Warning: video contains repeated abusive and foul language
It could happen to any of us; one minute you’re peacefully watching a parade with your five-year-old twins, and the next minute you’ve joined a group of wanna-be Black militants to block the road, stop that parade, and instigate a physical confrontation with the police.
Then, in another entirely separate minute, you’re caught setting yourself up as the white momma in charge of another Black protest, calling for “muscle” to attack a student photographer who has the temerity to photograph the super-secret private meeting that you’re holding in the middle of a University quad.
Luckily for Melissa Click, she’s on what our media-industrial complex considers to be the right side of history. As a consequence, despite having been caught in two separate and distinct incidents of public idiocy, she’s still very comfortably ensconced in her assistant professor’s job, still being considered for tenure, and still able to afford a PR/reputation management firm to shine-up her image. She’s even been given the courtesy of a public platform to defend her “spontaneous” behavior and to stake out the claim that her attempt to intimidate a student photographer with Black “muscle” was “a request for more experienced and taller members from the camp to come to my aid.”
No shit.
Still, I want to reprint her final paragraph in its entirely. Forget for a moment that her “academic scholarship” mostly consists of, and I quote directly from her own homepage at MU, “…50 Shades of Grey readers, the impact of social media in fans’ relationship with Lady Gaga, masculinity and male fans, messages about class and food in reality television programming, and messages about work in children’s television programs.” Forget that she revealed herself in the videos to be a natural-born bully, rabble-rouser, and thug. Just read what she wants you to read:
I truly believe that my 12 years of service and commitment to MU ought not to be judged by one hectic moment in which I acted in exasperation. Evidence of my character can be found in the teaching awards I have won, in the service I have engaged in, and in the quality and outcomes of my scholarship. I love working at MU, and while many people are concerned about the future of MU, I am not. Our university has a bright and promising future, and I want to be a part of it.
In other words, she’d like you to give her a second chance.
She’d like you to give her the second chance that was denied James Watson*, who was hounded into poverty. She’d like that second chance that nobody wanted to give Tim Hunt, another Nobel winner who was run out of his home country for making a joke during a speech. She wants the second chance that Justine Sacco made for herself, only to have the Washington Fucking Post punish her for not curling up and dying.
Perhaps Ms. Click would like the second chance that is no longer available to famous atheist and freethinker Richard Dawkins, who was demonized over a single fucking reTweet, directly leading to the man having a stroke?
I have a feeling that, indeed, Melissa Click is going to get her second chance. I think she’ll be granted tenure so she can continue to study Lady Gaga videos for the rest of her life at taxpayer expense. I think she’ll be named to panels and boards and committees. I think she’ll end up having a very happy and successful life. But we should ask ourselves: Why does Melissa Click think she deserves a second chance more than a couple of Nobel Prize winners? And if she gets that second chance, what does that say about what we truly value in our fellow humans?
* that’s James Watson, the man who basically discovered DNA, not James Watson, the dog trainer who currently lives in my ex-girlfriend’s house and sponges off her.
Jack I just wanted you to know my wife is a fan of your work. That worries me. 🙂
It doesn’t worry me, unless she outweighs me!
She’s a nobody. What happens in one little microcosm of the academic world is about as interesting as watching Entertainment Tonight and complaining how bad actors keep getting parts.
This isn’t new - “scandal” ruining people has been happening for most of living history, though it used to result in burning and hanging or prison a lot more than it does now. Less than 100 years ago in the UK you’d be ostracized as a woman for going to lunch with someone other than your husband, and the restaurant itself becoming known as a “house of ill repute”, so I think it’s fair to say the modern world is making better choices now.
Even in 2007 social media wasn’t where it is today (the iphone just came out then, after all), so our daily lives weren’t under quite the microscope they are now. I’m not sure I want to live in a world where one bad act or decision that’s really more about hot air than effect can ruin a life, personally.
This generations children will grow up in a world where they don’t get a fresh start after high school - their actions will be forever enshrined for future employers, partners, and descendants to examine in detail. I was a bit of a dick in high school. I treated many people poorly, and I had some very shortsighted politics that were mostly about peer pressure than anything else. That time is gone for me and doesn’t reflect any of my beliefs or actions today. Imagine if I could not escape them.
Ms Click isn’t in high school, but she’s in academia. Academia has throughout history lived in its own little bubble. I personally think the best option in this case is the easiest one - just ignore her already.
” I personally think the best option in this case is the easiest one – just ignore her already.”
If she was a tv/movie actor, musician or some other form of “celebrity”, or even a student, I would agree 100%. Unfortunately she, and countless others like her, are responsible for the education of future generations. Makes me wonder just what this generation might be learning. I know that college was originally for the acquisition of knowledge, and not training for future employment, but these days a college education is for the most case the equivalent of a HS diploma from 40 years ago in the job market. I would attribute that to the “dumbing down” of the curriculum. No matter the field of study, including technical fields, medical, etc, students have to take some of these courses. If I plan to study mechanical engineering, why do I need a credit course in “The history of oppression of one legged dwarf lesbians in rural America”. Especially as taught by a foaming at the mouth SJW?
Channeling your internal Michael Savage.
The most powerful man in radio!
Kids and ” foamers ” , whatta ya gonna do ? .
This woman is both , another whack job .
-Nate
She brings back bad memories of the Women’s Studies major whose family lived above mine in University housing during grad school. That was my first encounter with academia’s political branch.
I gotta say, I’m sympathetic to James Watson on multiple fronts, and what happened to him was ridiculous, and if he wants to sell his medal, good for him, but you do the story no service by describing him as “hounded into poverty,” when one of his hopes for the Nobel medal auction windfall was “buy a Hockney painting.”
Again, I’m sure Hockneys are very nice, but anyone in a position to purchase one can’t really be described as impoverished.
My understanding is that he sold the medal because he was flat broke. He donated some of the money to charity and kept the rest for himself. Presumably he went shopping for a painting because he wanted to have something nice as a result of the sale.
We have a reader at TTAC who’s part of Ms. Click’s demographic: hard leftist academic with a tax-supported sinecure. Immature, belligerent, convinced of his own intellectual and moral superiority and not at all ashamed to insist that he is your better.
This is to whom we’ve entrusted our young minds. The Gramscians have completed their long march and now control most of American institutional life, our schools, our government, and now even a lot of companies. Try to discuss actual history with someone who has been indoctrinated by them and at best you’ll get a blank face and more typically something like, “well, that’s your opinion”. About your and my racism, sexism, Islamophobia, etc. they are certain but black letter history, if it goes against their preferred narrative, is “just your opinion”.
She is the kind of womyn who makes you think that maybe the Khmer Rouge policy of killing anyone with glasses was not so insane.
Sir, the singular of
womyn
is
womon
Please don’t make that mistake again.
“Get out of the road, Mr. Fieri is trying to get to flavor town”
over/under on # of cats?
And she’s fired!
http://news.yahoo.com/univ-missouri-fires-instructor-student-run-ins-201056246.html
Hit the road, bee-otch!
Messes with the narrative a bit. 🙂
Regardless, I still think this current culture of blowing up every little act by irrelevant people into a national discussion is basically the evolution of the reality “entertainment tonight” culture into everyday life, and the media is complicit.
Tilting at windmills, indeed.