Petition at Queensborough Community College!

Dear Commons Community,

Gail Katherine Addiss provided an update on the situation at Queensborough Community College and the appointment of a temporary chair for the English Department.  She mentions that an electronic petition has been circulated asking President Diane Call to reverse her position on the appointment. The petition states:

“Dear President Call,

This is an open letter written on behalf of the 22 fulltime English Professors who voted for a change in leadership of our department and the many other faculty members, full and part-time, who support our decision. We and the undersigned are dismayed at your decision to reject our near three-fourths majority vote and appoint a temporary chair while a new chair is recruited in a national search. That you announced your decision to disregard our vote on Election Day would be amusing if the current situation were not so troubling.

We demand that you honor our vote and immediately approve our recommendation of Professor David Humphries as Chair of the English department.”

The CUNY community should be aware of this matter and faculty in particular should consider signing this petition.  As of a few minutes ago, there were more than 750 signers.

Petition link:

https://www.change.org/petitions/president-diane-call-reconsider-your-decision-to-deny-the-english-department-s-vote-for-chair#

Tony

 

Conservative Entertainment Complex and Fox News!!

Dear Commons Community,

The Huffington Post Live had an interesting interview with a panel of analysts and bloggers discussing the Republican Party, conservatives, and the media particularly Fox News,  and radio broadcasters such as Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham.  Referring to the “conservative entertainment complex”,  the major theme was that the Republican Party has been manipulated by the media such as Fox much to the Party’s detriment.  The most interesting comments came from Joe Muto, the man better known as the “Fox News Mole”.

Back in April, Muto lit up the Internet with a series of anonymous posts on Gawker that lifted the curtain on some of the goings-on at Fox News. The network promptly fired him and sent the police after him.

He talked to HuffPost Live host Abby Huntsman about how jaded some of the behind-the-scenes talent at Fox News is.

“The people at Fox are not stupid,” he said. “They know when they have Dick Morris or one of these other pundits on predicting a landslide victory for Romney, the people behind the scenes know that it’s all bluster. They know that this is sort of an entertainment. They know that a lot of these people are just hucksters … we producers know that this is all a farce. The reason we don’t step in and give a reality check to our audience is because that’s terrible for ratings.”

Muto also talked about Fox News hosts Megyn Kelly, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, and predicted that the network will sand down some of its hard-right edges in coming years.

We will see.

Tony