Some pigs are more equal than others*

"Lard: The New Health Food?" The skinny re the layer of fat found along the back and underneath the skin of a hog is coming soon to a Cold Turkey Cookbook near you. Watch this space. Pictured above, our first trial batch -- water-filtered drippings from a pan of fried bacon -- of what food writer and lard fan Corby Kummer calls "The great misunderstood fat."

"Your editorial is a breath of fresh air in the overwhelmingly repressive atmosphere of elite opinion that prevails in academia, but . . ." we wrote in the comments to a Harvard Crimson editorial [via Pajamas Media] that rightly criticizes UC-Davis's recent snub of Larry Summers but seems to be in denial re Harvard's own climate of fear lite that led to then President Summers's humiliation and resignation -- termed "voluntary castration" by Dr. Sanity -- last year. Citing our own "Chomsky, Moore, Fisk: Pathetic memebots running the program of a dead tyrant" post of last year, we pointed out the error of their ways:

I do have to disagree with your positing a moral equivalence re thought control on the part of "progressives" vs. those on the other side of the political spectrum. The left has infiltrated academia up to its ears. President Summers's kangaroo court and ouster from Harvard itself was a travesty worthy of the Maureen Stantons [Stanton is the professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology at UC-Davis who started an online petition drive "to put the kibosh on Summers’s impending speech"] of this world.

"More generally, the quashing of Summers’s speech points to a troubling trend in academia," wrote the Crimson editors sensibly, getting the first part right:

Increasingly, the unrestricted marketplace of ideas that must form the heart of any university worth the name is being poisoned by a perverse pressure to conform truth to political agenda and stifle any speaker who espouses uncomfortable or inconvenient opinions.

So far, so good, but then they put their denial caps back on:

In the present case, the culprits are academics who fashion themselves as progressives eager for social justice and tolerance, but the other side of the political spectrum is no less guilty in others.

Say what? Everyone knows academia leans heavily left, routinely intimidating into silence those who don't toe the party line, even as it flirts with tyrants. Crimson Commenter Stephen W. Stanton detects another blind spot in the editors' world view:

Focusing on Summers' credentials as a progressive only panders to the troublemakers. Don't try to make Summers more palatable because he is "one of your own" on the Left. Focus on your main point . . . Academic "freedom" does not exist where opposing views cannot be heard.

Another commenter, haha, perhaps unwittingly exemplifies the mindset:

As a university president it's your JOB to be politically correct and not offend a subset of people -- it makes the university look bad.

Haha's blind acceptance of patent nonsense calls to mind that punchline of all punchlines from the 1940 Bob Hope classic "Ghost Breakers":

Richard Carlson character: A zombie has no will of his own. You see them sometimes walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring.

Bob Hope character: You mean like Democrats?

Watch the video here.

**Blogtitle taken from Orwell's Animal Farm, "a comment on the hypocrisy of governments [and by extension, academic communities] that proclaim the absolute equality of their citizens but give power and privileges to a small elite."

Comments

[goomp]

"What fools these mortals be" to spend 25 to 50 thousand dollars a year to send their youth to be indoctrinated by an ignorant, corrupt academia.

[Gayle Miller]

Especially if they're sent to Columbia where these days the air is apparently so rarified no intelligent thought can occur!

[Gayle Miller]

Just a word vis-a-vis lard: My sister uses it to cook lamb chops with a lot of garlic and you have never tasted anything like it! Deeeeeeeeeeelicious!