Thursday, October 06, 2011

What Parts Were Taken Out Of Context?

Saw a post on Facebook about the controversy over the "Introduction to Labor Studies"/"Labor, Politics, and Society" course being taught jointly at UMKC/UMSL that one or more students exposed via Breitbart's "Big Government" site.

The discussion on facebook was about the Faculty Council revising it's policies on classroom recordings to prohibit sharing written or recorded material from a class outside the classroom.   Something to do with privacy and the inhibition of free discussion.

One has to wonder what these people thought of Julian Assaunge's Wikileaks, at least while it's torrent was aimed at the Bush Administration.  But one probably does not have to wonder much.

At any rate, I saw in the article that“officials on both campuses agreed they distorted the educators’ views”.   Which I'm sure were completely unbiased assessments from people who support "_______ studies" classes.

The comments talked about the clips being edited and that the one lady's outfit changed several times in one video.  And that they were pulled from YouTube due to "terms of use" violations.  On the other hand, none of them said how any of this was relevant to the points being made about the videos.  If you haven't seen them, it's all "he said/she said".  And most people won't watch the videos.

I say watch the videos yourself and see if you think you can discern the instructors' intent, and whether or not you're good with using state money to pay for the promulgation of this Alinskian claptrap.  Also, remember that this kind of technology automatically flips back and forth between the cameras, on opposite sides of the state, depending on who is speaking.  That's not all "edits" (not that there aren't edits), that's the way this stuff works.

2 comments:

Severian said...

Yup.

That's one of the many, many deeply creepy things about academic leftists (I repeat myself, I know) -- this is who they really are, and this is really what they believe.

I had to read a fair amount of labor history for a college course, and trust me, it's 100% pro-union, pro-socialist propaganda. "The workers" are never wrong (except when they get some very mild chiding for not being socialist enough); "management" is never, ever right. Indeed, it's unclear whether anyone writing labor history has any idea what "management" is for, other than to serve as mustache-twirling foils to the heroes of the labor movement. You know how GM is just a union health plan that occasionally builds shitty, shitty cars? According to "labor history," that's a good thing (well, except for the "occasionally having to build a car" part).

So why don't they ever say that in public? It's a defensible position -- it must be, given that labor historians publish books. And just for giggles, I threw the names of some of the folks in those videos through the ol' Google Machine. They sure do seem to produce a lot of scholarship saying pretty much the exact same things they say in those videos.

So if this is a standard, or at least acceptable, academic interpretation of labor history, why the coverup? The academy is famously devoted to following the facts to wherever they lead....

[....bwaahahahahahahahaha!!! God, I couldn't type that with a straight face!!! Give me a minute for my sides to stop hurting]

...anyway, they sure do proclaim that to be the case, loudly and a great length. So why not just say, "yeah, that's what the available facts have led me to conclude. Here are the relevant data, see for yourself"? Why pretend you didn't say what in fact you clearly DID say, and what you clearly DO believe?

It's downright creepy. And remember: you're paying for it, every dime.

Jason in SD said...

Good Lord, that's some scary stuff.