Right Wing Smile of the Day.

Here's a hoot for you. The Modern Language Association still exists! If you would like see a real live Marxist intellectualoid, you better make reservations for next year's convention because they don't have many years left.

Elizabeth Kantor (of Human Events Online) paints a picture of the living dead's latest shindig.

If a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged, an academic Marxist is a Leftist who’s been mugged by reality but is still doing his best to fight it off. An interesting selection of these folks could be seen at this year’s annual convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA), billed as “the largest gathering of teachers and scholars in the humanities.”

Last Thursday evening’s “Cash Bar Arranged by the Marxist Literary Group” was a dreary-looking gathering. I stopped by so I could say I’d been to a Marxist cash bar, but also to see what our homegrown Leftists are up to, 16 years after the spectacular collapse of Marxist theory on the world stage. (It turned out there was no nonsense about “from each according to his ability; to each according to his need” at the Marxist cash bar—soft drinks were $4 each, regardless of economic class or ability to pay.)

Heehee.

I introduced myself to a professor who said he was the author of “Hard-Boiled Masculinities.” This is a book that’s just been published by the University of Minnesota Press and, according to its publicity material, explains the “tough guy” in the American literature of the ’20s and ’30s as “a product of cultural fantasy, one that shored up gender and racial stereotypes as a way of lashing out at the destabilizing effects of capitalism and social transformation.” I tried engaging this expert on tough guys in some discussion about “Light in August,” the Faulkner novel he said he had used in his book, but he kept looking down at my conference badge, which had no university affiliation on it. He seemed nervous about talking to me, and finally told me he just wanted to make sure I wasn’t a reporter who might write something negative. When I answered, “Well, I might,” he declined further conversation and sped away. Demonstrating his soft-boiled masculinity, I guess.

Earlier that day the MLA delegates had—to no one’s surprise—voted to oppose the Academic Bill of Rights that David Horowitz and Students for Academic Freedom are trying to get incorporated into legislation in several states. “[S]peaker after speaker,” Inside Higher Ed reports, “rose to complain about ‘right wing’ attacks on higher education”; but moderate delegates did manage to delete language characterizing the aim of the Academic Bill of Rights as “the teaching of ‘conservative’ ideas that cannot win support through their own merit” from the resolution.