Almost a month ago, I noted a bizzare post at the National Review Online's higher education blog laying blame for the Virginia Tech killings at the feet of the postmodern English department. Apparently, Foucault made him do it, because if you question conventional ways of thinking about truth and morality, people will naturally be driven to murderous rampages, which, as we all know, is why the Modern Language Association shut its doors 30 years ago. It simply couldn't manage the attrition.
My only mistake was in assuming this was just an example of ill-conceived, one-time riffing off the top of the new cycle. Apparently not. The discussion is still going strong over there, with this post approvingly quoting a recent column from--seriously, you can't make this up--Phyllis Schlafly, where she notes that while she has no idea what Cho actually studied, he "could have" read selections from various--horrors!--feminist courses.
Or, notes Schlafly, he could have taken a senior seminar titled "The Self-Justifying Criminal in Literature." Right! By all means, let's purge Macbeth from our institutions of higher learning, because if we keep teaching Shakespeare to these kids...oh, wait a minute....(John Miller gets this right).
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