TOM MAGUIRE TO MATT BAI: Have You No Sense Of History, Sir, At Long Last?

As befits our credentialed-but-not-educated class, Bai condescends even while getting the famous McCarthy/Joseph Welch confrontation wrong.

SARAH PALIN snares Andrew Cohen. As I’ve said before, her great gift — or is it a curse? — is her ability to bring out the ignorance, the dishonesty, and the sheer meanness of the credentialed-but-not-educated gentry class in full Technicolor glory.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

I was amused to hear on one of the NPR talking head shows this morning the indignant comment that the right’s political rhetoric was “beyond the pale”, when terms like “blood libel” were used. Not amused enough to pay any attention to who was beclowning himself, but amused enough to mention to a few folks that NPR was obviously anti Semitic, because it was not sensitive to the Jewish ghetto meaning of ”the Pale”.

Maybe he meant the Irish one, or the Catholic one. But that just makes it more racist, in a different way, I’m sure. Or would, if Sarah Palin said it.

BERKELEY CHANCELLOR TIES LOUGHNER TO IMMIGRATION REFORM:

There are two possible explanations:

1. Birgeneau believes there is evidence that Jared Loughner was somehow connected to anti-immigration activism. If so, Birgeneau simply hasn’t been following the news about which he has used the authority of his office to opine, or has been on the inside of a bubble that keeps out the plain facts of the shooting.

2. Birgeneau has seen the news and knows there is no connection, but believes Jared Loughner was incited to violence by a vague ethos of hatred that permeates Arizona. If so, that tells us more about Birgeneau’s prejudices and irrationality than Arizonans’.

The Loughner affair has certainly served to reveal the prejudices, and lack of concern for facts or logic, that seem to animate much of our credentialed-but-not-educated class.

EMBARRASSING WIDENER:

A word needs to be said about the mocking laughter that instantly erupted from the law students in the audience. Presumably, that sound meant we are smart and you are dumb. Where did they learn to treat a guest at their law school — Widener Law School — with such disrespect? They hooted O’Donnell down, and she never got a chance to explain her point. What does that say about the climate for debate in law schools? Not only did they feel energized to squelch the guest they politically opposed, but they felt sure of their own understanding of the law.

I’ve been studying law myself since 1978, and I still puzzle over things and try to work my way through problems. If a speaker at my school makes a statement that sounds outlandish to me — me with 32 years of studying law — I may display a puzzled expression or a smile, but I hear the person out and entertain the possibility that he has a point and that even if the point is wrong, I will have learned some new perspective on the ways of being wrong or how another human being’s mind works. I try to create that atmosphere in the classroom.

What is the atmosphere at Widener? Is there no intellectual curiosity? No love of debate? No grasp of how complex constitutional law problems can be?

Well, we can only judge by what we’ve seen. Meanwhile, Cornell lawprof William Jacobson comments: “A literal reading of O’Donnell’s comments reflects that she was correct, but of course, the press and the blogosphere don’t want a literal reading, they want a living, breathing reading which comports with their preconceived notions.”

The Constitution stands for things that are good. The things that we want are good. Therefore, the Constitution stands for what we want. QED. How can those dumb wingnuts not understand this simple logic?

Meanwhile, I agree that the O’Donnell focus is a deliberate distraction. But I also think it’s important to use this opportunity — like the Sarah Palin “1773” brouhaha — to point out that the credentialed gentry class isn’t nearly as smart, and certainly isn’t as well-educated, as it thinks it is. Because, you know, it isn’t.

Perhaps Widener law students can’t be expected to understand constitutional doctrine like Wisconsin or Cornell law professors. But they can be expected to avoid showing their ignorance through ill-mannered displays. One of the underappreciated virtues of good manners is that they help you to avoid making an ass of yourself when you are not as smart as you think you are.

UPDATE: Not so smart: WaPo/AP Caught Revising the O’Donnell Story Without Issuing a Correction. “I ran a document comparison in word between the original text and every paragraph is completely rewritten.”

NOEMIE EMERY: They’re Not Elites, They’re Just Wrong. “There are words to describe this, but ‘bright’ is not one of them. This meritocracy has created an ‘elite’ without merit. In everyone’s eyes but its own.” Our gentry class is more credentialed than educated.

ANN ALTHOUSE ON Coons, O’Donnell, and the Separation of Church and State.

Suffice it to say that it was not stupid for O’Donnell to say “That’s in the First Amendment?” — because it’s not. Coons was presenting a version of what’s in the cases interpreting the text, not the text itself.

The 2 were talking past each other, trying to look good and make the other look bad. It is a disagreement about law between 2 individuals who are not running for judge. It’s not detailed legal analysis. It’s a political debate and this is a political disagreement. An important one, no doubt. But it can’t be resolved by laughing at one person and calling her an idiot, something I find quite repellent.

Bah. O’Donnell is so stupid, she probably thinks the Boston Tea Party took place in 1773. Dumb wingnut.

Plus, from the comments:

I don’t think they were talking past each other so much as O’Donnell was trying to get Coons to speak precisely whereas Coons wanted to speak in more general colloquial terms.

The real problem is the ignorance of the reporters and the people in the audience who couldn’t understand the point O’Donnell was trying to make and so just assumed she was being stupid. The irony being that she was right (and, on this point at least, smarter than them).

Once you understand that to the credentialed-instead-of-educated, the Constitution is a wish-fulfillment device rather than, you know, an authoritative text, it all makes sense. And there’s no real need to know or care about the words in the text, since it means whatever you want it to mean at the moment.

Meanwhile, here’s the video.

DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: Leftist dullards mock Palin for correctly referencing Boston Tea Party.

They’re not educated, they’re just credentialed. And boy, Gwen Ifill looks dumb.

CLARENCE PAGE: WHAT’S SO BAD ABOUT ELITES? The problem we have is that our “elites” — a reader keeps telling me that “gentry” is a better term, and he’s right — aren’t really elite. That is, they’re not actually especially smart or well-educated or competent. They’re just credentialed. That’s not the sort of elitism that commands respect, which is why it’s not getting so much anymore, as people catch on.

BABY YOU CAN DRIVE MY CAR. I think that the ATL commenters are getting a little overwrought about this. It’s not such a bad part-time job for a law student.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Please don’t quote me or my firm by name on this, but that post and the comments are sadly typical for Above the Law and a few similar lawyer-related blogs. The multiple references to the jobs not being worthy of students at law schools “ranked #15” are perfectly in tune with the elitist sense of entitlement expressed throughout the site and pervasive among many law students and young lawyers. I’m a partner at one of the 10 largest firms in the US and many of my fellow partners are both amused and dismayed by both the tone and substance of many of the posts and comments on those sites.

You write frequently about a higher education bubble. Our law schools are great evidence of that as they continue to churn out untalented, over-educated, over-credentialed snobs who really can’t do anything. (Sorry, professor). It’s been quite clear for several years that law students feel that they “don’t do windows” or other tasks that they view as beneath them, which unfortunately includes most aspects of actually, you know, practicing law as a young lawyer. Now that the economy and legal market has imploded, they’re finding out exactly what their “skills” are worth.

And it used to just be Yale Law grads who were that way. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Chad Chandler writes:

Chad Chandler
to pundit

show details 8:49 AM (32 minutes ago)

It’s not just law school, and it’s not that new. My wife graduated with an accounting degree from Birmingham Southern College in 2000. For four years, she was assured by countless professors and administrators that her business degree from such a unique liberal arts school would giver her an advantage over her peers. She and her classmates all believed they’d graduate from school, play around town for a few weeks, and then take on the arduous task of weighing multiple job offers. When they eventually realized that they’d have to beg for jobs — jobs that didn’t start at $50K — they felt betrayed. Nowadays, tuition has gone up and graduates’ prospects have gone down. I can only imagine how disparaged the kids must feel today. I, on the other hand, graduated college with a realistic outlook on life. If there’s one thing Auburn’s business school taught me, as inadvertent and embarrassing as it must be to the administration, is that I’m not special at all. Sitting in a theater-style classroom among 300 peers, you could see your competition all around you. If you missed a class, no one called to see if you were alright. If you did poorly on a test, the professor didn’t ask if you were having trouble at home. To the university, I was nothing more than a recurring check and a social security number. I was entirely replaceable and unappreciated. In that environment, I learned perspective and self-reliance. That frame of mind transferred over to the “real world,” where I worked in post-9/11 DC at a dead-end job as a temp with other recent graduates who couldn’t understand why they were stuck in corporate purgatory. After all, they had college degrees! They were entitled to the good life!

Well, let’s hear it for large, impersonal state universities.