Titania Scopticos: ‘The Professor’s Peanut Butter’

The Professor’s Peanut Butter

Tell me a tale, Muse, of tyranny,
Of free men who can no longer be free,
And how the most absurd, barbaric rules,
Emerge from universities and schools,
Making a desert where one used to find
A permanent oasis of the mind.
I need a stronger muse to sing my theme:
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS reigns supreme!
Behold her minions: DULNESS, CENSORSHIP
Giving my muse a swollen, bloody lip!
Alas, I’m forced to sing my song alone
So please turn off your mobile telephone.
Past quadrangles built from the best sandstone,
The Gothic arches built last century,
The library, the jacaranda tree,
Lawns manicured so as to look like baize,
Professor Sophos, as he did most days,
Walked to the lecture hall to share his knowledge
Hard-won from working forty years in college.
As a classicist, he was admired:
His scholarship was brilliant, so inspired
That even undergrads could recognize
That learned darkness thinned before his eyes.
The world’s best men, who share the prefix sir,
Were privileged to call him magister
And all the women we call baroness
Still thanked him for the tips he gave on chess.
The editors all clamoured for his articles,
Even the ones on sub-atomic particles,
For when they printed any of his work
The journal-buying crowds would go berserk:
His name proudly displayed above the fold
Would bring triumphant joy: “twelve copies sold!”
He read Czech, German, Greek, Italian, French;
Forget about the Bar, he passed the Bench;
He could recite the Pyrrha Ode in Latin,
And all the moons and satellites of Saturn;
He knew about fertility in soil
And how to marinate with olive oil.
He was beloved by most, but not by all,
Despite his useful comments on the Fall:
Some of his colleagues didn’t like the sneer he
Always gave to Literary Theory.
Working all morning on his lecture notes
About the swords of Sparta and the boats
Of Athens had left him no time to eat,
So, after some discussion of the fleet,
He bit the sandwich he had made for lunch.
The lecture hall resounded with the crunch.
Just as a chemist working in a lab,
Trying to cure us from the cancer-crab,
Stands over bubbling, reeking, tubes and beakers
And finds that his concoction is still weaker
Than he would like, adds a new chemical,
Which hitherto he spared, and then the full
Beaker explodes, releasing quantities
Of volatile liquid, burning knees,
So too our Sophos, trying to share thoughts
With those who froth while giving their retorts,
Found that his lunch fomented the complaints
Of self-appointed, thought-controlling saints.
And the self-righteous flooding left no way
For the Professor to teach students; they,
Already outraged at white men and such,
Felt crunchy peanut butter was too much.
What an offence to anaphylactics!
The auto-victims cried with acrobatics:
Grown women begged their mums to take them home;
Some crossed themselves, and asked the pope in Rome
To guarantee salvation and then curse
The peanut butter devil. Soon, a hearse
Arrived outside for one who couldn’t handle
The magnitude of such a horrid scandal.
Men with thick beards were fainting in the aisle
(Synchronized diving in Olympic style)
And some wept freely, arms round shoulders, while
A snivelling old lady cried “the students!
Oh, won’t somebody please think of the students?”
And then what happened? Would you like to guess?
In vans and helicopters came THE PRESS,
Cameras and microphones in one great hive
Trying to catch the story while it’s “live”.
Imagine Bondi Beach: the golden sand
Fading to white, the rows of bulging, tanned
Muscles on towels, while bodies almost bare
Saunter and shake the sea-drops from their hair
Which, in the sun, descend like gilded rain.
Upon this scene, two hours off the plane,
Arrives an Englishman holding some chips,
And drops a few, shoving them through his lips,
Conjuring gulls of quantities untold
Seeking finger-long bars of salted gold.
Alone, the seagulls barely make a splash,
But in a pack, and seeking chips, they bash
Each other, pecks like picks, trying to break
Free from the crowd and win a golden flake.
Thus fought the journalists. They didn’t find
The “Crunchyite” who, hoping to unwind,
Fled from the scene. One journo broke away
To broadcast what a student had to say
But all that she could say into the mic
Was: “like, um, like, um, like, um, like, um, like.”
He found someone more eloquent, who said:
“Like, oh my God, I just feel so offended.”
That word would prove to send our Sophos hence,
For nothing is so good at killing sense
As the mere accusation of offence.
O tell me, muse of mountains far away,
All those who were offended on that day:
The lesbians, the doctors, engineers,
The sociologists, nurses, the queers,
The doctoral candidate in Gender Theory
(Whose mind was empty while her eyes were teary);
The fat, twelve-toed, asthmatic homosexuals;
The Latinists who like to study textual
Discrepancies, but will not read what Zeus
Likes to get up to when he’s feeling loose;
And those who feel the way to get to MENSA
Is to avoid unpleasantries and censor.
The squalls of indignation from these groups
Blew the Dean of Arts around in loops
Around the campus as she dried the tears
And wiped the noses of the second-years.
Soon after she intoned that her “heart bled,”
She called a press-conference, in which she said:
“Smoothism in our classes will not stand,
And from now on all outside spreads are banned
(For even oil of a certain blend
Potentially can cause harm and offend.)
We have produced a water-flavoured spread
Which must be eaten only on white bread.
The bread itself must have no crusts or grains”
(Which hurt those with big heads but little brains).
“I, as the Dean, will own this going forward,
And drive this innovation even more. Should
A customer, er, student, have an issue,
I will act in loco parentis. You
Should fear no longer that oppressive brute:
For I have closed his book; his voice is mute.
Professor Sophos has a day, and then
His sandwiches will not appear again.”
Thus spoke the Dean, who then went to the trouble
Of keeping her poor students in a bubble:
All entrances and exits were patrolled
By guards whose hands were trained and eyes were cold;
A camera was installed in every nook,
Unblinking eyes of one great spider; books
Were ransacked for their non-conforming phrases;
And lunchboxes were scanned with probing lasers:
All to resist the presence of that spread,
(“It’s in the closet! It’s beneath your bed!”)
All done without demur. The final deed,
By which the students, so they said, were freed,
Was sacking Sophos. Robbed of his career,
Professor Sophos lived a life of mere
Reclusiveness. He fell ill, and his mind,
Which had absorbed knowledge of every kind,
As a sequoia with deep-sunken roots
Gains nutrients through soil, and green shoots
From it gain their vitality, was felled.
The echo went unnoticed in the world.
The Dean and students marched in a parade,
Proud of the Brave New World that they had made:
A place where no one took offence or cried.
Utopia was born, and learning died.

Titania Scopticos