Ogged, That would be "KC Johnson", not K.C. Johnson. He embarrassed the hell out of a prissy history department at Brooklyn College; he embarrasses us by being a visiting professor in history at Harvard; and further embarrasses us by outpublishing any two or three of us at Cliopatria.
Thanks, Ben, for that link. It is a great article, especially recommended for those who've enjoyed pummeling KC lately. I also recommend that they look at his books, where he's written primarily and sympathetically of dissenters on the Left. That's the sort of information that was unknown to Michael Berube's spear-carriers. To hell with the record, I've got my marching orders!
We don't really want to open a new thread of hashing out the latest KC Johnson business, do we? I will say that many who supported him in his tenure fight are not so enamored with him now.
My personal vote is that we not discuss The Most Important Argument in the History of Blogging any longer, either here or elsewhere. We're doomed to repetition at this point.
On another note, I am thinking of changing the title of my blog to The Loyal Order of the Neo-Bérubéans.
And also, some of my best friends are gay, so keep that in mind if I ever make homophobic remarks.
Can't we please discuss whatever it is? I'd think it would be experimentally interesting to find out whether it would devolve as quickly as a Mommy Blogging thread in which apparently there was acrimony over whether eating avocados makes you fat. (I'm assuming the sense I got from reading a few of the last thirty-odd comments is correct; if not, I still assert the moral authority to take this position.)
I guess I didn't do that good of a job of stopping the conversation.
Now that I've gotten in a couple sarcastic barbs, now let's stop the conversation -- unless Ralph wants to add a couple sarcastic barbs to even the score. I would even be okay with 2.5 sarcastic barbs, since calling that discussion The Most Important... seems to me to count as, say, half a sarcastic barb.
I've just realized that the guy mutual friends are trying to set my big sister up with is KC Johnson (That is, I knew his name was Casey, history prof at Brooklyn College, had heard the tenure brouhaha story -- just hadn't connected with the poster on Cliopatra). Huh. Small interweb thingie, ain't it.
No, I'm a recluse. The mutual friend in question, on the other hand, is a connector.
(And my big sister is even more of a recluse than I am -- the whole 'fixing her up with KC' project has been simmering for a year, and is now on hiatus while he's at Harvard. I can't actually get her to show up at a social event at which they can be introduced.)
I only started reading blogs regularly late last summer, and I can safely state that I have no idea what the "Most Important Argument in the History of Blogging"/ KC Johnson story is. Does it pre-date me or was it being covered on blogs which I wasn't reading at that time?
Actually, now that I've made the connection, I'm thinking about it -- if I don't twist her arm, there's no chance she'll show up at any event he's at. I may not twist.
Besides which, I don't think there's a lot of potential for success there. The one time I met him, he didn't strike me as her type.
I am. The problem is, she never gets out of the hospital for long enough to meet anyone, so someone has to fix her up with somebody. While I'm the natural person to do this, being a recluse and all I'm not very good at it.
Or I could just mind my own business, but where would be the fun in that?
And my sister used to work construction before med school -- just ogged's type if I remember rightly. Alas, I am entirely unable to conceive of myself forming the sentence "There's this guy I think you might want to meet -- he's got a blog almost entirely concerned with cock jokes..."
Truth be told we're more concerned with being concerned with cock jokes the jokes themselves; we are, like the artist and truth, at three removes from cocks.
LB, I think you mean, "There's this guy I think you might want to meet -- he's got a blog where I hang out frequently, almost entirely concerned with cock jokes..."
Well, see, there's another obstacle. Although I guess meta-cock jokes are an improvement, intellectual respectablity-wise, over simple, unadorned cock jokes.
Jeez, I fly to Pittsburgh after comment 6, and I come back and everyone's being all reasonable and on the subject of meta-meta-meta-cock jokes. Moral: To stop a flame war, bring the cock jokes. I'll have to try it on one of the big philosophy blogs sometime.
And here I thought I was going to discover my identity.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 10:23 AM
Maybe F. Winston will be you next week. One never knows.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 10:47 AM
You were Fafnir all along.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 10:48 AM
You mean that post was lies?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 10:52 AM
Does this mean we should address her differently now? And are her in-laws smart enough to put blog - and - blog together?
Posted by Camera O. | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 11:54 AM
Ogged, That would be "KC Johnson", not K.C. Johnson. He embarrassed the hell out of a prissy history department at Brooklyn College; he embarrasses us by being a visiting professor in history at Harvard; and further embarrasses us by outpublishing any two or three of us at Cliopatria.
Posted by Ralph Luker | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 12:34 PM
Fixed the "KC," thanks Ralph.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 12:53 PM
What is the origin of that nickname, btw? Neither K nor C seems to figure in his initials.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 12:56 PM
He was born Robert David Johnson, though everyone knows him now as KC (a nickname drawn from a Boston Celtics star).
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 1:01 PM
Thanks, Ben, for that link. It is a great article, especially recommended for those who've enjoyed pummeling KC lately. I also recommend that they look at his books, where he's written primarily and sympathetically of dissenters on the Left. That's the sort of information that was unknown to Michael Berube's spear-carriers. To hell with the record, I've got my marching orders!
Posted by Ralph Luker | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 1:43 PM
We don't really want to open a new thread of hashing out the latest KC Johnson business, do we? I will say that many who supported him in his tenure fight are not so enamored with him now.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 1:46 PM
My personal vote is that we not discuss The Most Important Argument in the History of Blogging any longer, either here or elsewhere. We're doomed to repetition at this point.
On another note, I am thinking of changing the title of my blog to The Loyal Order of the Neo-Bérubéans.
And also, some of my best friends are gay, so keep that in mind if I ever make homophobic remarks.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:01 PM
Be nice to Ralph.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:03 PM
Can't we please discuss whatever it is? I'd think it would be experimentally interesting to find out whether it would devolve as quickly as a Mommy Blogging thread in which apparently there was acrimony over whether eating avocados makes you fat. (I'm assuming the sense I got from reading a few of the last thirty-odd comments is correct; if not, I still assert the moral authority to take this position.)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:22 PM
I guess I didn't do that good of a job of stopping the conversation.
Now that I've gotten in a couple sarcastic barbs, now let's stop the conversation -- unless Ralph wants to add a couple sarcastic barbs to even the score. I would even be okay with 2.5 sarcastic barbs, since calling that discussion The Most Important... seems to me to count as, say, half a sarcastic barb.
BARB!
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:23 PM
I've just realized that the guy mutual friends are trying to set my big sister up with is KC Johnson (That is, I knew his name was Casey, history prof at Brooklyn College, had heard the tenure brouhaha story -- just hadn't connected with the poster on Cliopatra). Huh. Small interweb thingie, ain't it.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:24 PM
We're doomed to repetition at this point.
I think by now we've reached farce.
Seriously, is there no refuge from what Timothy Burke calls his "least favorite blogspat of all time"?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:24 PM
Did Tim Burke coin the term "blogspat"? If so, good work.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:27 PM
See comment #58, here.
I don't know if he was the first.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:32 PM
LB, you are a serious connector.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:33 PM
No, I'm a recluse. The mutual friend in question, on the other hand, is a connector.
(And my big sister is even more of a recluse than I am -- the whole 'fixing her up with KC' project has been simmering for a year, and is now on hiatus while he's at Harvard. I can't actually get her to show up at a social event at which they can be introduced.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:39 PM
You're willing to set your sister up with someone who's been accused of tendentious readings of fellow academics?
[The degree of this question's jokiness left deliberately vague.]
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:43 PM
I only started reading blogs regularly late last summer, and I can safely state that I have no idea what the "Most Important Argument in the History of Blogging"/ KC Johnson story is. Does it pre-date me or was it being covered on blogs which I wasn't reading at that time?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:43 PM
As far as I can tell it started at the earliest a few days ago. But these are blog days, baby, and import is measured by the ounce!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:44 PM
Oh, my third guess was that it's because I'd taken the weekend off from blog reading, but that wasn't as interesting.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:47 PM
Actually, now that I've made the connection, I'm thinking about it -- if I don't twist her arm, there's no chance she'll show up at any event he's at. I may not twist.
Besides which, I don't think there's a lot of potential for success there. The one time I met him, he didn't strike me as her type.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:47 PM
You're a good and prudent sister.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:49 PM
He doesn't seem like such a bad sort.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:51 PM
I am. The problem is, she never gets out of the hospital for long enough to meet anyone, so someone has to fix her up with somebody. While I'm the natural person to do this, being a recluse and all I'm not very good at it.
Or I could just mind my own business, but where would be the fun in that?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:53 PM
LB:
You know, ogged's single and looking....
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:55 PM
As is SomeCallMeTim.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:56 PM
And my sister used to work construction before med school -- just ogged's type if I remember rightly. Alas, I am entirely unable to conceive of myself forming the sentence "There's this guy I think you might want to meet -- he's got a blog almost entirely concerned with cock jokes..."
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 2:57 PM
Wow, a blogging Heisman - that's gotta be some kind of a first.
And ogged, the only advice of Albert Brooks's that I've ever tried to follow is to punch my own weight.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 3:00 PM
Truth be told we're more concerned with being concerned with cock jokes the jokes themselves; we are, like the artist and truth, at three removes from cocks.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 3:01 PM
LB, I think you mean, "There's this guy I think you might want to meet -- he's got a blog where I hang out frequently, almost entirely concerned with cock jokes..."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 3:02 PM
Well, see, there's another obstacle. Although I guess meta-cock jokes are an improvement, intellectual respectablity-wise, over simple, unadorned cock jokes.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 3:05 PM
#34 may be the most oblique cock joke I've ever heard (read).
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 3:05 PM
at three removes from cocks.
Speak for yourself. My cock produces realities, not phantoms.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 3:14 PM
It does? Is that normal?
Man, I'd better get some health insurance so I can get a doctor to look at my phantom-producing cock.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 3:17 PM
Re: 36 -- does the "meta" apply to the whole phrase "cock jokes," or just to "cock"?
(One could say that the Freudian phallus is a kind of "meta-cock." Then we could tell jokes about that.)
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 3:18 PM
And you've got the pictures to prove it.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 3:19 PM
Fontana Labs never meta cock he didn't like.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 3:19 PM
Hey, that's funny, Ben.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 3:21 PM
Speaking of cock jokes, I want to know why no one is talking about Daddy blogs, eh?
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 4:41 PM
Matthew Baldwin talked about them on the radio.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03-16-05 4:53 PM
Jeez, I fly to Pittsburgh after comment 6, and I come back and everyone's being all reasonable and on the subject of meta-meta-meta-cock jokes. Moral: To stop a flame war, bring the cock jokes. I'll have to try it on one of the big philosophy blogs sometime.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 7:03 AM
No, I did not coin "blogspat". Google shows people using it as early as 2003. See also "blogrumble".
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 03-17-05 8:05 AM