The Decline and Fall of American Scholarship: Prologue

So over the weekend I made an acquisition which now sits on my desk accusingly. "Okay, dumbass," it says, "you asked for this. Now what are you going to do?" I refer, of course, to this lump of...well, literature, I guess, if you insist on being generous:

"Sure, anonymous donor!" I said a week ago, in a fit of bravado. "I'd love to fisk that sucker! Send it over!" And you know what? That sorry so-and-so did what I asked. With friends like this, who needs enemies...at home?

I haven't been able to open it yet. For one thing, I realized that a lot of the time, I'll be reading it in public, and I can't possibly be seen with it. My god, the embarrassment. The first order of business, then, is to disguise it as a much less embarrassing tome.

Much better.

Tune in next time, when I try to see past the bleeding eyeballs to type a response to the Introduction. I hereby guarantee two lies in the first two pages. Excelsior!

--Auguste

Comments

[eRobin]

My god. Be strong, man. I wouldn't go through what you're about to endure for all the tea in China.

[ilyka]

Dinesh? Here, here's an excerpt.

Whoops! That's not an excerpt. That's just one of my old Cotillion pals.

But I'll bet you whatever an enema kit retails for these days that it's essentially indistinguishable from a Dinesh excerpt.

[JP Stormcrow]

For those about to mock. We Salute You!

[tas]

NPR aired an "essay" -- if you can call it that -- written and read by the author on the air. The year is young, but I think we already have a winner for the dumbest thing aired on NPR all year. And I know NPR stirves to have some balance, but they really should administer IQ tests to potential contributors so morons like D'Souza stay in the doghouse.