our merry band of department pals.
We were white and male
and drank a lot.Now there are people of color
and girls, and tea-totalers.
What a lousy bunch.
It's like a hen party here most days,
and the gays and lesbians hate us too.
White and male never felt so lonely.
Uh, how crazy is this?
ReplyDeletePoor, poor Miller! Having to pretend to acknowledge the right to access of those...other...than himself merely to make it through the day and the career. Do me a favor, Miller: get the fuck away from kids, m'kay? It's impossible to hide the sort of prejudice you harbor, and too many of these kids have been damaged enough by their parents' negligent lessons in superiority and privilege.
ReplyDeleteI cry one perfect, crystalline tear for your pain, Miller.
ReplyDeleteIt happens that way sometimes when I'm laughing really hard.
Thank god white and male isn't running the department anymore, because white and male can't spell. It's teetotalers.
ReplyDeleteBut the phrase "people of color, and girls" gives me hope that this might be a joke.
Me, too, F and T--the link takes one to a truly important text on racism at amazon.
ReplyDeleteBut I speak to all the Millers out there in my rant, whether THIS Miller is true or no...
Um, yeah. I really think this is irony. I hope.
ReplyDeleteAs unpopular as I am now going to be....
ReplyDeleteIt is my belief that you can feel how ever you want to feel. It's actions you aren't entitled to.
If the thought police were real we'd all be damned.
I'm with CMP. If we all thought the same, there would be no need for tolerance because there wouldn't be anything to tolerate, would there?
ReplyDeleteI knew as soon as I saw this that it would get jumped on. Jeez Looeez, folks, this is supposed to be a humor blog. How is it that you can't see what's so obvious?
By the way, Cass, irony my ass. This is flat-out self-deprecating humor.
ReplyDeleteHow is calling women "girls" and "hens" SELF-deprecating?
ReplyDeleteHere's my rewrite:
We used to have so much fun,
our merry band of buddies hired by the old-boy network.
We were honky-dude alcoholics who never had to write a book to get tenure.
Now there are these freaks with CVs twice as long as ours at the assistant level. Brown people and ladies, even.
Who let these people in to make me look so bad?
It's like an actual job here these days,
and it turns out some of my white-boy colleagues were gay all along. Who knew?
White, straight, and male never looked so incompetent till the gates opened to everyone else.
I'd love some of that white male loneliness if I could have the oh-so-lonely salary bump that comes with it. Though I do agree that this has got to be a joke. No doubt Mitch is gleefully watching all the outrage his doggerel has provoked.
ReplyDeleteYeees, introvert.prof -- indeed self-deprecating humor might manifest itself as irony. Get thee to a dictionary.
ReplyDeleteSo the first one was amusing. It called to mind one of my now-retired professors who, while drunk at a party, whispered conspiratorially to me that 'the place had gone to hell in a handbasket since they let women in here.'
ReplyDeleteThe second one is hi-LAR-ious.
Bravo to both.
This post was funny for a couple of reasons. First, the self depricating humor - nobody links to a book about racism/sexism while thinking it's ok.
ReplyDeleteThere's humor in the idea that new people change the social aspects of your workplace and make it not as much fun for you. I've seen a department change from hard drinking, strip club regulars to church going joggers in a couple of years. Very sad when it involved me, funny when it's somebody else's problem.
If you can't laugh at the demise of an unfair privileged class, what can you laugh at?
I though "tea-totalers" was a pun.
ReplyDeleteBecause the character in the poem reminds me of Deputy Inspector Frank Luger on "Barney Miller" here is a guy drumming to the theme:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?V=3_G2tDM7U3Q&feature=related
It's Miller time!
Christ, people, if the humour in this was any more obvious it'd poke us in the eye. And Strelnikov is bang-on, how can tea-totalers NOT be an intentional pun?
ReplyDeleteAny thinner skin, folks, and we'd be seeing yer internal organs. Sharpen up!
I enjoyed the original (which I assumed was spoken by a persona with opinions considerably at odds with those of the author, who was trying to expose/skewer such ideas), and I enjoyed F&T's rewrite even more, especially since several of the departments with which I interviewed last time I was on the market for a TT job (over a decade ago now) were top-heavy with unpublished Ph.D.s and even M.A.s who were nevertheless telling me (sometimes with sympathy, but still with no clue as to how one actually accomplishes such a feat) that I'd need a book for tenure (and I'd need to produce it while juggling the same heavy teaching and service load they had, without the help of a wife who dedicated what time she could spare from household and family concerns to research, editing, typing, or perhaps even grading the occasional student paper -- which seemed to be how the ones who had published, because they wanted to, had managed it).
ReplyDeleteA WIFE! Oh, Cassandra...where can I get one of those? I need one really badly. Plus, it would help my mum and dad have those grandkids they really want.
ReplyDelete