Can o' porn

The Ivy League kids who are known to Cole Slaw Blog are by and large a good lot. They rarely even bandy about a term like "state school," considered a perjorative amongst many creeping-vine kids. Of course, there are reasons why a state school might be considered inferior, among them funding, and the necessarily large class sizes. One thing, however, that as far as Cole Slaw Blog knows has never been an issue with publicly funded colleges and universities, is ideology.

While this is unlikely to change in the short term, what about down the road? We already know that most university professors are on the shit list (or is it hit list?) of a sizeable amount of right-wing rubes.

And now let's take Iowa House Speaker Chris Rants, whose knickers are in a knot because a grad student at the University of Iowa is offering a one-time course examining pornography in popular culture. This of course, will not do, and now the aptly named Rants is rattling his flaccid little saber, cautioning that he might not see his way to a $40 million inscrease in funding for the university.

"Do they know that we're not done with their budget yet?" Rants, R-Sioux City, said. "I'm pretty sure we don't need to increase state funding by $40 million to teach critical pornography studies."

Well, Rants, maybe you should pay some goddamn attention. The instructor, Jay Clarkson pointed out to the Associated Press that the course is not about viewing or enjoying pornography, which means they probably won't have "Lesbian Spank Inferno" in the syllabus. The course aims to consider how pornography has moved into popular culture, according to a report in The Associated Press. As Clarkson pointed out: "We will certainly be talking and reading critics who are against pornography."

Yes, but don't let the facts get in the way of stirring up the rubes, Mr. Speaker. Sadly, the majority of people who hear about this won't learn about it by reading the article, but instead by word of mouth. In which case, it's likely to sound as if the University of Iowa is teaching a class in which students watch porn. On the taxpayers' dime. Cole Slaw Nation is smart enough to see where this particular line of dimestore demagoguery goes.

Considering that the Republicans have the media on the run, and judges in their sights, Cole Slaw Blog wonders if threatening state schools that don't toe the lines drawn by Republican-led legislatures is the next sickening step.