Posted on 09/19/2011 9:08:10 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Maureen Dowd, channelling a new liberal narrative, argues that at least Romney is not an anti-intellectual dunce like Rick Perry, and to prove her point, she returns to Perry’s college transcripts. To the coastal elite, college grades are always proof of intelligence and legitimacy:
“Studying to be a veterinarian, he stumbled on chemistry and made a D one semester and an F in another. “Four semesters of organic chemistry made a pilot out of me,” said Perry, who went on to join the Air Force.
“His other D’s,” Richard Oppel wrote in The Times, “included courses in the principles of economics, Shakespeare, ‘Feeds & Feeding,’ veterinary anatomy and what appears to be a course called ‘Meats.’ ”
He even got a C in gym.
Perry conceded that he “struggled” with college, and told the 13,000 young people in Lynchburg that in high school, he had graduated “in the top 10 of my graduating class — of 13.”
It’s enough to make you long for W.’s Gentleman’s C’s. At least he was a mediocre student at Yale. Even Newt Gingrich’s pseudo-intellectualism is a relief at this point.”
When Dowd trashes Perry and Bush (why not quote the hardly impressive Kerry record?), she is arguing that long ago college records and scores are a good barometer of presidential success (that is dubious if one were to compare a Lincoln or Truman to Wilson or Carter), and, by inference, that the current president is also apparent proof. But does she have inside information about the Obama undergraduate record at Occidental and Columbia? If not, why not, given the supposed importance of undergraduate grades to liberal observers? I suppose we are to conclude that supposedly poor students like a Perry or Bush released their grades or had them leaked, but brilliant undergraduates earning top slots at Harvard Law have no need to release obviously straight-A transcripts and no worry that anyone would care?
Dowd then warns, ”Our education system is going to hell. Average SAT scores are falling, and America is slipping down the list of nations for college completion. And Rick Perry stands up with a smirk to talk to students about how you can get C’s, D’s and F’s and still run for president.” One need not approve of Perry’s C grade populism to wonder whether the problem is not a C student Perry as presidential candidate, but a current president that for some reason does not want to remind us that he was, of course, the sort of straight-A student that op-ed writers pine for.
Finally, some of Perry’s education reforms would probably do more to raise SAT scores and improve undergraduate education than the current race/class/gender industry that has turned a once classical curriculum into therapeutics, and tried to apply an illiberal equality of result standard of college performance rather than the old ideal of an equality of opportunity. In regard to Dowd’s sneer quote of ”What appears to be a course called ‘Meats’,” it might, in fact, offer more real knowledge (about animal science, nutrition, and physiology) than, say, any of hundreds of classes in our universities like ”Queer Mobilities” at Yale or “Desire and Repression: Economic Anthropology and American Pop Culture” at Princeton or “Of Mean Streets and Jungle Fevers: Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee” at Harvard?
The left never appreciates irony. Too stupid.
School grades are meaningless. Many people that do poorly in school go on to be great successes.
OK, Moroneen, let’s see your Calculus IV and Subatomic Particle Physics transcripts. And your pilot’s license.
OK, Moroneen, let’s see your Calculus IV and Subatomic Particle Physics transcripts. And your pilot’s license.
Some of the most stupid people I know are college educated idiots.
Putting that asiude why doesn’t Dowd want to see Obama’s records.
This whole time that Perry has been running they are constantly after him for ont hing or another while ignoring the fact that we still have no idea where Obama comes from.
So who the hell is Dowd to critisize Perry’s college grades. What classes did she take in college? Oh, let me guess, she took Communications and Journalism coarses. Wow, those sure are tough classes. If your’re going to be a snob about college grades then you better sure as hell be able to walk the walk. Dowd is a snob of the worst kind. She is a poser, a snob with no credentials.
Maureen Dowd is a certifiable moron. College grades mean little to nothing. What one does after college is what counts. And speaking of grades and such...where are those of good King Zero?? Stevie666
“MO”, what is important is Rick Perry is a “natural born U.S. citizen” and meets all the requirements to hold the office of President that are stated in the U.S. Constitution, UNLIKE OBOZO. In fact, there is no proof that Obozo is even a U.S. Citizen.
He's the only President of the Harvard Law Review that never submitted one.
How to Become an Intellectual: 100 Mandatory Maxims to Metamorphose into the Most Learned of Thinkers [Paperback]
Nick Kolakowski (Author)
Dear Ms. Dowd, the US is not governed by an oligarchy of the educated.
It doesn’t matter if the President or the head of the Senate or House have degrees stacked from the floor to the ceiling.
You are not superior to the rest of us and you are not entitled to tell us what to do.
What has your supposed “elite” position gotten you anyway?
I have no problem requiring ALL candidates to release their grades.
I bet Obama dodged chemistry, and instead went the liberal arts route.
The better test of intelligence is whether or not Obama can speak without a teleprompter. Perry can.
No one wants to see Herman Cain’s transcripts, because if released they would make Obama look like the toddler he is.
Plus Herman’s grades were earned in a hostile environment ( back in the south when there was institutionalized racism), something Barry didn’t have to endure.
Herman Cain is the real deal, notice they like to paint the guy as the “pizza guy”, but they ignore his other skills in pure math. The man was a rocket scientist for the Navy for the sake of pete!!!
Perry probably has better grades than “the won”. But Herman Cain outclasses both of them.
If I were Perry I would say I will release all my student infor on a 1:1 basis for every document he releases the Obama campaign “much” release the counterpart.
Let’s see Obama’s records.
The Dummies might not want to go there.
Obama is a HARVARD grad.
Look at how he has destroyed America with his “higher edu”.
This thread is in violation of regulation 3.101 regarding photographs.
RE: Plus Herman’s grades were earned in a hostile environment ( back in the south when there was institutionalized racism), something Barry didn’t have to endure.
Herman Cain did not take any flake courses either. His undergraduate degree was in MATH. You can’t BS math, if the calculations are wrong, they’re wrong.
He also has a Master’s degree in Computer Science, another degree you can’t BS. If your program does not meet specs. it won’t work.
yeah I wish Cain was the frontrunner
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