Dueling Mitch Daniels

Yesterday, Liss reminded us that Mitch Daniels is still a nightmare.

But in case you missed it, let me contextualize just HOW BIG a nightmare.

Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue University, January 2013:

"Diversity is prized except in the most important realm of all, diversity of thought. The academies that, through the unique system of tenure, once enshrined freedom of opinion and inquiry now frequently are home to the narrowest sort of closed-mindedness and the worst repression of dissident ideas."

Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana and Total Historical Genius, 2010 (in emails obtained by the AP this week):

“This terrible anti-American academic [Howard Zinn]has finally passed away,” Daniels wrote. “The obits and commentaries mentioned his book, ‘A People’s History of the United States,’ is the ‘textbook of choice in high schools and colleges around the country.’ It is a truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page. “Can someone assure me that it is not in use anywhere in Indiana? If it is, how do we get rid of it before more young people are force-fed a totally false version of our history?”

Whooooops your repression of dissident ideas, Mitch!

Of course, Mitch (Historical Genius degree,Glenn Beck University) is doubling down in defense of his censorship:

On Tuesday, Daniels stood by his demand that Zinn be excluded from Indiana classrooms but said his request was limited to K-12 schools, where the state has control of the curriculum. “We must not falsely teach American history in our schools,” he said in the email. “We have a law requiring state textbook oversight to guard against frauds like Zinn, and it was encouraging to find that no Hoosier school district had inflicted his book on its students.”

Sure Mitch! That in no way makes you sound like a deeply uninformed bigot on a McCarthy-esque hunt for thoughtcrime! Or as the former head of the American Association of University Professors put it:

“It is astonishing and shocking that such a person is now the head of a major research university, making decisions about the curriculum, that one painfully suspects embodies the same ignorance and racism these comments embody,” Nelson said.

Gosh, Mitch! I think your secret identity as Garbage Nightmare Bigot, masquerading as Intellectual Diversity Champion, might have been uncovered!

There are no words for my cavernous contempt for conservatives like Daniels and their naked attempts to smear and suppress the research that is inconvenient for their propaganda. Nor my disdain for their demands to be taken seriously as defenders of "intellectual diversity." So, here is a rendition of Dueling Banjoes on musical Tesla Coils: