Quote of the Month

"Government exists to protect us from each other. We can't afford the government it would take to protect us from ourselves."

--Ronald Reagan

Potato(e) Boy Learns Family Values

Five years ago Dan Quayle once again became the laughingstock of the liberal media when, misreading from a cue card, he mistakenly told a sixth-grader at a Trenton, N. J. school that the correct way to spell potato was p-o-t-a-t-o-e. Quayle's gaffe was caught on camera and led him to become the butt of jokes for weeks. The ridicule came on the heals of earlier scorn directed Quayle's way for his vocal support of "family values," such as when he caught hell for deriding Murphy Brown for having an out-of-wedlock baby.

Well, the sixth-grader who caught Quayle's spelling error (and received his 15 minutes of national fame) is already seventeen years old. Willliam Figueroa dropped out of school, got a girl pregnant, and now makes $6.50 an hour working as a greeter for a car dealer. Maybe he learned to spell, but it's a shame he didn't listen to Quayle about the importance of staying in school and getting married. Nevertheless, it's hard to blame Figueroa for not heeding Quayle's wise message -- the nation's cultural leaders were celebrating Figueroa and calling Quayle a fool.

Are You Listening, UDs, CRs, & SG Members?

"I have nothing against ambition, but there is something wrong with . . . students who have their lives planned out at age 20. This is especially true if those plans include law school and politics. It is one thing to try and make a Promethean bargain for genius and knowledge at that age, and quite another to want power over others. To have an urge for power before one has had a chance to acquire wisdom - that is a character flaw, as Bill and Hillary Clinton have proven rather decisively."

- columnist Paul Mulshine

Silent Night in Hanover

It's only September, but as glee clubs around the nation start planning for their Christmas concerts, yet another bizarre anecdote from secular academia is here to warm the season with mirth. Last year at ever-PC Dartmouth College, the Dartmouth Glee Club, traditionally called upon to sing at the campus tree-lighting ceremony, was informed by the school's Office of Public Affairs that it should refrain from performing religious carols at the event. The reason? According to one observer, administrators felt that a "Christmas concert which included Christian songs might make non-Christians uncomfortable." The glee club refused the college's condition and was replaced. Of course, the most sensitive among us might wonder whether Dartmouth went far enough: after all, it's wasn't very environmentally sensitive to sacrifice that tree, now was it? And even if the tree used was one already planted on campus, think of how much electricity was wasted on all those lights, which were probably assembled in some human-rights-violating country with exploited labor anyway.

From the "Can't We All Just Get Along" Department

Last year when Lawrence Levine published The Opening of the American Mind, some members of the academic left hoped the book would be the definitive retort to Alan Bloom's similarly-titled lamentation from a decade ago. Levine wasn't bashful in issuing his major claim, namely that the phenomenon conservatives label political correctness has in truth produced "a flowering of ideas and scholarly innovation unmatched in our history." But a few months ago when radio host Tom Reed asked Levine to debate culturally conservative heavyweight John Ellis, Levine refused, wanting instead to "debate" a guy who actually wrote a gushing blurb for his book. A few months later, when Levine received the honor of being asked to participate in a keynote panel hosted by the American Association of Universities and Colleges, he got cold feet again. The panel would have placed Levine alongside two outspoken opponents of his views. Levine chickened out and the debate had to be canceled.

Is this a trend among campus collectivists? One conservative liberal arts professor at UT complains that several years ago when debates were set up between him and leftist faculty members on multiculturalism and affirmative action, the same thing would often happen - the PC Patrol would go AWOL. This leads us to wonder: is Dana Cloud the only leftist left on campus with any spine? An open challenge from the editors of Contumacy to the campus left other than Dana: pick a suitable topic to debate with us and then have the guts to show up. If you don't back out, we'll treat you to lunch at the Four Seasons. (As an alternative, we'll take you to Mother's if you're the tree-hugging, vegetarian type).

A Question for Dana

The next time you see the University International Socialists (UIS) out on the West Mall, try this one on them: Who makes more money - an American high school dropout flipping burgers at McDonald's, or the average Cuban worker? Answer: the dropout, by a long shot. As a matter of fact, economist Steven Plout noted that official data from the Cuban government shows los cubanos earn 203 pesos, which is the equivalent of around $140, per year. In other words, an unskilled working stiff in the U.S. can make more money in a week at McDonald's than the average worker in the Commie tropical paradise makes in twelve long months. The only folks in this country who probably make less than the Cubans are those grungy, nature-boy types we see peddling the UIS newspaper.

The Perfect Cereal for the Perfect Student Group

The Young Conservatives of Texas at UT, whose political mission in recent years has followed the lead of rightist luminaries such as Jesse Helms, Bob Dornan, Alan Keyes, and Patrick Buchanan, have never earned the admiration of the campus political establishment. Former UT president and Yankee liberal Robert Berdahl even tagged them the "young crazy Texans" a few years back. Given the adverse atmosphere, this editor noticed the appearance on supermarket shelves of an item that would no doubt widely be deemed appropriate as the official breakfast product for the group - Kellogg's "Just Right Fruit & Nut Cereal," found in your local HEB. The name seems to fit. No one questions YCT's right-wing stance, and they're often called "nuts," though calling them "fruits" make get you a black eye. The description on the boxtop seems to work, too - "delicious crispy flakes . . ."

While the ridicule in the paragraph above is meant totally in jest, Contumacy is dead certain that if Kellogg's ever puts out a cereal called "Just Wrong," the University Democrats should already have dibs on the product.