What do the Coal Mining and Higher Education industries have in common

This rant from a West Virginia professor agaisnt the coal industry indadvertently is used by James Taranto to paint the (rather steamed kettle) the beautiful black color it should be.  The fact that the Huffytons don't see the irony is well, ironic.

A week ago Eric Waggoner, "chair" of the English Department at West Virginia Wesleyan College, took to the Puffington Host to deliver a declamation, which began:

To hell with you.

To hell with every greedhead operator who flocked here throughout history because you wanted what we had, but wanted us to go underground and get it for you. To hell with you for offering above-average wages in a place filled with workers who'd never had a decent shot at employment or education, and then treating the people you found here like just another material resource--suitable for exploiting and using up, and discarding when they'd outlived their usefulness. To hell with you for rigging the game so that those wages were paid in currency that was worthless everywhere but at the company store, so that all you did was let the workers hold it for a while, before they went into debt they couldn't get out of.

Waggoner writes of this rant that "it wasn't rational or cogent," but the excerpt should be sufficient to demonstrate that it was both heartfelt and historically sweeping. A native of Charleston, he evinces a genuine affection for his fellow West Virginians.

(That said, we would be remiss if we failed to note the irony that the professor himself is a representative of a predatory and lightly regulated industry that markets itself via appeals to economic insecurity, thereby inducing millions of young Americans to take on often-crushing debt.)

Read the rest of it , particularly the Froma Harrop Harromph - it reminds me of why educated dumbasses are the dumbest asses of all.

I also liked this line:

Reich is so blinded by ideology, and by prejudice against white Americans who are not part of the cognitive elite, that he fails to notice he has contradicted his very premise.

 

Well Bob had had a couple of drinks when he wrote this and he's a tiny guy so it ws probably the Lambrusco talking....