Monday, October 25, 2010

Fame is fleeting, babe!

Some dialogue following an attempted witticism during today’s Aristotle lecture:

Student 1: You make such obscure references!

Feser: Sorry. Guess I’m the Dennis Miller of philosophy.

Student 2: Who’s Dennis Miller?

Feser: See what I mean?

12 comments:

  1. Spiro Agnew once referred to Charles Goodell as the "Christine Jorgensen of the Republican Party." I wonder how many kids today know who Senator Goodell, Christine Jorgenson, or even Vice President Spiro Agnew were.

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  2. Spiro Agnew, probably. "That headless body that carries Nixon's head around on Futurama."

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  3. And by awesome, I mean both very humorous and also very illuminating. Consider: if even a fraction of your teaching time is given to educating the "yutes" on who Dennis Miller is, how much of your life must be dedicated to teaching a horde of such, ahem, n00bs to who Aquinas, et al. are? It's a sign of just how culturally anemic we have become that even pop culture is out of date within a decade. ("Oh, you mean that weird guy who used to commentate for the NFL.") What hope have we for figures a millennium ago and earlier? I recommend Gilson's essay on teaching if this kind of zombified student drags you down. And I mean zombified with all due respect.

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  4. Hello all,

    Just to be clear, it was NOT my intent to criticize the student for not knowing who Dennis Miller is. I hardly think that's a big deal. I just thought the exchange was funny.

    As George Will would say, we shouldn't take every andecdote as a license to commit sociology. Or, to paraprhase Mark Twain, "Persons attempting to find a motive in this blog post will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

    ;-)

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  5. ROFL!

    (But what's ROFL? Ouroboros, call your office.)

    ((What's Ouroboros?))

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  6. What was the original witticism?

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  7. Fair enough. But who's Will George? And who is Edward Fester?

    I didn't think you were insulting or mocking the student. It did just strike me as… sigh-making. heh

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  8. I'm interested in knowing the source of a Gilson essay on teaching. In my department, we pondered having a movie viewing in the beginning of the semester to make sense of subsequent allusions...

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  9. Matt:

    Find A Gilson Reader, Image Press, ed. Anton Pegis. Gilson's got a winsome essay in there on teaching. He certainly had enough experience!

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