I'd like to thank you all for coming to the First Annual Meeting of American Eggheads here at the Buffalo Radisson Hotel. (I think I recognize several of you from last year, which is always heartwarming.)



This year's guest speaker is a stuffy egghead of the highest caliber. Indeed, he breathes such rarefied air, that we've had to artificially pump extra oxygen into this conference room this morning simply to maintain his normal life processes -- in consideration of which singular fact, the ushers have been instructed to have zero tolerance for any audience member who so much as LOOKS like they're getting ready to "light up" during this session, so keep your minds on the philosophical prize today, yes? -- i.e., on the Truth writ large -- rather than on the dubious pleasures that might be supposed to obtain in some fictional Marlboro Country. (Humph! Marlboro Country, indeed! Whoopee-tye-oh, i'faith! No, friends: I don't think so. I definitely don't think so.)



Right. Now where was I? Ah, yes, I was praising today's speaker (rather extravagantly, as I seem to recall):



A surprisingly controversial figure, our guest has received posthumous degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, (mistakenly in all three cases, thank heavens, apparently due to some computer glitch: he's still very much alive, thank you very much, as his philosophical adversaries are no doubt about to learn to their cost) at which latter institution he famously "came to fisticuffs" earlier this year with Professor Peter Singer over their opposing definitions of "quality of life." "Who defines quality?" our guest was heard to shout, as he sparred with the surprisingly nimble Australian. "The couch potato? the bookworm? The Stylite seated atop a pillar in the Alexandrian desert? Bless me, Singer, if the couch potato is our touchstone for quality, I should have been euthanized ages ago!" Then, in August of last year, our guest speaker got in a shouting match with Noam Chomsky at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago after allegedly referring to that gentleman in public as "The King of Nothing But-ism," evidently referring to the linguist's penchant for, and I quote, "implicitly justifying leftist tyranny by invoking strained parallels with the excesses of the right." There are unconfirmed reports that he even stuck his tongue out once at the almost disturbingly honorable Dr. Cornel West. (Now that WAS going too far!)




Be that as it may, and without further ado (and indeed, before my increasingly ambivalent introduction of the man encourages the lot of you to boo him off the stage "sight unseen," as they say....)



I present today's Guest Egghead, Brian Quass O.W. ("or whatever").








Good morning. Thank you for the polite applause. (I'm going to pretend that I didn't hear the handful of half-hearted cat calls and tentative boos that appear to have accompanied it.)



I'd like to thank Professor Jingo for his flattering introduction. I have one small correction to make, however: I only stuck my tongue out at the esteemed Dr. West after that gentleman rather inexplicably attempted to trip me in the hallway outside his Princeton office last year. I admit that the incident sounds out of character for the man, but I stand by my version of events. In any case, I honestly thought that the esteemed gentleman had gone back into his office at the time that I (ill-advisedly, in retrospect) spun dramatically around with my tongue extended -- but I only took that latter step in the interest of "blowing off a little steam." I was as mortified as everybody else (even more so) when I suddenly realized that I was sticking my tongue out, not merely in the general direction of that gentleman, but indeed in his very face, not 10 feet from his bespectacled person!



I've since tried to apologize to C.W., but can I help it if he won't return my calls?



As for Noam Chomsky, I merely advised that no-doubt honorable gentleman that his hyper-criticism of Western values comes with a price tag -- namely the ascendancy of a moral equivocation that would ultimately erode the philosophical pillars of his own implicit Leftist agenda -- for every argument he brings to bear against the supposedly rightist status quo -- its establishment out of self-interest, its pretensions to being justified by a greater Truth -- can and will be used against Noam's own philosophy in the court of logical law when and if it comes to the fore in governing world affairs.








Let he who is without sin, throw the first stone.








Hey, cut it out! I was kidding!




Thank you, Professor Brian O.W. (Ushers, see that our guest makes it safely back to his car on the parking level and then -- firmly but gently, mind -- give him a well-deserved boot!) Ahem. Right. Free speech is one thing, but disagreeing with the reigning zeitgeist of us American Eggheads is quite another, don't you agree, gentlemen? What's that you say, gentlemen? "Hear! Hear!" is it? Yes, "Hear! Hear!" indeed, gentlemen! "Hear! Hear!" indeed! You go, gentlemen! You go! (Ooomph!)



Right. Fortunately we did have one backup speaker scheduled in case of some unfortunate incident like this (imagine, an actual counter-revolutionary trying to speak his mind like that! Some people!) I now present to you the Professor Odds Hartley to speak on the uplifting subject of Free Speech in America. Professor Hartley, if you please, sir! (Aye, let's hear the man out: It sounds like a very promising topic, indeed!)