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Brandeis remembers its motto.
…since we’re doing the debate metaphor, I thought I’d finish with my “rebuttal” speech. But since Jehuda ended up “punting” (though not surprisingly and unlike Storey, I applaud him for it), I figure there’s no reason to go through some big point by point refutation. I’ll just make three final statements:
Here we go again. Alex Rodriguez admits to substance abuse back in 2003, and the Cadre of Crusading Baby Boomer Moralist Sportswriters are again denouncing the current crop of MLB players (and the records they hold) as “tainted.” They are crying to the Baseball Heavens,
“Oh Mercy, Lawd! Take us back! Take us back to a time when baseball was played by the honorable and when records made sense! A time of purity! A time of nobility! We can’t stand the awful sight of these players who have no respect for basic rules and decency! Deliver us, Lawd!”
Get your day-glo vests and buckshot ready, it’s Fat Cat Season.
Average Americans, armed with incendiary e-mails and blog commentaries are actually beginning to affect Business As Usual. An op-ed from yesterday’s NYT documents the new populist fervor.
In debate, we have speeches at the close of the round called “rebuttals”. This terminology, despite its use in both high school and college, is something of a misnomer. To rebut something is to disagree, to counter-argue. The rebuttal speeches are actually the middle speeches, where everything being said is a refutation of an earlier argument and few to no new arguments are made. I think the phraseology evolved from the fact that new arguments are disallowed in “rebuttals”, but they should really be called “summations” or “closing arguments”.
Run away! Run away!!
Before Storey and I continue our pleasant little war, it appears Brandeis has already ended the debate, while pretending the sides weren’t the right ones to begin with. From Jehuda Reinharz to the Brandeis community today:
You're using me to justify what?!
I must admit I hadn’t expected a reply of any kind from a fellow Mepper, though I considered the possibility that some Brandeis alumns might disagree (though, as Storey points out, the vast majority of Brandeis alumni are as annoyed about this as I am)–but I must say I was pretty flabbergasted at Storey’s take on my post about the closing of the Rose Museum.
Einstein, a key figure in Brandeis’ founding, would have approved of this move.
Consider this my spirited rebuttal to Greg’s post from Monday.
Brandeis University e-mailed its alumni on Monday, January 26th to inform them of the decision to close the Rose Art Museum. This immediately struck me as a brilliant and courageous move to cut dead weight at an institution reeling from faith in the stock market and the fallout of the Bernie Madoff fiasco. Over the course of the next week, I learned that I was pretty much the only almunus in university history who felt that way (though surely there must be some alumni on the unanimous Board, no?) and that everyone was in a fervor rarely found among Brandeisians not discussing Israeli-Palestinian politics. What happened?
This Superbowl Sunday, as you’re huddling into your inflatable beer chairs with your Tostitos NachoMan helmet strapped firmly to your attentive brain cans, know this:
You are about to spend five to six hours watching an event in which you will see approximately twelve minutes of actual sport.
The rest of the time you will be a semi-conscious participant in the real event of the day. For, this day, America’s largest and most prestigious corporate advertisers will line up and attempt to sell you useless shit that you don’t need in a mind-bogglingly extravagant cavalcade of shilling.
Sorry, no culture here. Move along.
The more I think about Brandeis’s new scheme, the angrier I get. So I’ve crossposted this entry from my personal website here. Nothing particularly funny about this situation, but I felt this needed to be said:
Warning–rant ahead.
No I’m not suggesting we ban Mariah Carey’s attempt at movie making. Nor do I mean the harmless, though annoying, glitter graphics people add to their Myspace and Friendster pages. Finally, I’m not suggesting we waste our valuable legislative time banning Paris Hilton’s addition to the already overly saturated perfume industry. I’m making a simple request. Ban that stupid, little bitty, sparkly crap that they attach to greeting cards. All other forms of fairy dust are fine by me. After all, we Meppers hate the War on Drugs.
