Comedy Masquerading as Academia
Steven Crowder, disguised as a fat studies scholar, gets paper accepted at prestigious university conference.
“The result of my mission was just this: I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that some inferior men were really wiser and better.” —Apology by Plato
Socrates — the subject of Plato’s Apology — was famous for being wise and a good teacher. Socrates himself would have said the greatest part of his wisdom was the realization that he knew nothing. Wisdom has inherent humility, and humility is what makes the greatest teachers.
Pride — humility and wisdom’s opposite — is well dubbed the greatest of all sins. Pride causes people to be so self-focused that they lose track of reality. It is this navel gazing that is at the root of a lot of the cultural issues we are dealing with in America today.
A perfect example of the utter foolishness of pride is laid bare by conservative comedian Steven Crowder going incognito as “Sea Matheson"— a queer fat pride activist — and bluffing his way into a prestigious "Fat Studies” conference held by Massey University. To even get accepted, Crowder submitted an “academic” paper entitled “Embracing Fatness as Self-Care in the Era of Trump.” This paper was accepted and Crowder was invited to give a talk at the conference based on the theories espoused in his “paper.” The ruse was made even more believable because the conference was online due to COVID restrictions.
Crowder talked about fatness as a political and ideological way to separate from Trump supporters. He hit every woke talking point imaginable from masking to “My body, my choice.”
His talk was met with great aplomb. One of the other speakers at the conference even invited him to peer-review a paper.
As much as this was the ultimate troll by a master, it is a staggering commentary on the higher education system as a whole. Academics, who are so enamored by their own self-declared eloquence, have taught a generation that self-care and self-identity are the only ways to true happiness. Ironically, academia is a lot like excess fat — you really have to work hard to get to the meat of good education. Some never get there. Higher education has become the trope outlined in Apology of important people who think they are very wise and yet know nothing.
In other words, they fell for the classic blunder.
Kudos to Crowder for reminding us once again that God uses the foolish things of the world to shame the “wise.”
