Bill O'Reilly vs. Bruce Andrews

Nov 02, 2006: Outrage of the Week. Poet/Fordham Poli Sci Professor 'stand up guy' defends against O'Reilly attack for assigning anti-Bush/Iraq book

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Bush+Iraq
• AcademicFreedom
• unAmerican
• U.S.ForeignPolicy
• Explanation/Prescription

[zephyrboys]

O'Reilly completely missed the point of the class and then continued on his misguided course until he looked like a complete fool!!!

[aibrean00]

Bill is so infuriating. He is overwhelmingly disrespectful to his guests and cuts them off when they are successfully refuting his points. This shows how much of a joke FoxNews is to allow this to go on.

[doudoub2005]

youtube is full of fail liberals

[Rorix9]

take your "america is perfect" glasses of Bill...you are not helping us

[can0lliii]

@mongol311 no fordham is in america and i am not of italian descent

[TheDalinkwent]

In Fox news world,anything that questions America or challeges it is "far-left" and any person who doesn't get on there knees for Bush are "Bush-haters", it's funny because he's never once called Beck, Coulter,Rove or any of the other idiots "Obama-haters" or "Far-right loons" despite the constant bashing and lies they say about Obama.

[isitme88]

@LivesUnderABridge And, thirdly, who the fuck cares about the argumentative/linguistic abuses committed by the "left" as *Andrews* probably thinks of it (Trotskyists, etc.)? Such people have absolutely no power in America. It would be an exercise in masturbation.

[isitme88]

@LivesUnderABridge Anyway, depending upon your definition of "leftist" (and considering what BOR's definition almost certainly *is*), it's probably the case that most worthwhile books about political deconstruction are written by "leftist" authors.

Which unabashed "conservative"/"right-wing"/wh­atever scholars would you like to see BA teach? Most right-wing academics are hostile to deconstruction in the first place, since they associate it with the bogey of "postmodernism".

[isitme88]

@LivesUnderABridge No, that misses the point. The whole idea about "balancing" the module's bibliography presumes that the intent of the class is substantive/normative. How does one "balance" texts which intend to give students tools for deconstructing political discourse? With books that argue against deconstructing political discourse because, cyuh, it's all just obviously transparent?

BA *does* "have that in [his] curriculum", if "that" is a methodology for deconstructing leftist discourse.

[LivesUnderABridge]

@isitme88

That would have been easily countered by, "But you don't have that in your curriculum."

I understand that the political ideologies espoused by the books aren't neccessarily relevant, but you have to admit it's a bit coincidental that every single one of them is leftist in nature.

[isitme88]

What I think BA should've done here was to impress upon BOR the nature of the class (i.e. as one intending to teach students about the deconstruction of political discourse), and stress that he would be happy to apply the same methodology to the rhetoric of a "leftie" (Carter, say). Thereby, he could've presented his own inscription of the quasi-foundationalist quality of "balance". Not that is anything other than set-piece bullshit; but it might've been discoursively interesting to try that.