Quit drawing the wrong conclusions!

I've stayed away from the latest StudiesStudiesGate story, not because it isn't one of the funniest things I've read in years, but I suppose because it felt too much like piling on from the right.  I initially clicked on an Atlantic article because it promised to buck the trend by sharing the thoughts of a disappointed progressive who was genuinely chagrined by what the hoax revealed about the state of Trendy academia.  Indeed, the article started out that way, even revealing one nugget that I'd managed to miss before:  the hoaxers got someone to publish an article suggesting that the remedy for excessively patriarchal astronomy was to encourage the field not only of feminist astrology but . . . interpretive dance.  Now, I thought "interpretive dance" was a "tell" for even the least observant, but, OK, these academics really were that dense and humorless.

The author goes on, however, to warn us not to make too much of this embarrassment:

Like just about everything else in this depressing national moment, Sokal Squared is already being used as ammunition in the great American culture war. Many conservatives who are deeply hostile to the science of climate change, and who dismiss out of hand the studies that attest to deep injustices in our society, are using Sokol Squared to smear all academics as biased culture warriors. The Federalist, a right-wing news and commentary site, went so far as to spread the apparent ideological bias of a few journals in one particular corner of academia to most professors, the mainstream media, and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Now they've gone too far.  Undermine American academia all you like, you heartless right-wingers, but don't attack the integrity of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.  They're all that stands between us and an erosion of bedrock principles like due process and the presumption of innocence.

By the way, I think it's just awful how Dr. Ford doesn't get the respect she deserves for her psychology Ph. D.  I've just recovered a suppressed memory suggesting that her thesis was on interpretive dance.  OK, that may not be literally true, but it feels true, it's my truth, and who are you to say that someone else's phallo-truth is more valid?  Turn up the music.  No, not the BeeGees!  Get that Lindsey Graham video out my head!