How enlightened did you say you were?

I usually prefer not to deal with topics that are a bit sensitive to some, but Rick told me this past weekend an anecdote that I felt I had to share with my faithful readers.

He is a pretty big deal in his academic field, and was recently invited to give a talk at a major "Ivy League" school that will remain unnamed. His reaction to most of the people he met there, including most of the members of his audience, was that those folks could, for the most part, be filed under "pompous asses" (one person asked him a question, making sure to throw the name "Habermas" into the pot. Unfortunately, she asked if she was perhaps mistaken in mentioning Habermas at that point, and Rick kind of told her in his answer that, well, yes, she was totally mistaken to do so. I swear that some scholars throw names like "Habermas" and "Kristeva" around just to hear themselves say them.) Their attitude was also that they are beyond enlightened when it comes to political and social issues - they are much holier than thou, you see, because they come from a better background, and have all been anointed with doctoral degrees from the very finest institutions of higher learning (read this as Tier I/Ivy League universities.)

However, in the middle of a dinner with those enlightened folks, one of them cracked a homophobic joke when refering to a colleague as "king and queen" of some area of his discipline or other. Rick was a bit taken aback but, since he was the guest, he did not tell the person who had used that language that he felt that it was definitely tainted with some homophobic undertone.

Gay jokes are especially vicious, I think, and many people get away with them much more easily than, let's say, if they make a racial or ethnic joke. It is downright vile to utter a racial slur, but it's perfectly O.K. to refer to gay men as queens and to some lesbians as dykes - because, hell, a good bitchy queen is a sight to behold, and one can go on for hours about what makes a great dyke a great dyke. Is it the spiky haircut, the hiking boots, the faded Levis' jeans, or the flannel shirt? And yet, let's face it: it is demeaning to gay people who, for God's sake, are just gay, and should it even matter?

So, then, there's also the issue of academics who like to pontificate about the fact that they are so much more "enlightened" than the common man, and yet, they really aren't. Wasn't it, after all, the President of Harvard University who, a few years back, had declared that women were not as naturally gifted for the sciences as men were - an anti-feminist remark, if there was any, that drove him right out of his job - even though he did try to apologize.