Romney's silly 'faculty lounge' attack on Obama
Barb ShellyIt was the morning after the Florida primary and a clip from Mitt Romney’s victory speech came floating out of the car radio.
“Like his colleagues in the faculty lounge who think they know better, President Obama demonizes and denigrates almost every sector of our economy,” the GOP frontrunner declared. “I will make America the most attractive place in the world for entrepreneurs, for innovators, and for job creators. And unlike the other people running for President…”
The faculty lounge? I drove on, thinking this was looking like a long day, a long year, another long, dumbed-down election season.
What is it about American politics that compels smart people to think that the way to connect with regular folks is to bash the people who helped them get smarter?
Poking around the Internet, I saw the Florida speech wasn’t the first time Romney had linked Barack Obama with the pointy-headed intelligentsia. Usually, he limits his disdain to the Harvard faculty.
“That may be what they think in that Harvard faculty lounge, but it’s not what they know on the battlefield!” the candidate told the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ national conference in August.
As a line of attack, that one is ever so curious. Romney himself has never seen combat, but he’s seen a lot of Harvard. He earned graduate business and law degrees from there, and three of his five sons are Harvard grads. Some of his top advisers are of Harvard pedigree. Also, as news reports have noted, Romney has received some nice campaign contributions from the Harvard faculty.
But do university professors really sit around the faculty lounge denigrating the U.S. economy? Do all universities even have a faculty lounge?
I phoned Gary Ebersole, a professor of history and religious studies and chair of the faculty senate at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and asked his opinion on Romney’s comments.
“Some universities do have faculty lounges, but they are used mostly for alumni functions and the like,” he reported, once he’d stopped laughing. (UMKC doesn’t have a lounge, although the faculty sometimes sponsors events in the chancellor’s residence.)
“This notion of the faculty gathering at 3 in the afternoon to have a brandy is really quite funny,” Ebersole said. “Would that we had time to lounge somewhere.”
On-line, I found a blog called “The Faculty Lounge.” Contributor Alfred Brophy, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, said the law school at Chapel Hill has a faculty lounge, but not the kind with dark wood panels and recliners.
“We have a little room that we call the faculty lounge,” Brophy said. “If you bring your lunch you can go and eat there. It reminds me of the teachers’ lounge in my high school.”
Brophy noted that university professors are often cast in the role of the foil. In the movie “Dirty Harry,” a judge who moonlights as a constitutional law prof at (where else?) the University of Berkeley is called in to lecture Clint Eastwood about the constitutionality of his tactics.
“It’s a cartoon sketch but I suppose it taps into something,” Brophy said. “There’s this image that you have the liberal, left-wing academy trying to brainwash students whose parents go into debt putting them through school.”
Romney’s remarks were on my mind last week when I attended a presentation at UMKC. By chance, it featured deans talking about some of the projects being undertaken by the faculty.
In the School of Education, professors accompany students into city neighborhoods to get a look at the home lives of urban schoolchildren. Faculty and students in the schools of Pharmacy and Dentistry spent parts of their summer vacations helping out in tornado-wrecked Joplin. While Romney pledges to extend a hand to entrepreneurs, the faculty at the Bloch School of Business are miles ahead of him.
At just about every college and university in the nation, you’ll find highly engaged faculty who are much more in touch with communities and ordinary people than — need I say it — presidential candidates. And notwithstanding the perception of universities as bastions of excess, faculty in general are being asked to do more with less, especially at cash-strapped public institutions.
It would actually serve Romney well to spend some time in the faculty lounge — if he can find one.
To reach Barb Shelly, call 816-234-4594 or send email to bshelly@kcstar.com. Follow her on Twitter at bshelly.
Mark Hastert
1 year, 3 months agoIt’s a peculiar comment from a guy with not one but two Harvard degrees. Dare I say it’s easier to imagine Romney in a clubby wing back chair in front of a fireplace than Obama. Manor born and bred, Romney seems more out of touch than most.
Steven Fetter
66223
1 year, 3 months agoWhy are you surprised that a Republican would not be enamored with college professors? They tend to heavily vote against GOP candidates, are vocal in their disdain for their positions, and tend to demonize GOP support for big business. While there may not be a real faculty lounge or water cooler, be be assured there is a virtual meeting place that is attended by academia to rail upon Brownback, Romney, abortion, global warming, the military, and all the other causes that the Liberal intelligencia hold dear.
You probably can answer this question; is there even a debate in a college journalism department with the 50/50 issues that currently divide the country?
Kent Mueller
1 year, 3 months agoAnd Barb takes the lead in the race for the 2012 annual Barb Shelly Snark Attack Award.
Really Barb, you called a professor to ask if they had a faculty lounge? Focusing on that line is either award winning snarkiness, or damning of a journalism school for not teaching simple metaphors.
Mark Hastert
1 year, 3 months agoWhy is it that conservatives are so anti-education? Do they prefer ignorance? Would they rather have an uneducated President? They revel in denigrating anyone with an education or who relies upon educated advisers and experts in their field. That would be commendable in any other circumstance. Under most any situation I can think of I’d want the smartest, best educated, best informed in my corner.
They’re gonna have an awful time finding someone to vote for in this election. Romney with two Harvard degrees, Doctor Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich Ph.D., Santorum with an MBA. Granted their all trying to act like a doofus .
George Hunsucker
Northland
1 year, 3 months agoOr the splendid Keynesian porkulus bill which luckily kept unemployment under 8% Tom.. Oops, that’s right, it DID NOT, did it?
George Hunsucker
Northland
1 year, 3 months agoYes Kevin, but the “tradition” of having professors stand-up and lecture and getting paid for repeating the same lecture is not to be disturbed.
I wonder what would be the reaction to a university taping all a professor’s lectures and then packaging them into a web-based course? The professor of course would recieve no pay from the web-based course since she/he had already been paid to deliver it once…..
John W Mack Jr.
1 year, 3 months agoWhew! It seems most of the people commenting on this editorial have either never been to college, or flunked out in flames.
Their attacks on colleges and universities has nothing to do with the institutions, and everything to do with the deep-rooted and widespread lack of respect for schools and learning that has been encouraged ever since Reagan came into office. It goes along with the demonization of government. What they are telling folks is it is OK to be stupid, that learning and gaining intelligence is not desirable, and those that do are not to be trusted. It is no different than their attacks on Muslims… just another plank in their platform of hate and distrust. The exact same tactic has been used previously in other countries to corral the populace.
It all goes along with Willard desperately trying to convince voters that he is just like all of us, just one of the guys. Unfortunately, it seems as if enough people are stupid enough and uninformed enough to buy into it.
David Fruits
1 year, 3 months ago“Greedy teachurs are badder than the good bankar man who has monees. Vote for me.” Mittens
“Economics is Something That I’ve Really Never Understood” - John McCain
Bush already showed us the “CEO Administration” and we’re left with quite a pile of stinking feces. Give us an alternative, and “tap” into the independent voter. Or don’t, nominate Santorum, and watch Obama moonwalk into a second term. These candidates cannot speak specifically on any topic, only that they are not like the other guy. I need more substance.
Mark Hastert
1 year, 3 months ago“Obama has wrought (ObamaCare) they often come with disastrous unintended consequences”
Read more here: http://voices.kansascity.com/entries/romneys-silly-faculty-lounge-attack-obama/#storylink=cpy
No, it’s Romneycare. Before that it was Gingrichcare. It’s a Republican idea, working very well in Massachusetts. Disasterous?
Oh, and aren’t conservatives good at playing the victim? War on Christmas, War on marriage, War on traditional values. Like a gay getting married is gonna cause daddy to run off to Cabo with one of the guys on his bowling team. What a joke, it’s beyond silly.
Conservatives have declared war on themselves and make people who just want to live and let live their villains. This is one area where all conservatives should take a lesson from Ron Paul.
So now Mr. MBA makes jokes about the college professors who taught him. Maybe he should have settled for a GED.
Patrick T. Condon
1 year, 3 months agoMark Hastert, to call either Romney or Gingrich conservative would be erroneous. Gingrich, at best, is a Rockefellar Republican and Romney is a chameleon. Santorum is the only true conservative in this race. You’ll note that the RNC has been floating talking points, until this past week, talking about the inevitability of who will get the nomination. With Santorum’s 4 wins, they have been put back on their heels because the public has something different in mind.
Kent Mueller
1 year, 3 months agoMark, I have noticed that since I have called you out on your repetitive misstatements of fact, you don’t respond to me so much. Oh well.
Are you still telling people that the taxpayers paid off the GST pension obligations?
Mark Hastert
1 year, 3 months agoAw Kent is there any point? I refer you to sources you never bother to follow up on and you continue to restate your POV as if you didn’t know better. I’ve noticed that it is a common tactic. When all else fails, obfuscate.
It seems to be endemic of ideologues of all stripes to ignore or feel threatened by anything that challenges their orthodoxy. Thus, Romney panders for votes with snarky faculty lounge comments the false statement about denigrating “almost every sector of our economy”. It lets his constituents go on telling themselves that education is their enemy, knowing stuff threatens their world view. People who feel threatened or victimized readily accept the premise. I’ll freely admit that the Dems do it too but this thread isn’t about Dems so I’ll leave it at that.
George Hunsucker
Northland
1 year, 3 months agoDon’t confuse him with FACTS Kent… mark is a water-carrier merely doing his “job”……
he is a jimmy obama lover and that’s that!
Kent Mueller
1 year, 3 months agoMark, you have never provided me with sources showing the federal government bailing out the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., even though you insisted that happened.
And statements like “telling themselves education is the enemy” shows how little you understand the issue. Conservatives do not believe education is the enemy, despite what you just said.
Kent Mueller
1 year, 3 months agoMark…..following the money leads you to believe conservatives think education is the enemy? Huh?
Mark Hastert
1 year, 3 months ago“Mark…..following the money leads you to believe conservatives think education is the enemy? Huh?”
Read more here: http://voices.kansascity.com/entries/romneys-silly-faculty-lounge-attack-obama/#storylink=cpy
No, sigh, follow the money was a reference to the PBGC. Do your research. See where the money they’re paying benefits with is coming from. They’re something on the order of $20+,billion deficit and under funded future liabilities with no hope of catching up. The retirees (including former GST employees) must be paid with borrowed money. Guess who’s? That’s why I’ll continue to say that it is a government/taxpayer bailout. If you want to research it further feel free. The point of the entire matter (as you well know but won’t acknowledge)is that Romney/Bain essentially paid themselves millions in fees and bonuses with money that could have kept the pension fund solvent thus sticking the government and eventually us worker bees with the liability.
As to conservatives vs. education (specifically college); of course conservatives are hostile to it. Santorum recently used a statistic saying that 62% of kids coming out of college are less religious than when they went in. What he didn’t say was the 75% who didn’t go to college became less religious (part of the same study). The convenient sin of omission, eh? Gingrich has made similar anti-university remarks in the past. They seem to be of the opinion that faith should be part of the curriculum. So when the President says he wants to make it possible for more kids to go to college without burdensome debt they feel threatened because they fear than a college education results in liberal thinkers.
Knowledge is power and a threat to ignorance.