Breitbart Staff Pisses On His Grave So We Don’t Have To

Oh the horrors. A prof asking his students to read a book written by a man he deeply respects.

Impeach Obammer NOW!*

*it’s not even a fucking blow job, Bitpart dumbasses.

I was forced to read Robert Nozick and Milton Friedman at Princeton. Do I get a cookie?

@Serolf Divad: I was forced to read Saul Alinsky in PoliSci. Didn’t stick at the time, but I’m finding it highly amusing three decades later.

@nojo: I remember The Paranoid Style of American Politics by Hofstader and The Making of a Counterculture by Roszak, but I went to Oberlin where we were all a bunch of commies.

That said, the one book that actually influenced me quite a bit was Implementation by Pressman and Wildavsky – fundamentally a much more mundane book. It’s central thesis is that if you are going to have a government program, you should make it actually work, not set it up to fail.

I apply its principles to this day.

I was forced to read Ayn Rand in the 11th grade. What do I win Johnny?

@blogenfreude:
My sympathies, I guess.

@Walking Still: At this distance, the only influential things I can remember reading as an undergrad are Faulkner and Shakespeare — and not so much for what they wrote, but for helping me understand what writing is (or can be) about.

As compared to, say, listening to Firesign Theatre in the dorms. Thoroughly mind-blowing. Even without herbal assistance.

@nojo: + 1 as to Firesign Theater. They warped my mind in highly useful and memorable directions.

Learning how to write was the most important part of my formal undergrad education. That I learned through the savage critiques of my papers given me by my English, Philosophy and Religion profs.

I was at Princeton while the students were demonstrating against their investments in Apartheid South Africa. Therefore, the only book that stuck with me was Democracy for the Few. So glad the movement succeeded and we ousted the plutocrats since then.

Friedman, Schumpeter, and Ayn Rand in the same class. Damn econ minor.

I was a Journalism major. We read articles, not books. We practiced writing press releases and 7 paragraph articles. About the only book we read was All the Presidents’ Men.

OTOH, the Spanish minor set me up for all sorts of Neruda, Mistral, Lorca, Garcia Marquez, Cervantes, Cabrera Infante, Vargas Llosa, y Borges.

@Walking Still: I should get that Implementation book for the people I sue.

y’all had it way too rough. i had a 10th grade class, current affairs where we had to read a local newspaper after lunch in 5th period and take an open paper test on what was going on in the world each day. don’t laugh. i started reading the paper every day after that class taught by the assistant basketball coach.
everyone should read the paper every day, whether in print or on the internet. when they used to deliver the nashville paper to knoxville, i would buy 3 papers every day: knoxville, nashville, and usa today. i’ve quit buying usa today though because it sux so bad. the folks at the convenience store thought i was some kinda genius scientist or something because i actually read which is very rare here in teapublicastan.

@Mistress Cynica: i was an econ major at tennessee. back then we had a mean old socialist professor who pronounced stalin as sta-leen, lenin as le-neen and even looked like karl marx on purpose. today the UT business center is as hard core right wing alleged free market capitalist as it gets. they tore down the building i attended and built a new business center which none other than darth cheney christened at its grand opening. this place just released studies condemning electric cars as pollutants, alleging each costs tax payers $250,000 in government subsidies and another decrying the inefficiencies of wind turbine power. the first UT business center president got himself appointed chief of the george w bush library later. what a bunch of fucking bullshit.

@SanFranLefty: You should have at least gotten Fearing and Loathing on the Campaign Trail (always worth a re-read in election years).

Ibogaine anyone?

I left school at 15.

Exsqueeze me, but Paul Ryan FORCES his STAFF to read Ayn Rand today.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/80552/paul-ryan-and-ayn-rand

Far more dangerous to democracy. Just sayin’.

@Blue Gal: Wish I still had my 11th grade book report on Atlas Shrugged … I’m pretty sure I savaged it.

@Walking Still: Was it something we said? Firesign’s Peter Bergman dies at 72.

@nojo: Oh no! One less Bozo on the bus.

I’ll have to have a pizza to go with no anchovies in his honor (and I like anchovies).

@Walking Still: Exit Left to Celestial Funway.