I didn’t watch that show until I was an adult because my younger sister was severely traumatised by the episode where Neil’s head comes off after he sticks it out the train.

She had a bit of a thing about people’s heads coming off thereafter – does anyone remember that CCs ad where the people’s heads came off into their laps? She really hated that.

When I was about 16, I was into labelling things I didn’t like as “fascist”. My mother took me to task – she said I shouldn’t just throw that word around. I think those people in the Cultural Studies circle need a mother like mine.

That’s call you’re all fascists. I’m the people’s poet and I demand no more social bigotry or hatred by 12pm tomorrow or I’ll set the bomb off.

Get up Neil I hate you.

What insight into the daily grind of politics do academics have that my Aunt Fanny does not?

A scholar’s worth to his/her students is the superior knowledge s/he has acquired after years of familiarity with great ideas, the most complex thoughts, and research findings. When it comes to what is “really happening” today, here, and now, they are just as blind as the rest of us, except overwhelmingly a shit more bigoted.

Is it possible to identify exactly which academics have supported this, and thus do a quick analysis of support by scholarly discipline? I would hazard a guess the support increases the lower down the academic food chain you go, with the most enthusiastic concentrated among the softer Social Studies disciplines.

I would also bet that the peer pressure in the softer disciplines is quite intense, with supporting the boycott demanded as a signal of worshipping at altars of “correct” theologies.

I still remember being amongst the Culti Studi postgrad circle a couple years ago and, when referring to the Arts scene as the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ being labelled a fascist and a conservative. I’m neither. And they’re not the same thing anyway.

The thing is none of these people really know anything about politics. Or care. They’re just trained to see things in an overtly political way they don’t even realize they’re doing it. They’re in for a shock ’cause I reckon the jig’s just about up.

Time to get a real job folks.

Personally, I would not want my students to be too aware of my political preferences, and I would certainly not want to teach political opinions as “fact” when there is another side to the story. I’m not a member of any political party, I would not tell my students if I was, and I would never, never squash someone’s opinion just because it differed from mine (I had a very left wing lecturer in first year uni who did this, and since then I have an abhorrence of it).

I suppose some aspect of my personal preferences has to come through somehow (love of restitution and equity), although I try to make it clear that students do not have to follow this, and indeed I really enjoy it if someone puts forth a well thought out opposing point of view.