Portrait of a Useful Idiot
I’m not sure what the real scandal is here: That we have a state-college full professor dumb enough to believe that the CIA “gave” Hugo Chavez cancer, or that Penn State – Abington considered “Women’s Agency In Hysteria and Its Treatment” and “Defending the Self In a Total Institution: Staff Prompting and Patient Burlesque” to be actual academic credentials.
Either way, you cannot miss this interview with Penn State Professor Karen Halnon. Sample awesome:
Can you comment on your arrest and on the videos of you on the plane that are circulating?
I do have a comment. I know that I expressed an act of civil disobedience. But that act was necessary.
Why so?
I’m very knowledgable about that part of the world. I teach about U.S. imperialism in Latin America. And the U.S. has declared war against Venezuela. That means military aggression. They tried to take out Hugo with a coup, and then they took him out with cancer. . . .
What is the revolution revolting against?
The problem is U.S. military global domination. And they want the oil. And they want the water. And so I found that this act was a necessary Thoreau-like act of civil disobedience. I had to speak out now. The situation is dire and urgent, and any sacrifice I make for my own self, if it saves lives — there have been far too many lives lost due to U.S. global military domination. . . .
But what of the cigarette? One reporter who covered your actions said that lighting a cigarette on a plane is just a little better than yelling “BOMB!”
Why did I have a lighter if there is such great national security? It was right in the top of my book bag.
Listen, the point is, I am a sociologist, and I live in an intellectual world. A sociologist always thinks in terms of symbols. And every revolutionary I know smokes. It was identifying with the revolutionary cause. And then, beyond that, it is a symbol that the United States is a smoking gun. The action was necessary. They are going to kill many more people.
She’s like Ward Churchill minus 30 IQ points.
Exit question: Isn’t it problematic that Halnon is accusing our first black president of declaring war on Venezuela?
