On March 31, 2006, John Schilb referred to Mark Bauerlein as “lazy and paranoid” in response to Bauerlein’s uninformed attack in a blog post at The Valve on that year’s Conference on College Composition and Communication, with the evidentiary basis of Bauerlein’s attack being a few presentation titles.
In what one might see as a generous attempt on Bauerlein’s part to confirm Schilb’s assessment, he’s recycled his 2006 blog post at The Valve into a 2008 blog post at The Chronicle Review, with exactly the same method (cherry-picking presentation titles) and exactly the same evidence (the 2006 conference program).
Still Lazy After All These Years
Thanks for digging up that reference, Mike. When I saw yesterday’s chronicle entry, I faintly remembered that he’d done the same thing before and guessed it was exactly the complaint he made about the conference (and by hasty extrapolation, the entire field) almost two full years ago. I sincerely hope he hasn’t been stewing about those conference titles all this time.
I didn’t know about the Chronicle article or the blog post (thanks for the notice!), but Mel Livatino did the same thing in a _Writing on the Edge_ article in Spring 2007: viz., was sweepingly dismissive about CCCC based on presentation titles.
Livatino’s article was followed by two responses (Jenny Spinner and Doug Hesse), and Litviano’s responses back, including a (not very humble) mea culpa.
After checking my email this morning, it looks like folks on WPA-L have made the points I did, and Melissa Ianetta did the same in the comments section. Apparently, though, “Disturbing the Peace: Hip Hop as Theory, Politics, and Pedagogy” made him angry enough to mention directly twice. I’ll have to check out the Livatino piece, Margs — thanks.