I was reading a column by Mike Adams on Townhall.com this morning about colleges to avoid…installment number 5 (only five?)
Anyway, his whipping boy for this column was someone from the University of Michigan defending affirmative action because, supposedly, George Bush benefited from the practice. Adams added UM to his list of toxic colleges not only for this exchange, but for numerous other exchanges he’s had over the years. His reflections got me thinking about the three years we spent in that bluest-of-the-blue hotbed of enlightenment.
See, doc-wife did her residency at the University of Michigan. Not being able to afford Ann Arbor housing prices, we lived on the edge of the UM home city in nearby Ypsilanti. After three years of rubbing elbows with these enlightened intellectuals, we were more than ready for a change – so much so that we went to West Virginia (what better place to scrub the stench of navel-contemplating hipping from your psyche?)
We ran into plenty of examples of idiocy at the school, but perhaps the worst effects of liberal lunacy manifested in the community – unquestionably fueled by the fervor of University instructors and sycophants.
*Example: On one of our frequent sojourns through an Ann Arbor park (about 1 mile from UM) with the children (one in stroller, one not.) we were walking along the sidewalk and happened to come near some geese on the lawn, cropping grass. Said geese, sans any youngsters or nearby nests, took exception to our presence and came hissing and threatening. I, being the bigger goose and predator, thank you very much, spread my wings and sent said geese scurrying back out onto the lawn and away from the sidewalk. An outraged Birkenstock-wearing 40-ish couple, complete with matching coffee bean necklaces and floppy hats, came running our way and immediately started demanding we leave the poor geese alone, “you should have turned around the other way and left them alone,” they screeched.
I’m sure there’s a metaphor for the international appeasement advocated by lefties in there somewhere, but this entry’s about Ann Arbor.
Message given to hippies: It’s my park. I’m bigger, meaner and very protective of my kids. Aggressive, bully geese need to be shown the error of their ways, not encouraged. Hippies left…grumbling.
*Example: Another Birkenstock-wearing woman gave me seven kinds of hell at an Ann Arbor yard sale for leaving my sleeping daughter in the car one fall day while looking over the items for sale. Never mind that I could always see the car, it wasn’t to hot/cold. She was ticked off and even went so far as to ask me why my kids were with me and not in daycare. She threatened to call the police.
Didn’t I know my daughter could be stolen? I just stared at her like she was a bug. I’m from Earth…from which planet do you come?
*Example: Tree-huggers picketing state game lands for the opening of deer season…anti-gunners picketing the local skeet range…bunny-huggers picketing the farm park run by Dominos Pizza because they considered the well-fed farm critters there to be exploited in some manner.
And don’t even get me started on Ann Arbor’s annual art show, otherwise titled “How did they get so many loons together this far from the water?” The art was always first-rate, however, and the people were fun to watch in a “what the heck kind of a union between species produced that misbegotten pile of protoplasm?” kind of way.
The loony enclave is somewhat contained, though, because 30 miles west of Ann Arbor lies Jackson, MI, a reddest-of-the-red community that numbers Ted Nugent among its residents. To the east is the chaos of Detroit and to the north the gun and knife club of Flint, at one time numbered among the most dangerous places to live in America.
Ann Arborites, of course, don’t venture to those places because liberal intellectualism cannot coexist with concrete examples of its fallacies. Better to stay home in the echo chamber, rail about the inequalities of life and fire off the occasional email rant to Townhall columnists who question your fundamental precepts.
