New Mexico Mercury

I have always known that there is one unshakeable truth given to us by God: thin people damn well deserve to get ahead because the almighty has made skinny folks supremely more qualified, more talented, more perceptive, more articulate and more blessed than fat people who are ill-suited for the rigors of a life in which we all have to scurry about as quickly as possible.

Now I have living confirmation of the living truth of my insightful prejudgment thanks to self-styled “idiotic” and impulsive” UNM Psych. Professor, Dr. Geoffrey Miller, who so wrongly beats himself up over a little on-line kerfuffalo he made.

It was in a particularly apt Twitter tweet he says he did for research purposes that the good doctor discouraged obese Ph.D candidates from even bothering to apply.  If you can’t stop pigging out on Cheetos, reasoned Dr. Miller, you probably won’t have the discipline to study with the illustrious Professor Miller, so don’t even open your sorry mouth and don’t speak unless spoken to.

I must say that I absolutely agree with the Herr Doktor. Professor Miller’s principled statement makes just about as much sense as other strange academic traditions inherited from the Spanish Inquisition. So-called “Quid-Pro-Quo” is a great example of the cultish beauty and soundness of the good old ways. During this ritual that lasts years, the aspiring doctoral candidate must produce bank boxes full of paperwork demonstrating the capacity to do research and writing even while sleeping, eating, flossing, or changing underwear.

And then there is the business of the dissertation defense during which the unfortunate supplicant is mocked, scorned, crowned in thorns, and stripped of all civil rights, only to be at long last embraced and accepted by her committee chair who is all smiles and who would like to pirate her research.

In view of these demonstrably arcane practices, Dr. Miller’s little tweet seems business as usual to me. In fact, he should stand by his obesist research statement, which hands down makes as much sense as most of the rest of academic practices. It was not, by the way, the content of Professor Miller’s tweet, that appeared to be most noxious to UNM. He never submitted his research tweet to the UNM Grand Research Investigation Vetting Committee (GRIVC) for approval! This could mean fines. I am prepared secretly to send Professor Miller lots of money in support of his visionary plan to exclude overweight grad applicants from UNM. That seems to fit the grand paradigm just fine.