So in the Monday New York Times, there’s a thoughtful piece trying to explain, quote, “the overwhelmingly liberal tilt of university professors.” Their shocker of a conclusion: It’s not about an obvious discrimination against conservatives – rather it’s just a silly, wrongheaded case of type-casting!
Yeah, it turns out that conservatives don’t want to be professors, the same way that men don’t want to become nurses. Righties abhor tweed and pipes the way dudes reject Dansko scuff proof clogs. One researcher calls this political typecasting – and includes journalism, art, fashion and therapy as other areas where conservatives refuse to draw a paycheck. Instead, conservatives head toward medicine, law enforcement, dentistry, the military and late night tv shows about unicorns.
Now think about that for a moment. The left gravitates toward fashion and therapy; the right toward medicine and might. What does this tell you? Well, in the former list of jobs, it’s almost impossible to create guidelines for success. Look at modern artists, and you’ll see there’s no way to predict who will make it and who won’t. But in the jobs favored by the right – standards are clearly drawn. You can gauge the difference between a good doctor and a bad one by the number of sponges left behind in your lower intestine (three by my last count).
But let’s cut to the chase. The real reason why professors are libs boils down to one word: tenure. I mean, imagine if you had a guaranteed job for the rest of your life. That means none of your ideas will ever be tested in the real world. Instead, you can blather all you want about how Bush orchestrated 9/11, how America is responsible for all that’s wrong with the world, and what a tremendous dude Che Guevara was.
The fact is, if we actually kept score on the success of liberal ideas throughout history – it just wouldn’t be fair to liberals.
And if you disagree with me, you’re probably a racist homophobe.