Long time readers of this blog will remember the days when we regularly quoted and discussed our neighbor, the Northern Valley Beacon. Back in those days it carried an affiliation with Brown County Democrats, and we thought it altogether proper to engage it. Eventually the Beacon announced that it was closing down due to our withering criticism, but reopened, unannounced, under a new address. From that address, David Newquist continued to slander us behind our backs. Since the new blog no longer carries a party affiliation, we thought it less interesting and have mostly left it alone. But I confess that I still read it. It is a fun blog. Recently I noticed these remarks directed at Professor Schaff and myself:
Most prominent is that the two professors who comprise the political science department are part of the blog, South Dakota Politics, which is notorious for its mean and nasty ad hominem attacks on people who take issue with them. Furthermore, they are given to self-preening crowing and shameless ego-inflation on their blog, like annoying bantam roosters, about their faculty positions and their special insights. According to an e-mail sent me, one of them bragged about going to an academic conference on blogging and identifying himself as a contributor to the blog that knocked Tom Daschle out of office.
No one questions the right of faculty members to voice their personal opinions and to engage in political activity on their own time and with their own resources. However, the self-preening egotism displayed and the utter scurrility of their personal attacks does call into question the probity of their conduct as professors and casts the pall of a petty and vicious partisanship over the institution.
What is astounding in this is the almost perfect lack of self-reflection. He accuses our blog of "mean and nasty ad hominem attacks on people who take issue with them." Ok. Then I suppose he believes that mean and nasty attacks are bad? But then then he complains about the "self-preening crowing and shameless ego-inflation on their blog, like annoying bantam roosters." Maybe this dead spot on, but for heaven's sake, David, isn't it a mean and nasty attack?
I just scrolled through the last several days of SDP posts and found nothing that was particularly mean and nasty, nor much that constituted any sort of attack. Mostly what we post are news items and political opinions about national and local news. The NVB, by contrast, consists of almost nothing but attacks. The Aberdeen American News is called the "Anal Aberration News." Isn't that just a bit mean and nasty?
And what about this:
[P]eople in South Dakota do not like scientists and other intellectuals very much. They regard their teachers as akin to slaves, or at least bonded servants.
I confess that I have only been living and teaching in South Dakota for fifteen years, but I have failed to notice this attitude. It is clear that David Newquist does not like the people in South Dakota very much. On that we will have to disagree. I think they are the finest folk I have ever had the privilege of living among. For that reason, win or lose, I am in no danger of becoming bitter.
One final note. David says that "the two professors . . . comprise the political science department" at Northern. This is inaccurate. There are three political science positions. The third is occupied by the person who, I believe, is the faculty representative of the College Democrats. She was hired with the full support of Professor Schaff and myself. The sociology wing is occupied by four persons none of whom, I am confident, voted Republican. One, I believe, described herself as a Marxist. Another is a proponent of socialism. I am reasonably certain that if you polled the Northern Faculty, Democrats would outnumber Republicans at least two to one. So much for the charge of a Republican dominated campus.
David sees Northern and South Dakota through a lens of terrible bitterness. For that reason he knows very little about either.
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