Herr Doktor Mike Von Fleichmann: Judo Coach, Shakespearean, and CrimeFighter

Perhaps you’ve heard of C-SUB Professor Mike Fleichmann. A Shakespeare Instructor and Judo coach (no kidding) on the Cal State dole, Fleichmann also considers Ed Jagels (the notorious Kern DA slammed in Rolling Stone a few months ago) a close friend. Mike, like Jagels and any decent California neo-fascist, works real hard at his job and has been rewarded for his service to Truth and Judo with awards from the John Birch Society or something—-he's also been a recipient of the prestigious Cal State Bootlicker of the Year award numerous times.

Mike somehow got it in his head, back at the University of Skokie or whereever he purchased his PhD, that Literature might be profitably implemented for right-wing ideological ends; thus he makes a living passing off his Shakespeare/Himmler pep rallies to those gullible Kern citizens who flock to lit. classes in search of Culture. Kernoids, however, don't receive much Culture in Mike's classes--though they do get Fleichmann’s lectures in "How To Be A Terrific Salesman", with the MikeMeister often using Antonio from the Tempest as his machiavellian role model, though Mike does have some problems with the Bard's polysyllabic syntax.


If you have read Ellison’s Invisible Man you remember the cynical and corrupt college administrator Bledsoe. Like the usual Cal State professorial hack, Fleichmann IS another Bledsoe, but lacking Bledsoe’s irony and verbal sophistication. CSUB has plenty of other Bledsoes, other incompetent hatchetmen and women, some of them quite pathological if not psychotic in character, such as Big Mama Plugowski. Big Mama P. (a feminist member of the politically correct Kern Vichy French, contrasted but not opposed to Fleichmann's Wehrmacht), could not divide fractions correctly, but she does know some French and has read lots of Ginny Woolfe, and manages, in a very consistent manner, to consistently distort the Deep Thinkers in the name of “post-structuralism” or “hermeneutics” or some crap. Confronting Big Mama P. with a syllogism would most likely cause her to have a nervous breakdown, but better some entertainment from the resident Crazy Circus Lady of C-SUB than to suffer through a Seminar in Drama of the 3rd Reich with Herr Fleichmann. As with most CSU apparatchiks, both of them should be brought up on racketeering charges.

C-SUB: They earn money the old-fashioned way: They Swindle it

Frog Doc

An eccentric neo-positivist David Stove, an Australian, produced some great writing attacking western idealism (e.g. Plato and Kant) as well as the more egregious absurdities of marxism. Stove was a bit conservative (supposedly he was leftist in his youth), but seems materialist, more or less; his scathingly humorous attacks on postmod., marxism, feminism, etc. are sort of Jonathan Swift-like, but a bit more philosophically informed.

Stove

Dr. Johnson on the Female Cleric

"Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

Sick of Sports Hysteria, Redux

It’s Fall again and that means Football, sports fans. Er, well, baseball is not quite over though. And basketball and hockey are just around the corner. In the spectator democracy of the USA, fans are provided with some form of “Ball” each and every season of the year. Of course, the newpapers and media are promoting this season’s gridiron “prospects” as usual. Beer is being sold. Coaches are giving pep rallies. Cheerleaders are working up fight songs for their heroes! And the local public high schools have new gangs of thugs ready to WIN. The private “Christian” high schools are contenders as well. Rah rah shish boom bah for Jee-sus, the greatest pro of ‘em all.

Coaches may sentimentally claim that “the important thing is that you do your best,” but what really counts to them is winning. That’s what sports at all levels teaches: Victory at any cost--useful training for creating obedient, robotic soldiers as well as go-getter alpha males. The celebrity athletes make the big bucks by being the baddest, most violent players on the field. It's rather questionable that's an attribute we should be instilling in our youth.

More respect should be given to the student who wins the science fair, or to the chess club champion, or the math or French honors student. Solving trigonometry problems requires more skills and is more useful to both society and to the individual than being a great free throw shooter or running back. I, for one, have much greater respect for say an Anatoly Karpov or Bertrand Russell than for Mark MacGuire or Deion Sanders.