What happens when you take procrastinating to a new level

It might not look it, but I actually have lots of stuff to do. However, I still find time for the Internet (my values are more refined than yours I guess) and am now in a strange non-argument with a blogger on the other side of the country. A friend of mine told me about the University Diaries blog because of a personal connection and I started read it fairly regularly. Written by an English professor, I was interested because it was a place to read about things related to academic life generally. As the months went by I started catching on to things about the blog I didn't like, but whatever, I kept reading it.

Then I noticed some of my comments were being deleted. It's not like there are tons of comments on posts, just two or three, but for some reason mine were being deleted. The first was in response to this post, which is just a long quote from Don DeLillo's essay on 9/11 and its aftermath. I think it’s a really good piece, but I made a smart-alecky comment that was along the lines of

all this talk about language doesn't highlight the threat of islamofacism, there isn't a war against the past and future (what delillo says), but between evil and America, and his last line in the article (allah akbar) sounds somewhat appeasement driven.

I know I'm just a jerk on the internet, but seriously, why delete that? You either think I'm serious, which is crazy, or you think this type of response has no place on your high class BLOG.

I decided I either had to comment on every single post or stop reading it all together. Deleting comments to posts that aren't defamatory or highly offensive seems to say, "I don't understand this whole internet thing". I stopped reading. Anyway, like I mentioned before, better values, and I came back. Again, I started commenting and, again, UD started deleting. The latest deleted comment was in response to the ONE AND ONLY other comment to this post about a Harvard prof. having his title stripped for stealing manure. The other commentator said if people were looking for horseshit, they should go to

Kendall Square and dig into Mt. Chomsky, which has a never-ending supply.

I made a post saying,

What does Chomsky have to do with theft, corruption, and Harvard professors? Oh, I get it, you don't like him! Funny.

Deleted!

Why am I boring you with all this? Because of two points, which surprisingly have to do with two recent posts by UD. The first from yesterday was about a controversy involving a department chair removing quotes from associate professors' doors because he thinks (ridiculously) others might find them offensive. UD, with no irony, mocks the department chair and university president for doing ESSENTIALLY WHAT SHE IS DOING WHEN SHE DELETES MY COMMENTS. Maybe I am wrong here, but I think the parallels and different responses are shocking. I made a comment, check it out before its deleted!

The second reason for all this is her very next post about a recording on ABC of various Democratic senators, like Kennedy and Kerry, meeting with lobbyist on Nantucket. I don't want to say Democrats are on the side of angels, cause they aren't, but to compare this meeting to the type of corruption from the Republicans from the last few years as UD does is not only lazy thinking, but shows a lack of knowledge about the depth and severity of the accusations against what GOP legislators. Several GOP congressman are not just losing their seats, they are GOING TO JAIL.

The real crime of this meeting for UD though is some stupid, silly limerick recited by Kennedy about the Dems taking about Congress. The horror, the horror. Somehow this means...I don't actually understand her point, but I do get she is attacking Kennedy for poor writing. The Democrats suck, but I don't know if I would link bad poetry with torture and crimes against international law, or other issues regarding this upcomming election. But hey, that's just me.

Ezra Klein has a good post on the somewhat, if not extremely tenuously linked, similar issue, mainly how it seems liberal academics don't seem very concerned about the pubic shere, or life generally outside the university walls. Even when it is about how subjects they are experts on are misrepresented:

A few weeks back, David Brooks massively misrepresented the positions of Lawrence Katz, a former Clinton administration economist and current Harvard professor. I'd read a bit of Katz and noticed the discrepancy, so I gave him a call and convinced him to let me set the record straight. What astonished me, however, was that Katz himself had no interest in challenging Brooks' distortions. It sucked, to be sure, but he had things to do, and why dwell? That the nation's most popular op-ed page was misinforming Americans on the inequality debate was a shame, but whaddayagonnado?

I think the disdain for public affairs outside the self-referential bubble of academia is endemic, and quite possibly the main cause for softheaded thinking that sees hangin' on Nantuckt and writing bad limericks with trying to destroy some of the fundamental tenets of our democracy like habes corpus and the seperation of powers.

By the way, have I mentioned UD has expressed an admiration for David Brooks?