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July 25, 2006
Hagiography of a Mentally Ill Moonbat
Posted by Dave Blount at July 25, 2006 9:25 PM
Connoisseurs of moonbattery who have exceptionally strong stomachs are invited to read the gushing hagiography of Kevin Barrett at Madison, Wisconsin's Capital Times. Not only does the piece describe the life story of the loopy drifter who went on to be a major figure in the "9/11 truth movement," but it reveals how it is possible that this sick little insect is still teaching at the University of Wisconsin, despite it being public knowledge that he inflicts upon his students a collection of delusions that would appall the most hardened psychiatrist — his fellow moonbats really like the guy.
Readers may recall that Barrett is active in a number of conspiracy cults centered on 9/11, and that the bizarre beliefs his students can expect to be subjected to include these:
- Terrorists did not cause the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
- The WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition.
- Vice President Dick Cheney is the likely mastermind of the plot to destroy the WTC.
- Mohammad Atta was a pawn and patsy of the United States government.
- Al Qaeda is either a myth fabricated by the U.S. government, or a U.S. government front group.
- Many of the 9/11 hijackers are still alive.
- The FBI was responsible for the 1993 WTC bombing.
- The 9/11 attacks had nothing to do with Islam.
The path that led Barrett ever deeper into paranoid psychosis is downright clichéd in its moonbattery. Picking up the Capital Times account at the point he entered UW-Madison as a student:
Barrett combined his love of intellectual inquiry with a hard partying lifestyle, hanging out with "eccentrics and hippies," and receiving his bachelor's degree in journalism in 1981.
After graduation, he took off for San Francisco in a 1955 school bus. In the Bay Area, he sang in a punk band, wrote poetry and did odd jobs like moving furniture and proofreading academic papers. He spent a year in Seattle working for a group that advocated a nuclear arms freeze, and volunteering for former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart's 1984 presidential campaign. But upon returning to San Francisco, he fell back into his life of partying and creative intellectualism, enjoying gatherings at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Barrett, from a family of "lapsed Unitarians," was at the time dabbling in existentialism, absurdism and Zen.
With nothing better to do, he enrolled at San Francisco State, where he got masters degrees in English Lit and French. His English thesis was on Philip K. Dick, a pulp science fiction author known for writing whole novels in the course of a day or two while fueled by amphetamines.
Barrett met his Moroccan-born wife in NYC, and promptly converted to Islam. Check out this paragraph:
Later that day, he and his future wife met up to chat again, this time at a train station below the World Trade Center. Just a month later, the complex would be bombed for the first time, piquing his attention.
Like a perpetual adolescent who never quite moves out of his parents' house, Barrett washed up in Madison again, where he got a doctorate and has been teaching courses on Islam, which allow him to share his remarkable 9/11 theories with impressionable students.
But the touching story of the useless hippy who finally found his calling isn't over yet — and it may end with a fall. In a letter signed by 61 of Wisconsin's 133 legislators and delivered yesterday to both university administrators and Governor James Doyle, state lawmakers demanded that Barrett be fired before the fall semester starts. Presumably more would have signed if the legislature weren't on summer recess. Some of the $1 billion in taxpayer money that is poured into UW-Madison every year could be in jeopardy if the school's sympathetic educrats don't stop circling the wagons around Barrett.
Hat tip: LGF
