Father Knows Best
Somehow I missed this, first time around, written after a Northwestern prof had a class featuring a woman brought to orgasm on stage by a sex toy. Here's a column purportedly written by the father of a young woman at Northwestern. The student did not attend, but the dad wishes she had. We sure are a long way from Bill Cosby and Robert Young:
So now I am weighing in, as the tuition-paying parent of a student in [Prof. John Michael] Bailey’s class – and I am not complaining, either. The way I see it, Bailey turned an educational triple play for my daughter’s benefit.
First, there was the session itself, which offered her (had she stayed) a chance to hear live people explain why they would use such machinery in their sex lives, as well as why they would do so in public. Part of the in-class discussion, my daughter has since been told, focused on exhibitionism. This seems a perfectly reasonable topic for a human sexuality class. For that matter, so does an exploration of the variety of ways in which people engage in sex....
Second, there was the journalistic aspect of this experience. My daughter has held all sorts of jobs at the Daily Northwestern, which broke the story of the demonstration. But was it a story worth breaking? Was it news, on the campus of a leading research university, that there was sex in a human sexuality class? And if it was news, did graphic details including the device’s crude name belong in the paper and on the paper’s website? These are the sorts of questions journalists must address. The only way to learn how to handle them is to do it....
Third, there is an important life lesson in the Realpolitik that followed the news coverage. The university supported the professor while the story was restricted to the campus. Dean of Students Burgwell Howard told the student newspaper that the event probably “falls within the broad range of academic freedoms – whether one approves or disapproves.”
Things changed when the story went national....
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Re: Father Knows Best
Your daughters will be glad they were spared such a father.
Sep '10
Re: Father Knows Best
Only a leftist could find a way to stick the word Realpolitik in a story like that.
Sep '10
Re: Father Knows Best
Where do all us unemployed satirists go to find work when we are continually trumped by Trump and reality?
Feb '11
Re: Father Knows Best
Just another expression of the common Leftist view that you can't learn to do *anything* unless you are in a formal class taught by a credentialed expert.
Jun '10
Re: Father Knows Best
I didn't know Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn had a daughter at Northwestern?
Aside from the morally objectionable nature of the event (which, at least to me, is utterly appalling), this episode is just one more event demonstrating the triviality of most higher education (with notable exceptions: Hillsdale, Grove City, BYU, some the of conservative Catholic schools, which still believe in and enforce a moral code).
Joseph Epstein, who taught at NW for thirty years, wrote a terrific article on the sheep-like nature of NW's leadership. Here.
Edited on Apr 25, 2011 at 12:10pmRe: Father Knows Best
The song that came onto my Pandora station while reading your post:
Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'"
Ironic soundtrack, no? The author's daughter seems to have reacted against her baby boomer father's generation of free love, in favor of more prudent approach to sex. The dim father, not being able to perceive that times have changed, continues to cling onto the depraved sexualized culture of his glory days.
Mar '11
Re: Father Knows Best
Realpolitik? Priceless.
Jan '11
Re: Father Knows Best
Excuse me while I go autoclave my brain (again)
Mar '11
Re: Father Knows Best
My apologies. It can, and does, get better than "Realpolitik". The closer to this column is the cherry on this sundae of stupidity: "I cannot think of a better example of academic freedom being put to good use, if only on a one-time basis." The fact that he can't conceive of a better example of academic freedom either speaks to his lack of imagination or the fact that there are so few boundaries of respectability left to cross.
Re: Father Knows Best
Priceless excerpt:
Earlier this quarter, my daughter told me, the class discussed living in a “sex-negative” society that generally frowns on expressions of sexuality, versus a “sex-positive” one that embraces it. If nothing else, she said, this controversy demonstrated how sex-negative our society remains, even with all the changes of the past half-century.
Yes, that's modern America, scowling down Puritan fury on any expression of sexuality. Until every father is delighted that his daughter is having a battery-assisted Dionysian revelry in class at his expense, we'll be a sex-negative society.
Actually, by then the standards will have shifted again; any sort of taboo will be proof we're still sex-neg. No, amend that; some taboos will be in place, and students will have be taught to navigate these difficult new situations. "Baa means no," for example.
Jul '10
Re: Father Knows Best
The normalization of perversion in our culture is not a sign of health or long-term stability.
Jun '10
Re: Father Knows Best
"Baa means no," for example.
You have done a terrible thing to Daisy....
May '10
Re: Father Knows Best
jerry crimmins: My apologies. It can, and does, get better than "Realpolitik". The closer to this column is the cherry on this sundae of stupidity: "I cannot think of a better example of academic freedom being put to good use, if only on a one-time basis." The fact that he can't conceive of a better example of academic freedom either speaks to his lack of imagination or the fact that there are so few boundaries of respectability left to cross.
· Apr 25 at 12:22pm
Great point. And telling a lefty that he lacks imagination really cuts to the quick. But they exhibit this over and over -- from their religious certainty about global warming to their rigid skepticism of SDI to their inability to go 1 or 2 steps beyond the obvious "fix" (so let's outlaw high speed police pursuits... then what's going to happen)... it indicates a quality of thinking that runs directly counter to their preening self-conceptions.
They lack poetry, too, but that's getting off topic.
Re: Father Knows Best
We shouldn't be surprised there is actual sex in a class about sex education?
I think I'll skip the symposium on infectious diseases.
And the classes you need to be a mortician are a killer!
(Rim shot - I'm here all day, folks!).
May '10
Re: Father Knows Best
I've heard the "sex positive vs. sex negative" meme before. It relies on a complete failure to distinguish between two radically different meanings of shame.
There's the kind that makes us hide what we're ashamed of.
Then there's the kind that makes us veil what is particularly intimate and personal. John Paul II has a beautiful analysis of these two in his great work of sexual ethics, Love and Responsibility.
There's nothing "positive" about the public exhibition of what ought to remain private.
Jun '10
Re: Father Knows Best
In an earlier post, I linked to Joseph Epstein's article in the Weekly Standard. Here again.
The whole thing is wonderful, but this paragraph on what academic freedom really means is priceless:
"Academic freedom . . . works two ways. While it protects university teachers from outside forces that would inhibit them, it also sets a standard of conduct on what doesn’t deserve to be protected by academic freedom. In 'The Demand of the Academic Profession for Academic Freedom,' Edward Shils wrote about this subject with great force and subtlety. Along with much else, Shils notes that academic freedom might be rightly abrogated 'from a genuine conviction that [a scholar’s or scientist’s] research is unacceptable according to strictly intellectual standards,' and that 'academic freedom is primarily the freedom to do serious academic things without obstructions imposed with other intentions in mind.' Academic freedom, as Shils also notes, is a specialized right that is 'hedged about by obligations and conditions.' Some of these have to do with academic behavior on the job, for not alone in dreams but in freedom begins responsibility."
Re: Father Knows Best
I second tabula rasa for the reference to Professor Epstein's piece on Northwestern.
Jul '10
Re: Father Knows Best
Wait until they study the PRC's Cultural Revolution at Northwestern. And then, if anyone is left, on to the Khmer Rouge.
Of course, when they get around to Noah's Flood the water bills alone will break the University before the depopulation issue overwhelms the recruiters.
As a reminder of why we should not let our institutions of higher learning operate without adult oversight and supervision, I once again offer the horrible warning of the Peace Riots at Miskatonic University.
Sep '10
Re: Father Knows Best
Was the "machinery" used either solar or wind powered? Probably not. Even Lefties know that when you have a job that really needs to get done, some things are more important than climate change.
Jun '10
Re: Father Knows Best
When you hear someone use the term "triple-play" in ordinary conversation, you can be sure you are about to be sold a bill of goods.