Yes, Make It Stop(the ridiculousness, that is)!!

I've been taking a brief, unofficial hiatus from the news, because of the sheer revulsion I feel at the incessant sniping and attacks from the Clinton camp to Obama's, and vice-versa. But I've come up for air now that the ridiculousness quotient has reached a new high(or low)this morning, when someone--maybe the Republicans, maybe the Clintons--began asserting that Obama is an exaggerator and/or liar because he claims he has been a "professor at the University of Chicago Law School." He did a stint teaching at the UC Law School before and after his stint as Illinois State legislator, prior to his election as a US Senator in 2004.

True, not everyone in a college or university is a "professor." Technically, a "professor" is someone who has reached the highest level of achievement in the university; otherwise, you are an "associate," or "assistant," or even a "lecturer" or "instructor" if you are not on a permanent, tenure-track appointment. Despite these fine distinctions, in the 12 years I have been teaching--I'm now "associate professor"-- not one person has ever called me anything but "professor." In this culture, if you teach in ANY capacity in a college or university, you are so regarded and referred to.

For people to be seizing on Obama's calling himself a "professor" as evidence of dissembling is somewhere east of insane...I guess they want him to insert a variation of the above explanation into every speech, every autobio, every book jacket, to hold him to a standard NO ONE on ANY CAMPUS adheres to. THIS...IS...riDICulous...Make it stop! Make it stop!