Academics never fail to amaze me. I haven't figured out why our nation's universities do not offer an "ID" degree - Doctor of Idiocy. Many institutions of higher learning now give credit for life experiences, thus immediately qualifying many educators as IDs, were such degrees available.
Educated idiots include those middle school and high school teachers who have sex with their underage students. How can these educators, some with children of their own, be so idiotic as to expect that their trysts will remain secret? Then there are the educated idiots among college and university presidents who have allowed, if not encouraged, political correctness, identity politics, radical feminism, militant marxism and thought control to poison the atmosphere of their campuses.
Robert Paxton is a prime example of an educated idiot. For 13 years, he was president of Iowa Central Community College in Fort Dodge, Iowa. That was until he was forced to resign after The Des Moines Register published a photo of Paxton aboard a boat with a group of young people during a July 4 outing on Lake Okoboji.
The photo showed him holding the spigot of a Coors Light mini-keg suspended over a young woman's open mouth. Paxton, 52, has said all of the people who were drinking in the boat were of legal age. He said the beer keg was broken and wasn’t dispensing beer into the young woman’s mouth. He said his 19-year-old son, who was arrested for second-offense drunken driving early the next morning, was in the boat but was not drinking. All the drinkers were of legal age, the keg wasn't dispensing beer and his son was not drinking - yeah, right!
The small, insignificant college where I taught for 23 years had its own share of educated idiots at the helm. There was its first president, Herb Stallworth, a nice sort of flaky fellow, who suffered from a very severe case of "white guilt" because his ancestors had been Alabama slave owners. The college catered to the black community and Stallworth spent much of his time trying to interact with the school's black students.
One day I was talking with a student of the "angry black man" genre. He and I had engaged in a number of heated discussions, but we got along well because we respected each other. On this occasion, Dr. Stallworth came along, put his hand on the student's shoulder and asked him, "How's it going my brother?" The student turned around and struck him in the chest, knocking him back two or three feet, and telling him in no uncertain terms, "You ain't my brother, you mother fucking honky!" A shocked and awed president reacted with a sickly laugh before he scurried off and away.
On another occasion, a drunken black student went on a rampage, deliberately shattering the glass door on one of the front entrances to the administration building. Someone called the police who arrested the student and locked him up in the Texas City jail. Upon hearing of the arrest, good old Herb rushed into town and personally bailed the student out of jail. And how did the student repay the president's kindness? Well folks, he promptly returned to the campus and once again shattered the glass door which had been repaired while he was still locked up.
I will never forget the time I designed a brochure for our criminal justice degree program. For the front cover, I selected a photo of two uniformed officers with two leashed police dogs about to enter a building. Other division chairpersons, my dean, and the Dean of Instruction thought the photo was quite appropriate. My dean, who happened to be black, then gave me permission to print up 5,000 of the brochures. A couple of weeks later, Stallworth was shown one of the brochures. He exploded with rage, screaming that the photo was reminiscent of police dogs attacking black demonstrators in Birmingham. A red-faced Stallworth ordered that all 5,000 brochures be burned forthwith.
Then there was Fred Taylor who succeeded Stallworth as president. Back in those days, the early '70s, it was not unusual to get a whiff of marijuana on campus. One day, I stumbled across an impromptu meeting being held in the rear foyer of the administration building. There was Taylor, then Dean of Instruction, sitting on the floor with a dozen or more students. I overheard one of the students asking whether or not Texas City police officers could come on campus to arrest students for smoking pot. Dr. Taylor replied that the police could not come on campus without the college's permission.
I jumped into the discussion to inform the students that Taylor was mistaken. I told Taylor and the students that since the college was in Texas City, in Galveston County and in the State of Texas, city police officers, sheriff's deputies and Texas Department of Public Safety officers could enter the campus anytime without anyone's permission, and without having to notify the college they were conducting an on-campus investigation. And then I really made their day by telling them, "I wouldn't be surprised if there are undercover narcs on campus right now."
The prize for biggest educated idiot would have to go to Larry Stanley, when he was president. In 1990, at the beginning of the First Gulf War, we had a general staff meeting to kick of a new semester. Before the meeting, I went up to the podium and asked Stanley to lead us all in the Pledge of Allegiance. He refused. I then asked him to let me recite the pledge. Again he refused. When I asked him why, he replied, "This is neither the time nor the place for that." Neither the time nor the place? I thought he was out of his mind. Later he told me that he did not want the pledge recited because he knew the marxists would get up and storm out of the meeting. To that I say, so what and good riddance!
I am sure there are those who would consider me an educated idiot for risking my career by taking on the administration of Larry Stanley and his marxist masters. I know that it was not the smartest move I ever made, but it was the right thing to do. They did try to fire me after the Texas City Sun published my offer to buy Larry Smith, the college's leading marxist, a one-way ticket to any country of his choice if he agreed in writing never to return to America. That's when the administration really got pissed off. I had to go to the ACLU for help and they saved my ass.
Now back to Robert Paxton. While he was forced to resign as president of Iowa Central Community College, his departure was far from painful. Amazingly, he was granted $400,000 in severance pay. That gives real meaning to the old saying, "Ignorance is bliss."
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