Is Texas Really a State of Mind? The Professor May Disagree.
By Lee Hockstader
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 19, 2004; Page A04
…In January, Sechrest published a 7,000-word article in Liberty, a tiny libertarian journal, titled "A Strange Little Town in Texas." After dispensing with the things he likes about Alpine -- great climate, clean air, awesome scenery, low crime rate, friendly locals, frontier spirit, robust theater scene -- Sechrest came to his main point.
"The secret problem is that the students at Sul Ross, and more generally the long-term residents of the entire area, are appallingly ignorant, irrational, anti-intellectual, and, well . . . just plain stupid," he wrote.
Harsh, yes, but Sechrest, a libertarian himself who grew up near Dallas, was just warming up. He dissed his students and neighbors as "some of the dumbest clods on the planet," and his fellow faculty members as "mostly a waste of space." As for the local schoolkids, many "are only a notch above retardation," he said.
What happened next was an object lesson in the perils of roiling the waters in a placid small town -- or, as City Council member Katie Elms-Lawrence put it, "Sweetheart, you don't defecate in your own back yard."
Having written the article last year, Sechrest sent it off to the magazine, which is published in Washington state. He figured that was that. He said he never imagined it would find its way back to Alpine, population about 5,000.
Bad call. Not long after the magazine came out, around New Year's, the article began circulating in Alpine and on campus. The effect was as if Sechrest had set off a colossal stink bomb.
Many wanted to know why, if Alpine and Sul Ross were filled with airheads, Sechrest stayed. (He said it was because of the money -- he makes $96,000 a year as a professor -- and his academic freedom, "most likely because no one has any idea what I'm writing about.") Almost everyone in Alpine was furious. Most insisted Sechrest was simply wrong.
Posted by P6 at February 19, 2004 08:22 AM
Trackback URL: http://www.niggerati.net/mt/mt-tb.cgi/460
Comments
When I read that article, I thought, "man, he might piss off a bunch of people in his town." And then I thought the same thing that he did -- what is the chance that someone who might be offended would read Liberty?
Posted by Phelps at February 19, 2004 11:33 AM