Newly appointed Yale deans this fall: W. Marichal Gentry, dean of student affairs and associate dean of Yale College, and Shelly C. Lowe, the University’s first assistant dean for Native American affairs and director of the Native American Cultural Center.

Yale Herald:

In an email to the entire Yale student body, Dean of Student Marichal Gentry reminded students that “consensual sex can be glorious”. We’re used to getting emails about staying safe, saving the Yale Police phone number in our phones, and to always call for help, especially around the biggest drinking weekends of the year. The past two years we have received very standard emails about Spring Fling, Harvard-Yale, and Halloween, but this one definitely caught the eye. With unusually eloquent prose for Dean Gentry he reminded us,

A few years ago when we introduced the idea that consensual sex could be glorious, it seems that was a surprise to many. Consensual sex is having the sex you want, something you can say “yes” to, not something you’re afraid to say “no” to. Glorious consensual sex is something given, not taken, something shared not endured: something that makes you smile the next day, not something that hurts psychologically, emotionally or physically.

The philosopher can hardly avoid laughing at the 180 degree reversal of the Puritan establishment’s position on carnal activity on the part of the persons it supervises in loco parentis.

Yet, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, the annoying tone and conscribed perspective of the cant of indulgence differs only in puerility from the earlier cant of continence.

Yale has acquired a treasure in Dean Gentry. To mark the inauguration of one’s term in office by delivering via email a sermon to the water advising it to run downhill represents a gift for inadvertent comedy amounting to genius.

And I’m doubly grateful to Mr. Gentry for bringing it to my information, via his university appointment press release, that Yale now boasts a dean in charge of Native American Affairs. Who would have imagined that Yale actually had Native American Affairs? We are not Dartmouth, after all.

Sing, Eris, Goddess of Discord, the joys of Diversity!

Democrats Pat Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen are comparing Obama to Richard Nixon in his capacity for divisiveness and lack of respect for the office of the presidency.

President Obama’s post-partisan America has disappeared, replaced by the politics of polarization, resentment and division.

In a Univision interview on Monday, the president, who campaigned in 2008 by referring not to a “Red America” or a “Blue America” but a United States of America, urged Hispanic listeners to vote in this spirit: “We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.”

Recently, Obama suggested that if Republicans gain control of the House and/or Senate as forecast, he expects not reconciliation and unity but “hand-to-hand combat” on Capitol Hill.

What a change two years can bring. ...

We write in sadness as traditional liberal Democrats who believe in inclusion. Like many Americans, we had hoped that Obama would maintain the spirit in which he campaigned. Instead, since taking office, he has pitted group against group for short-term political gain that is exacerbating the divisions in our country and weakening our national identity.The culture of attack politics and demonization risks compromising our ability to address our most important issues – and the stature of our nation’s highest office. ...

The president is the leader of our society. That office is supposed to be a unifying force. When a president opts for polarization, it is not only bad politics, but it also diminishes the prestige of his office and damages our social consensus.

Moreover, the divisive rhetoric that Obama has pursued can embolden his supporters and critics to take more extreme actions, worsening the spiral.

Whatever the caliber of Obama’s tactics, they might achieve some short-term success. The Republican Party has offered no narrative or broad solution, and it has campaigned exclusively to take advantage of the negative environment. It contributes merely a promise of a more hostile environment after Tuesday.

With the country beset by economic and other problems, it is incendiary that the president is not offering a higher vision for the nation but has instead chosen a strategy of rank division. This is an attempt to distract from the perceived failures of his administration. On issue after issue this administration has acted in ways that are weakening the office of the president.

Read the whole thing.

When his own supporters say things like this about him while he is only halfway through his first term, the president’s prospects are looking grave indeed.

Last weekend’s Stewart/Colbert Rally was described by liberal Atlantic blogger Joshua Green as “heavily ironic [and] slackerish.”

Rallygoers’ main object of contempt—mild, detached contempt—was Tea Party, not GOP

Signs a lot cleverer than your usual rally

But, with exceptions, usually less so than authors seemed to think.

As this derisive video made by Americans for Prosperity demonstrates.

Hat tip to Moe Lane.