Earlier today, I wrote about an op-ed from over the weekend in the Strib. Reading it, I assumed that the piece – by “Hinda Mandell”, formerly of Edina – was incredibly bad, overly over-the-top, broad-to-the-point-of-unfunny, stereotype-clogged parody.
Mandell is, in fact, a real person, with a twitter feed of her own; Ms. Mandell is apparently a real mid-level “communications” academic whose brief seems, ironicaly, to include parsing communication so finely for the wispiest hint of perceived victimization that “communication” of any type will eventually be rendered impossible. The article was apparently on the level. Not to mention the first thing I’ve ever read that was actually too dumb to be on Minnesota Progressive Project.
Ryan Rhodes figured it out before me – and after almost ten years of blogging, he’s just as worth reading as he ever was, by the way. He commemorated Ms. Mandell’s raving with the gifts of art…
…and fisk.
Who says there’s a higher education bubble? Note to aspiring communication students: Avoid the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, lest you come out of college much, much, MUCH dumber than when you went in.
Anyway – I guess there are a couple of lessons from this whole thing:
- We have too many academics.
- The higher ed bubble is about to explode. And when it does,and if (heaven forfend) Hinda Mandell has to find another gig, wouldn’t it be ironic if she had to get a job as a barrista?
I apologize for the error.
I’m off to tell my farmer friends to stop referring to “Hard Red Spring Wheat“, before Hinda Mandell claims they’re bigoted against Native Americans.
From the editorial:
But the jungle and its people are dark.
Therefore, to rid SITD of all hints of racism, I suggest that Mitch change his template from black typeface on a white background to alternating lines of black typeface on a black background and white typeface on a white background.
Only then will his communications be clear.
Honestly, I originally thought it was a terrible work of parody/satire, too. It was the really odd segue about the bunkmate high five anecdote that tipped me off that she was legitimate. The Google search just confirmed it. What the hell was the Strib thinking running this? Does Hinda have a friend working there or something? It’s not as if newspapers like the Strib really need this kind of nonsense to hasten their trip down the drain.
There are Hinda Mandells all over the place, particularly in Academia, an especially fertile ground for authoritarian repression disguised as progressivism. Read “The Human Stain” by Phillip Roth for a compelling tale that begins with an example of Mandellism. A distinguished college dean is driven from his post by charges of racism after he refers to two students who enrolled but never attended his classes as “spooks,” meaning ghosts, unseen, etc. Turns out the absentee scholars were black, hence the lynch mob (pardon the allusion, but it fits.) But the best part of the novel comes later. You should read it.
But the jungle and its people are dark.
Dark. Like the night is dark. Like….oh, crap, I think I’m in trouble. Where can I buy some racism-abatement credits?
True, Hinda Mandells abound. But, this one has a Twitter account and tweeted a link to her article, so I went with the preponderance of evidence in this case.
In some East Asian cultures white is the color of death. The Cantonese term “gweilo” describes caucasians in a derogatory sense as “ghost people”. The Hawaiian term “ha’ole”, used to decribe people of European descent, means ‘soulless”.
Let me cut to the chase. Where’s my free money for being white?
Hey, Night Writer, Walter Williams said to give you this. It ought to help. 🙂
The Cantonese term “gweilo” describes caucasians in a derogatory sense as “ghost people”.
Many of the world’s languages have different words for “human” depending on how geographically and ethnically close to the speaker the subject is.
It’s as if the “Minnesotan” language called Minnesotans “human”, people from Iowa/WI/theDakotas “Gorillas”, Missouri/Montana/Nebraska/Illinois “Chimpanzees”, Indiana/Idaho/Arkansas “Lemurs”, and everyone beyond that “Dogs”.
I hereby await an apology and reparations from most of the speaking world.
Get on that, Ms. Mandell.
Hold up, we may be taken for an imposter: http://www.rit.edu/cla/communication/faculty.php?user=hbmgpt
http://www.rit.edu/cla/communication/journalism.php
Something fishy and viral here.
Sorry, the suspicious shark within me has taken control. The combination of how entirely stupid that article was, alongside an RIT Web page design that seems straight out of 2001, and a social media “expert” in the person of Mandell who has a grand total of 209 followers, just keeps stretching my believability meter to the absolute breaking point.
Mitch, your blog title, Shot in the Dark,” is clearly a wink and a nod to your clear intention to shoot dark people. I mean, it’s obvious.