UWP Lecturers Fwd: brilliant letter

[Deborah Willis]

If any of you want to take up Carole's suggestion to fill Scull's mailbox with 
messages, you might want to include some of the other 23 UCSD chairs who 
signed the letter.   Sadly, some of them are from humanities departments, 
including Philosophy, History, Music, and Linguistics.   A small comfort is that  
the UCSD Dept of Literature is not among them.   
     Scull's letter is truly appalling.    But there are some refreshing responses 
online  (to add to Carole's wonderful letter). Check these out:

By a lecturer at UC Merced:
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/177/story/945878.html

A Merced Sun-Star opinion page article:
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/177/story/945883.html

A blog entry:
http://abookend.vox.com/library/post/in-response-to-scull.html

Scull's letter seems to be bringing out ironists everywhere.

Deborah


---- Original message ----
>Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:19:51 -0700
>From: Carole Fabricant <cf7516 at gmail.com>  
>Subject: Fwd: brilliant letter  
>To: adriana.craciun at ucr.edu, Andrea.Denny-Brown at ucr.edu, 
carole.fabricant at ucr.edu, cf7516 at gmail.com, Caroleanne.tyler at ucr.edu, 
Deborah.Willis at ucr.edu, erica.edwards at ucr.edu, George.Haggerty at ucr.edu, 
heidi.braymanhackel at ucr.edu, jamestobias at mindspring.com, 
James.Tobias at ucr.edu, jennifer.doyle at ucr.edu, John.Briggs at ucr.edu, 
John.Ganim at ucr.edu, joseph.childers at ucr.edu, katherine.kinney at ucr.edu, 
keith.harris at ucr.edu, devlinucr at earthlink.net, michelle.raheja at ucr.edu, 
rise.axelrod at ucr.edu, rob.latham at ucr.edu, Stanley.Stewart at ucr.edu, 
Steven.Axelrod at ucr.edu, susan.zieger at ucr.edu, Tiffany.Lopez at ucr.edu, 
Traise.Yamamoto at ucr.edu, Vorris.Nunley at ucr.edu, 
englecturers at listserv.ucr.edu
>
>   Hey folks,
>    
>   The depths to which some of my esteemed and, er,
>   enlightened colleagues will stoop never ceases to
>   amaze me.  One is never quite prepared for the next
>   act of outrage or idiocy.  Way to go, guy; let's
>   hear it for colleaguiality and (more importantly)
>   class solidarity.  In case you don't know what I'm
>   talking about, I'll attach a newspaper article (and
>   a half) to this email (I copied it into my Word
>   documents) which will explain it all.  Below you
>   will find my response to His Eminence
>   the Distinguished Professor Scull.  There's no
>   way one can deal with this except through satire. 
>   (Well, actually there are other ways -- but
>   nothing that can be described in an email.)  I
>   heartily encourage all of you to send emails
>   to Scull congratulating him on his
>   brilliant satiric wit.  It would be nice if his
>   mailbox were filled with such notes.  (Actually it
>   would be even nicer it it was filled with something
>   else -- but never mind that for now.)
>    
>   Read and weep.  Or better yet, read and laugh, and
>   write sarcastic fan mail.
>    
>   btw, Don't forget to address him as "Distinguished
>   Professor" -- given his obvious adulation of status
>   and reputation I'm sure he wouldn't want to be
>   addressed any other way.
>    
>   Cheers,
>   Carole
>
>   ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>   From: Carole Fabricant <cf7516 at gmail.com>
>   Date: Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 3:00 AM
>   Subject: brilliant letter
>   To: ascull at ucsd.edu
>
>   Dear Distinguished Professor Scull,
>    
>   I very much enjoyed reading portions of your
>   brilliant satire which, had you been a less humble
>   and unassuming person, you might have entitled "A
>   Modest Proposal for preventing the Inferior Campuses
>   of the UC System from being a Burden to their
>   Superiors or the University at large, and for making
>   them Beneficial to the Public."
>    
>   As a Jonathan Swift specialist I can say without
>   reservation that you have perfectly captured the
>   tone and spirit of Swift's greatest satire, creating
>   a persona whom you've succeeded in making into the
>   twin brother of the Modest Proposer:  a man, deeply
>   concerned for the welfare of his community, who
>   understands that the sacrifice of some of its
>   members (other than himself and his fellow
>   classmen, of course) is necessary for the good of
>   the whole.  Your persona, like the Modest Proposer,
>   subscribes to the sad but inescapable truth that in
>   every society the weak have to be sacrificed to
>   ensure the continued health and prosperity of the
>   strong, the have-nots must give way to accommodate
>   the desires of the haves; and while expressing
>   regret regret at being forced to "contemplate very,
>   very unpleasant choices" he doesn't allow mere
>   sentiment to soften the stark nature of his
>   proposal, or to divert him from his noble purpose.
>    
>   Of course, this being a satire, we eventually come
>   to realize that the Modest Proposer's (both yours
>   and Swift's) presumed concern for the welfare of his
>   society, hence his eagerness to offer solutions to
>   its problems, is merely a cover to mask his own
>   self-interest, delusions of grandeur, and
>   dehumanizing outlook (his substitution of abstract
>   quantifiable measures for human values) -- but not
>   before we've enjoyed a delightful romp through the
>   realms of the satiric grotesque.
>    
>   I must say that I thought it was a particularly
>   brilliant stroke of wit on your part to substitute
>   the image of General Motors "lopping off" Hummer,
>   Buick, Opel, Saab, "and who knows what else" for
>   Swift's central metaphor of chopping up and eating
>   Irish babies.  The "who knows what else" provides
>   just the right Swiftian touch, opening out the
>   possibilities of the satire in the same way that
>   Swift's Modest Proposer, after describing the many
>   dishes the babies can be cooked up into, adds that
>   "Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the
>   times require) may flay the carcass; the skin of
>   which, artificially dressed, will make admirable
>   gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine
>   gentlemen."
>    
>   Equally ingenious was your remark that because of
>   the funding crisis we now have to become "only a
>   nine, or an eight (and a half) campus system."  A
>   lesser satirist would have left it at 'nine, or
>   eight,' but your insertion of 'a half' of a campus
>   produces an ever-so-slight frisson, evoking the
>   image of a half of a baby (somehow more shocking
>   than a whole one) being stuffed into a pot to make
>   a stew:  an image that serves to underscore the
>   fundamental sadism and cruel indifference beneath
>   the Modest Proposer's mask of benevolence.
>    
>   I will be teaching Swift in the fall quarter and
>   wonder whether you would be willing to come and talk
>   to my class about your perspective on the art of
>   satire -- perhaps even share with us some of your
>   other creative endeavors in this field.  I always
>   tell my students that, given the absurdity of the
>   times in which we live, it's no longer possible to
>   write satire.  But I'm glad to say that you've
>   proven me wrong.
>    
>   Yours sincerely (and admiringly),
>    
>   Carole Fabricant
>   Professor of English
>   University of California, Riverside
>    
>    
>    
>________________
>UCSD letter re campus closures.doc (54k bytes)