Chronicles of Cluelessness
As if there weren't enough to be depressed by . . . .
The rampant cluelessness of academic magazines is really starting to get to me. Check out Bitch.Ph.D's spot-on comments concerning a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article in which the author misapplies the advice of Suze Orman to justify having to go into debt in order to do her research. ("It's an investment in myself!" she triumphantly declares, in a way that somehow reminds me of 35-year-old women trouping off to get Botox injections.)
Some of you might remember that the Chronicle incurred this Wiseass's wrath back in December of 2003, when it unleashed Scott McLemee on the MLA Annual Meeting program and allowed him to conduct a popular-press-style hatchet job on anybody who dared to discuss anything vaguely popular, theory-oriented, or sexualized--without, it should be added, any investigation into the actual merits of the actual arguments being made in the actual papers.
And now my own institution's glossy, relentlessly cheerful graduate student magazine has ranked a theater student's appearance in E! television's Michael Jackson trial re-enactments as the "featured accomplishment" of the quarter. Dear God.
I really miss Lingua Franca.
The rampant cluelessness of academic magazines is really starting to get to me. Check out Bitch.Ph.D's spot-on comments concerning a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article in which the author misapplies the advice of Suze Orman to justify having to go into debt in order to do her research. ("It's an investment in myself!" she triumphantly declares, in a way that somehow reminds me of 35-year-old women trouping off to get Botox injections.)
Some of you might remember that the Chronicle incurred this Wiseass's wrath back in December of 2003, when it unleashed Scott McLemee on the MLA Annual Meeting program and allowed him to conduct a popular-press-style hatchet job on anybody who dared to discuss anything vaguely popular, theory-oriented, or sexualized--without, it should be added, any investigation into the actual merits of the actual arguments being made in the actual papers.
And now my own institution's glossy, relentlessly cheerful graduate student magazine has ranked a theater student's appearance in E! television's Michael Jackson trial re-enactments as the "featured accomplishment" of the quarter. Dear God.
I really miss Lingua Franca.
posted by Ancrene Wiseass | 12:59 AM
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