Despair

"But it's not just the threats to individual academics represented by Horowitz et al's lists that should concern people. There is a larger issue here, which is the professional wrestling-ization of American politics and culture that they reflect. By this I mean that today, more than ever before, the mainstream media--and at base, American culture--prefers Jerry Springer and professional wrestling-style confrontation to actual attempts at reconciliation, and America is the poorer for it. More specifically, The Professors, and the kind of political and cultural discourse it represents, are dangerous to the functioning and purpose of the university, and to the larger notion of both free speech and civil debate that have long been cornerstones of American higher education, and through it, culture. . . . "

"However, in the genre of Jerry Springer "scholarship," it matters not at all if accusation have a basis in fact, only that that they're thrown into the public sphere with enough vehemence, and via the right outlets (Fox, talk radio), to "stick." In the larger public sphere this disinterest in either presenting or encountering the most accurate version has been demonstrated in spades with the James Frey-Oprah Winfrey debacle over the pseudo memoir A Million Little Pieces, which continues to sell wildly despite being exposed as a work of fiction."

America's "Most Dangerous" Professors?