I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. Immediately after the sexual meaning you quote, wikipedia gives the political meaning which Berube uses.

Dave, The point is exactly that. The political meaning arises from the sexual one. The term is a nasty slur.

He can't turn off the arrogance for even a minute, can he?

From what I've been reading over the past week, everyone and her brother agrees

But of course.

And I'm sure no one he knows voted for Nixon, either.

Is the insinuation that Berube won't be a good leader of the MLA because he mocks conservatives who pretend to be American revolutionaries?

Or is the insinuation that Berube won't be a good leader of the MLA because he uses sexual puns to make fun of political opponents?

Or is the insinuation that the president of the MLA should have no political opinions?

Or is the insinuation that the president of the MLA, while having political opinions, should not be allowed to voice them on his private website?

Luther:
#2.

No, the insinuation is that he has no fucking clue what most of the country thinks about government run health care. He lives in a bubble of far-left opinions, which is precisely the problem with academia this blog has been addressing since day one.

John, you doth protest too much. Do you really think Berube believes that "everyone and her brother" wants single-payer health care? In context, he clearly means something like, "Among all of those who want progressive health care reform, there's a growing consensus around the single-payer model."

I'd say Berube has engaged far more with conservatives than conservatives have with liberal academics.

Oh, I forgot how this works. Now we decide what Berube really meant, so as to cover up what an ignoramus he is.

No, John, this isn't about sussing out Berube's secret intentions. It's simply that he has written in the past about the health care debate and is well aware of the various progressive and conservative positions on the issue.

It's fine to disagree with him. I think he's been wrong on a variety of issues, such as when he defended cultural studies against Thomas Frank's criticism, or in his early work when he defended certain straings of Theory against its critics.

But I also think that Berube is an honest scholar, a real public intellectual who engages a wide audience on issues such as the value of the humanities, the representation of disability, and the culture wars as a whole. (And his book on Tolson and Pynchon is brilliant.) Which is to say, going after Berube for a blog post about the health care debate is absurd. It's an intellectually dishonest distortion of Berube as a scholar, one that refuses to engage with his actual scholarly work. So if you have something to say about Berube's work as a teacher and a scholar, please do so.

Personally, I don't care who becomes President of the MLA. As a high school teacher, I find the work the MLA does rather useless, and I'm consistently disappointed by the organization's refusal to engage with K-12 literature teachers. As a professional organization, I'd like to see it publish more work on literature pedagogy and attempt to make its scholarly work available to teachers. But Berube seems as capable a leader as any.

Until now, I've been sitting this one out, but I think that Erin has a point here.

First, let me say that I generally share Luther's admiration for Bérubé as a scholar, teacher, and public intellectual. I also think that it is fair to say that he has generally been more willing than most academics and public intellectuals to enter into a dialogue with his ideological opponents. While he is often forceful in his arguments, and more than occasionally glib and snarky, he usually avoids ad hominem arguments and petty nastiness.

This is why I wish that he had refrained from the "teabagging" reference. I don't know if it qualifies as a "nasty slur," and I would not go so far as to suggest that it disqualifies him from being president of the MLA... though it probably diminishes his credibility as a representive the *whole* profession, in all of its ideological diversity.

Err... is everyone assuming that MB was the first one to use the term teabagging to refer to self-styled Tea Party participants? Or that he was aware of the sexual meaning? I'm not a literary scholar, but I think that takes auteur theory a bit too far...

Sherman: No one is assuming Berube is the first to use the term. It's quite commonly used at this point--even by some MSM folks who enjoy taking cheap shots when they ought to be just reporting the news. Also commonly known is the origin of the term in BDSM slang, and its derogatory connotations originating therein. I absolutely assume Berube is aware of the etymology.

Yes, the term is "quite commonly used", but only by creeps, to put it bluntly. I've never seen a blog post or comment that contained the words 'democrap', 'demoncrat', 'rethuglican', 'repugnican', or a similar construction, that was worth the time it took to read it. The word 'teabagger' is also a pretty reliable sign that the person using it is a creep -- in this case a foul-mouthed one -- and not worth paying any attention to. It's surprising, or should be, that one capable of such contemptuous and contemptible language is a future MLA president.

I find Shoemaker's mention of "ideological diversity" amusing at best. Berube is *absolutely* representative of English departments in major universities, and I suspect Shoemaker is more than well-aware of this.

"Tea bagging" is a largely fictional sexual practice of the type that boys make up and give funny names (e.g., dirty sanchez). Those terms are usually used in sniggering jokes to degrade women -- and are most often used when boys are between junior high school and college.

I found it odd that progressive, gay/lesbian figures (Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper) were among the first to use the term publicly, and that they used it with knowing smirks on their faces (wink, wink). It runs counter to what I understand their sexual politics are. But I guess it just proves that emotionally immature boys aren't the only people who can't resist juvenile sexual humor. Progressives, too, find it funny to use dirty words.

Drake,

I can't win with you, can I? All I'm saying is that the president of the MLA should represent the entire profession, and not just those members whose political beliefs he happens to share. What's so objectionable about that? Are you simply incapable of passing up an opportunity to be nasty and contemptuous?

My previous two attempts to post this were blocked. So let's try it again.

The Tea-Party activists themselves were the first to use the term "tea-bagging" about their activities, as can be seen in their posters and t-shirts calling for a movement to "Tea Bag Obama."

Peter, why was Berube voted into office? Why are the bulk of the officers of the MLA leftists? Why are most of the essays published in PMLA of the same basic ideological bent?

The MLA controls the profession, but it doesn't even make a token effort to represent those language and literature professors and graduate students who don't toe the leftist line.

And Berube has proven himself an ass on numerous occasions. His arrogance is overwhelming, even when he tries to hide it in fake modesty, as in his remark that he is so honored to have beaten out two senior members of the profession.

That's a rather bold statement, Luther Blissett. Care to offer some evidence that the Tea Partiers themselves were the first to use the obscene slur?

John,

The MLA controls the profession, but it doesn't even make a token effort to represent those language and literature professors and graduate students who don't toe the leftist line.

So you agree that "the president of the MLA should represent the entire profession, and not just those members whose political beliefs he happens to share"? Or am I missing something?

Luther is taking his claim from Clarence Page (or they both share a similar source). Basically, he's sorta right - in that 8 or so months ago, someone had a sign at a Tea Party rally that said "Tea Bag Obama."

Now, I heartily await Luther claiming that all anti-war protesters during the Bush years can be called Nazis because some signs at some rallies had Nazi images. (No, don't invoke Godwin's law - that doesn't apply here because there actually were nazi signs at some anti-war protests, and I'm just trying to show the silliness of taking a few fringe signs from one or two protests as an excuse to behave badly and talk crudely about people who are exercising their political rights).

Basically, the problem here is Mr. Luther sees nothing wrong with insulting and attacking his political opposition because he sees them as so far gone and so benighted as to be beyond the realm of reasonable discourse. And that's the problem with Michael Berube and most of the MLA types - they aren't interested in dialogue - insults and snark are acceptable, though.

I have my issues with Gerald Graff, but at least he was interested in debating and "teaching the controversies." I am decidedly not a fan of David Horowitz, but when Graff brough Horowitz to the MLA convention in 2008, it was a stroke of genius and an amazing gesture of good faith. Too bad so many of the attendees acted like schoolkids who just learned that a loser was being allowed into the cool kids clique.

We should behave better, and we don't.

So - Luther: I'll let you call the tea party "tea baggers" if you let me refer to all progressive/liberal protestors as Nazis.

I have no problem with you calling anyone any names, conservativeenglishPHD. It's called free speech. If you've ever read political discourse from, say, the Greek orators until now, you'll see that tea-baggers and Nazis are fairly gentle terms, all things considered.

Which returns me to the original question: is Berube simply not allowed to voice political opinions, or must he obey Miss Manners' rules of tea-party conversation when addressing idiots who compare national healthcare to fascism and their own gluttony and greed to the noble motives of the Founding Fathers? Because if the answer is the yes to the former, then you're unamerican. And if it's yes to the latter, you're simply a prude with little sense of the history of political oratory.

I don't see anyone suggesting that Berube doesn't have the right to voice his opinions. I do see a number of people suggesting he demeans himself and the position of MLA president when he expresses himself as he does in the post cited above--and that post, for the record, is par for the course when it comes to Berube's blog writing about people whose politics differ from his. Peter has noted that Berube ought to be more aware when he writes that he is now speaking as someone who ideally represents everyone in the Modern Language Association. I agree with that, and would add that he should also be aware that he is representing the academic humanities to trustees, to administrators, to parents, to students, to legislators, and to taxpayers. It's just a fact of his life, now that he is the president-elect. If he wants the academic humanities to be respected by non-humanists and non-academics, he needs to choose his words better and think before he types. If he wants academic humanists to be thought of as intolerant, immature, and biased, he should keep doing what he's doing. I really think, Matt, that if someone besides me were making the point, you could get it. But because it's coming from me, it has to be wrong and should be fought and belittled and mocked. That's been your m.o. toward me since 2001. It's a new decade tomorrow, Matt. Don't you think it might be time to go away? Surely the time you have spent trolling this site under numerous aliases over the years, some of them more openly hostile than others, but all originating in highly dubious and personal motives--surely that time is better spent on other things?

"If he wants the academic humanities to be respected by non-humanists and non-academics..."

Then he's living in a fantasy world. Why on earth would or should the rest of humanity outside the ivory tower respect academia? Respect is not an entitlement: it needs to be earned, and outside of the hard sciences, I fail to see any effort at earning it. Quite the contrary: academia seems to do everything it can to earn scorn, contempt and bewilderment. I'd welcome any evidence to suggest otherwise.

Luther Blissett:
It's been more than four days since I asked you "to offer some evidence that the Tea Partiers themselves were the first to use the obscene slur". Please either do that or withdraw your imputation.

Berube writes on his site:

I am reliably informed that the term “teabagger” is a nasty slur that should not be applied to people who ... uh ... call for Obama and liberal Democrats to be ... um ... mumble mumble mumble. I sincerely apologize to anyone I may have offended in 2009, and I hereby declare that this blog will henceforth refer to this group as Tea Party Patriots™. I ask you all to do likewise, just as I once asked you to refrain from calling David Horowitz a vicious racist and sexist term and say “He Who Shall Not Be Referred To By His First Initial and a Drastic Truncation of His Surname” instead. I would also like to say, for the record, that I do not believe the animus directed against Obama’s stimulus plan last spring had anything to do with race. Many Americans simply realized to their dismay that government spending was out of control, and some of them began to harbor suspicions that the new president was actually a Keynesian. Accordingly, they demanded to see his Keynesian birth certificate, and the White House did itself no favors by stonewalling them. To call these people “birthers” today is to suggest, however faintly, that they are not to be taken seriously, and I respectfully request that you refrain from using that term on this blog as well. [internal links include two photos of Tea Party protesters bearing signs saying things like "Tea Bag Obama"]
http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/twenty_ten/

Anyone who knows anything about Berube knows that he does not "toe the leftist line." He vigorously debates the left, much of which dislikes him intensely. His recent book "The Left At War" is primarily about how the left isolated itself and made itself irrelevant to the political decision-making on the Iraq War. Berube debated many of his adversaries on the left in a FireDogLake book discussion just a few days ago, and it's still up, if you care to read his views. Or you can maintain your intentional ignorance, as Dr. Weevil indicates he's going to do.

Anyone who bothers to read my comments here and there knows that I have written nothing to suggest that Berube "toe[s] the leftist line". Even John Drake, who uses the phrase here, does not apply it to Berube, but to the MLA as a whole. I'm perfectly willing to grant that Berube is one of the less doctrinaire leftists in the MLA. All the more shocking that even he feels free to verbally degrade and defile tens of millions of his fellow Americans. Is Bloix wallowing in "intentional ignorance"? That would be the more charitable explanation of his latest comment.

Respect is not an entitlement: it needs to be earned, and outside of the hard sciences, I fail to see any effort at earning it. Quite the contrary: academia seems to do everything it can to earn scorn, contempt and bewilderment.

I think there is considerable truth in what you say with regards to academic administration, to the student affairs apparat, to the fine arts, to the humanities, to subfields in social research where statistics is not used, and to faculties in education, social work, and library administration. It is unfair to tar the general run of trade faculties, engineering faculties, agriculture faculties, medical and para-medical faculties, business faculties, athletic coaches, mathematicians & statisticians, &c.