Tim Blair, and the joys of nasty, arrogant, and downright stupid abuse

(Above: the New Yorker cartoon that started a meme).

A little while ago, a ripple of excitement ran through loon pond. 

We thought we'd been visited by Tim Blair. But it didn't take us long to realize that it had to be a fake, ersatz pretender.

The fake Blair was agitated because we posted under the name Dorothy Parker as a tribute to a woman with a brain and a taste for drink (yes they generally go together). He seemed to think this kind of anonymous behavior showed a lack of guts.

Now it couldn't have been the real Tim Blair, because we know that the real Tim Blair would only play the arguments - in a free and fair dialectical exchange - and not the woman. Besides, the real Tim Blair runs a blog that is littered with thousands of anonymous contributions, comments flung about with a vengeful passion by members of Blair's tribe, sheltering in anonymous freedom to say what they think and argue what they believe. And incidentally strip shreds off any non-believers as they go hunting in feral packs.

Sure they might be moderated, but if the real Tim Blair believed that anonymous discourse was a bad and naughty thing, can you imagine the number of times he'd have to delete an anonymous comment with repartee like "show some guts" or "deleted for cowardly anonymity" or "only comments from named registered users will be accepted".

Perhaps that might come when the real Tim Blair is put behind a pay wall and forced to stop linking to other people's content, or embedding content rightfully belonging to others, and Chairman Rupert insists that News Corp becomes a totally clean engine for changing intertubes etiquette and property rights.

Meantime, we were disappointed to learn it was only an ersatz Tim Blair that paid a fleeting visit, so we went in search of the real Tim Blair. And as always, he didn't disappoint.

Just as he's not above dog whistling about race, he just loves to dog whistle about academics and especially climate change academics of the quasi religious true believing kind. 

First the set up in Beyond Challenge or Question:

Walter Starck on the friendly folk who contacted Vancouver Sun writer Jonathan Manthorpe following publication of an item expressing some agreement with Ian Plimer’s Heaven and Earth (currently ranked #699 at Amazon, by the way): 

Manthorpe reported that he had received around 100 e-mails about his Plimer piece. About two-thirds were from ordinary people who agreed with Plimer. Another healthy portion was from scientists who agreed with Plimer’s overall contention about natural variabilities in climate on which humans have little or no influence. However, they disputed various specific claims and details made by him.

Manthorpe also noted that, “… the disturbing letters were from the scientist believers in man-man global warming.”

He then went on to say, “I have met a lot of unpleasant people in the course of my life, but I have never seen such a torrent of nasty, arrogant and downright stupid abuse as has been aimed at me this week by people who aggressively sign themselves ‘PhD’ as though it were a mark of divine right that is beyond challenge or question.” (emphasis in original)

 
We need a new set of source words for that particular abbreviation.

Now you might think this was an elegant plea for elegant discourse of rational kind, seeing as how nasty, arrogant or downright stupid abuse seems to be the problem.

Boy, do you know fuck all about the art of dog whistling.

"Piled high and deeper" is the consensus on how best to resentfully describe PhDs, and send them up shitless. 

But there are variations which could truly be described as downright stupid: "Political Hack, Doc?", and some which are nasty : "Phucking Dickhead" or "PhD - Pinhead Division" or "Pharking Doorknobs".

All in a perfectly convivial way of course, like schoolboys sniggering behind the toilet talking about girls and their strange bits and pieces that still exercise a strange and fatal charm on the male mind.

At the heart of it? I don't know, maybe contempt or fear, certainly loathing. Whatever, you can't say it elevates the tone of the discussion, but then these are just Blair's standard pack of rabble rousers doing the dirty work for him:

My father used to be a university lecturer. He always used to translate BSc., MSc. and PhD. as “Bull Sh*t”, “More Sh*t” and “Piled Higher & Deeper”.

Says it all, really.

I think he meant to say bullshit and more shit, but really shouldn't - if you intend to conform to the letters - it read as Bullscat and master of scat (or more scat, if you will)?

Sorry, it's the academic in me. Soooh pedantic, and such a gormless quasi religious believer.

But how about if you can manage to join women and age hatred into fear and loathing within the faculty?

It was my experience when working for a university, that the younger the Ph.D., the more smug and self-satisfied for not yet having met nose to cluebat.

In my own college days, we hurtfully used the Ph.D. appellation to mean Pentecostal Hair Do (and not only in reference to bee-hived Pentecostal women). Later on, after working relationships with faculty, it became Perfectly Helpless Doofus.

Oh well played, great scoring, jolly good stroke sir. Winner of the pinhead division in the school of arrogant abuse  (PhD ScAAB). Remember there are also courses available in nasty and downright stupid abuse.

Sadly we had to rule out a late breaking attempt to wrest the crown from you:

Dickhead of Philosophy
P(in)h(ead) Doctor
Pissed and Delirious
Peeved and Deceitful
Pretentious hipster Douchebag
Position of Head Disorder, related to cranial rectum inversion
Pimping Hoes Degree
Permanent Head Damage

Many more at Urban Dictionary

No fair using Urban Dictionary. We know about you students who smuggle textbooks into the examination room. 

No, for sheer ungarnished pleasure, hurtful personal abuse derived from personal experience is always to be preferred. Well done anonymouse ...

(Below: and a couple of variations).