On Aliens Near and Far
October 2, 2010
THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:
The lore of alien visitation and the flying saucers is one of my hobbies. It occurs to me that the aliens might already be wise to Mrs. Othman. In the UFO lore, the “contactees” are never people of office or elevated station; they’re always backwoods people, dirt farmers, highway hamburger stand owners, slightly maladjusted teenagers and the like. The one exception that comes to mind is ex-President Jimmy Carter, who reported a close encounter, but without “contact.” Of course, Carter was also the only serving president to be the victim of a rabbit attack. It is difficult to interpret these things with certainty. If I were an alien visiting the earth in the late 1970s, I would probably have knocked on Billy Carter’s door. I have the intuition that Billy was a better greeter than his brother Jimmy. Considering his ears, Ross Perot probably was an alien. Obama is an alien of a different kind. Once or twice in a faculty meeting (a college teacher, I work in the most ferociously, homogeneously left-liberal institution of them all), I have gotten the distinct impression that I am an alien.
Laura writes:
Mr. Bertonneau is an authority on extra-terrestrial life as co-author of the excellent book The Truth is Out There: Christian Faith and the Classics of TV Science Fiction. He has perceptively noted the underlying presumption in the cited article about Mrs. Othman. Not only is the possibility of communication with anyone in officialdom extremely remote, but there is evidence that aliens have already arrived. They may have even penetrated the highest levels of society. Who knows? Mrs. Othman may be trying to communicate with her own. I think we should stop this woman before it’s too late.
— Comments —
Andrew Kurtis writes:
Prof. Bertonneau wrote:
“Once or twice in a faculty meeting (as a college teacher, I work in the most ferociously, homogeneously left-liberal institution of them all), I have gotten the distinct impression that I am an alien.
Serious question for him: How does he put up with it? From what I’ve heard and read about American colleges and universities over the years, it sounds like he would not only be the “House Conservative” to be tolerated, but a pariah to be avoided, or even publicly ridiculed.
Mr. Bertonneau responds:
Andrew Kurtis asks a question about what it is like for a person of conservative convictions to work in the pronounced left-liberal environment of a college or university. The answer is that the experience varies in flavor depending on the institution. With a few known exceptions (Hillsdale and some faith-based colleges), all institutions of higher education are decidedly left liberal in their political bias. The differences stem from people. Some left liberals keep their politics in quarters, so to speak, which is to say that they are civilized human beings; some left liberals are vehement and for them politics is not only all-consuming but also a litmus for judging the goodness or evil of other people. When I taught English at Central Michigan University in the 1990s, both the department and the university as a whole were dominated by an effective nucleus of vehement left liberals, who thought of themselves as an actual political and cultural vanguard. (If I could show Mr. Kurtis a group photograph of the people in question, he would laugh, and ask incredulously: “Those utterly frumpy, thoroughly middle-class, Volvo-driving people – they thought of themselves as a political and cultural vanguard?” The answer would be, yep, they did, and they did so even though they were stuck in the cow pastures in the middle of the Michiganian “mitten.”)
Making a long story short, the personnel committee fired me for teaching grammar to freshman (believe it or not), a reactionary gesture on my part that violated the right of students to their own language and dialect (blah blah blah), and that consigned me, in the view of the outraged, to some analogy of “capitalist running dog” or “wrecker” or “enemy of socialism.” (With adjustments, it was not unlike an episode from Solzhenitsyn: Grammar is tantamount to class oppression; thus grammar teachers are oppressors.) Oddly, the people who treated me in so bigoted a manner regularly claimed in public, that, one can’t teach college students to write; and yet they were all accepting state salaries largely to teach college students to write. I swiftly published Declining Standards at Michigan Public Universities, still accessible on the Internet, and had the pleasure of seeing then Governor John Engler wave it admonishingly at a bunch of indignant professors at a gubernatorial press conference.
In my current situation, I have had the pleasure of working with people who, while more or less predictable in their politics, are refreshingly civilized. I count many friends in my department. The people in charge are entirely ethical.
Occasionally, sitting with colleagues at lunch, it falls to me to grit my teeth while someone says something baseless and stereotyped about “conservatives” or “Palin supporters” or the “Tea Party.” I have acquired the habit of responding to these statements calmly but firmly, making the point that, as homogeneous as it is, some small, real diversity does exist on college faculties that dissents from such positions and that I am an instance of it. It helps to be an active scholar with a good publication record, which I am and which I have; to receive good student evaluations, which I do; and to take on assignments cheerfully, which is my habit. There are a few other conservatives where I teach. Mainly they keep their politics to themselves while at work, which I view as a good policy for everyone.
I should add that once, at the close of the 1990s, I had the most bitter employment experience of my life. This experience involved a then newish scholarly organization whose announced purpose was opposition to the wave of postmodern nonsense in the humanities and whose establishers were, for the most part, self-identifying conservatives. A friend who took my side in the debacle (quite an ugly debacle it was) characterized them as “prigs.” My characterizations of them are not publishable.
All of which has taught me to take people one at a time and institutions one at a time. This tentativeness seems to me to be part of the conservative-traditional ethos that I espouse and by whose tenets I try to live.
Mr. Kurtz writes:
I just want to thank Mr. Bertonneau for his interesting and thoughtful response. I’m glad to hear that he is treated with some respect at his current college (of which I happen to be an alumnus). His experience at Central Michigan University really is frightening, and the real victims there were his students. You can’t teach grammar to freshman because it’s a form of class oppression? Unbelievable!
