habit.  2. Rove is an agnostic, the annoying kind of agnostic that works to undermine atheists.  I read this: “Karl Rove is not a believer, and he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers quite honestly. I think the way he puts it is, “I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.”  To me that sounds more like agnosticism than full blown atheism.

DTGslu2K wrote:

Rick Perry winning the presidency on November 6, 2012 is pretty much the worst possible scenario for the 2012 election. I think I’ll have to figure out a way to leave this country if it actually comes to that.

Would that be like Alec Baldwin, who said he’d emigrate if George Bush won in 2000, but stayed here, or Joe Wilson, who was going to move to New Zealand if George Bush was re-elected in 2004, but is still here?

Dana, thanks for demonstrating the wisdom of John Stuart Mill:

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.

Would that be like Alec Baldwin, who said he’d emigrate if George Bush won in 2000, but stayed here, or Joe Wilson, who was going to move to New Zealand if George Bush was re-elected in 2004, but is still here?

Or like my friend, Stephen, who has been here for, um, a decade or so…

Idiot.

@Albert Cirrus Fortunately for you, Stalin probably was not an atheist. According to a very definitive biography by Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin lacked nearly any capacity for abstract thought. His early childhood and time at seminary would have cemented the idea of God in his head, and he would’ve been unlikely to question His existence. As a young revolutionary, he was critical of those who were too irreligious. He also referenced God in a few conversations, including one with Churchill, and not only called upon the Eastern Orthodox church for help with morale during the war, but made promises to them which he actually kept. The idea that all Communists are “godless” is probably based on Marx’s view of organized religion, Mao Tse Tung’s aggressive atheism, and the American anti-Red pseudo-religious zeal of the Cold War.

Or like my friend, Stephen, who has been here for, um, a decade or so…

Idiot.

Perhaps if you stop calling him “idiot” he’ll come back.

Perhaps if you stop calling him “idiot” he’ll come back.

Dana comes back here all the time, Manju.

Perhaps if you stop calling him “idiot” he’ll come back.

You say that like it would be a good thing.

Oops…I read “my friend, Stephen, who has been here” with a “t” in front of the “here”.

Manju, PiaToR is in New Zealand and has a friend named Stephen who left US after Bush was elected and has lived there for about a decade.

And the idiot is Dana - but everybody seems to have got that already 8-)

Dixiecrats, they’re relevant to every thread on Pandagon, dontcha know?

#56

I have heard that about Stalin.

@zifnab @ #4 I was hoping somebody else would do this, but..

It is not the Core.

It is The Corps (same pronunciation). As in the Corps of Cadets. As in what used to be the entire student body (back in the day when they were all young men being trained to be cannon- or combine-fodder).

And it really is actually spelled “corps”, from Norman French for “body”, as in a body of organized people, as in the Marine Corps, or the Peace Corps. (“Corps” is also the term for a military unit smaller than/subordinate to an “Army” but generally larger than/superordinate to a Division).

(“Corpse” - in wherein the “s” is *not silent - means a dead body, but that is probably what produces the confusion.)

While I’m at it…

“Corp”, which I too often see substituting for “corps”, is an abbreviation (too often printed minus “.”) for “Corporation.” Similar etymology, “incorporate” meaning “assemble into a body”, but it means something quite different in practice. I’ll leave it to you to figure out the offense there.

It’s just my stomach rumbles when I see the terms confused.

Also, too..

The Corps is not a frat. That’s not to say they don’t effectively function as one (I think they do, on steroids), but that they are simply not one. It is a corps of cadets, like the cadets of VMA, or Culver, or West Point (hence the common simile of ROTC on steroids), but within a broader University culture, which it in this case distorts.

I hate frats, I hate militarism. I get the traditions. Let’s just not confuse them.

Yeah, and “the pedants are revolting.”