



TV actress Leah Remini renounced Scientology last week. I assume she’s looking back on the past decade and wondering what she was thinking. I know how she feels. I was also a member of a cult. It’s called liberal arts.

Getting a BA in English lit and taking all the insane lefty electives that surround it is a great way to spend tons of money getting brainwashed. Before I went to college, I had common sense. I believed women are fundamentally different than men and I didn”t think everything is racist. It took them four years to convince me otherwise and about twice that long to recover. (This was in the early 90s before LGBT persecution took over the lexicon.)

Liberal-arts programs don”t point out why angry young men are being irrational. They tell us we”re not angry enough. Professors believe the customer is always right, so they provide kids courses on Sticking it to the Man. We wanted to blow minds with radical ideas, but our professors outdid us every time. I was sorta pro-choice as a teen, but my professor went a step farther by telling us it was OK to have an abortion up until a year after the baby was born. All you needed to do to be outrageous in college was quote your teachers. By the time you get your diploma, you are convinced the Western world is run by rapists from the KKK. We learned to be offended on behalf of others, and how they felt about the matter wasn”t even important. If they didn”t agree with our crusade, they needed more “education.” That’s the same cure for people who resist Scientology: more Scientology.

“By the time you get your diploma, you are convinced the Western world is run by rapists from the KKK.”

I first noticed I was brainwashed while on vacation in Jamaica. We went into a souvenir shop and I caught myself being offended by fridge magnets portraying black soccer players with huge grins. They had bugged-out eyes and exaggerated lips and it reminded me of the Golliwogs I had been taught are evil. Who was allowing this magnetic minstrel show of a soccer game to appear before my eyes? Why, Jamaicans, of course. They are allowed to create cartoon sculptures of themselves. As this basic truth seeped into my cranium I could feel the liberal-arts professor in my head say blacks can make these magnets because they”re not coming from a place of privilege…or something…but that feels like a Band-Aid solution to a hemorrhaging gash in the logic. Now we have to research who created what image before we deem it unacceptable? Former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill tells us the Cleveland Indians logo is offensive. Is that because a white guy drew it? What if they hired an Indian to draw it? Is that OK? I thought my diploma would provide tools for the real world, but it was nothing more than a Ph.D. in Shit for Brains.

Racism doesn”t pervade every part of modern life, but when you have a liberal-arts education, anti-racism sure does. The fridge-magnet incident was disturbing because I felt myself having an emotion that wasn”t mine.

The second time this happened I almost pulled my brain out and threw it in the garbage. We were watching a movie at an old-timey theater and I saw a black man who worked there taking out the garbage. He was black as coal and was wearing an attendant’s uniform that included white gloves. His lips were very red and enormous. He also had big eyes. I feel racist even describing this guy. When I caught this human being wearing the skin in which he was born, I was not amused. I had been so brainwashed into finding that kind of depiction of a black person offensive, I even got offended when it was the guy’s actual face! I felt like politely sauntering over to him and asking him if he would kindly take it down a notch. Thanks, college.

The third time this happened I was watching porn. To me, RedTube is about fantasizing that you”re there. When I see a huge moulignon go pounding into a woman’s vagina, it is impossible to pretend that’s me. Ergo, I avoid porn with black men in it. I even wish there was a filter where those options don”t appear. This felt racist at first, but then I thought, “Wait a minute. I feel guilty if I don”t masturbate to black guys? How did we get here?” Do blacks even want that level of reverence? “Hey Dwayne, I was watching porn the other day and the guy in it looked just like you. I didn”t turn away, though; I just kept beating off and staring at the guy. Cool, huh?” (Extends hand for handshake.)