So last Friday we got to sit in a day-long workshop with one of the world's best argumentation scholars, and she was just fantastic. Utterly brilliant. Less fantastic: some of the out of department grad students that showed up to give their opinions on the state of political argumentation. Unless you've had six or seven insipid morons smugly laughing at one another's jokes about how stupid conservatives are - well, you just haven't lived. The most annoying child in the group was undoubtedly the one who kept being oh-so-sophisticated about how he "hadn't heard" that "Venezuela is our enemy now". Except he wasn't joking - it's not like he was disagreeing with conservatives. He just really had never been exposed to the idea that American and Venezuela might be enemies right now (you can chant it with us if you want: P. H. D!). Anyway, he was yucking it up about the ignorance of Republican House members who were apparently just making things up.

Second most annoying: the guy who kept talking about how stupid and ignorant conservatives are because they don't understand that Sunnis and Shiites are different groups. We were almost convinced by his nuance and sophistication, and would obviously have been better for it. But then we found this video of a Sunni imam celebrating the glorious Hezbollah victory over Israel. Hezbollah, you may remember, is from that other side that's not Sunni:

So now we're back to being ignorant and unsophisticated. But hope springs eternal, ya know?

Previously:
* American Liberal Activists Are So Cute, With Their Smugness And Their Superiority And Their Not Being Very Smart
* Screw Rachel Corrie
* Yes, the Pope Is Catholic - Juan Cole As a Study In Pro-Jihadist Faux Liberal Sophistication (Updated)