C is for Cooneying

The Bush Administration’s bowdlerizing of scientific reports provides colleagues a useful verb.

Deans have over the years loaded Power Committees [PC] with sycophants and shills, especially when feckless senate executives have been more interested in the good will or patronage of deans. In like manner, failed “oilman” George W. Bush selected an energy lobbyist to lead his Council on Environmental Quality. The erstwhile lobbyist, Philip A. Cooney, proceeded to redact scientific reports on global warming to create or to nurture mysteries or uncertainties about the existence or extent of global warming and to undermine inconvenient truths. In Mr. Cooney’s hands, intelligence about greenhouse gases and climate changes was “fixed” around policy much as intelligence about Iraq was said by the “Downing Street Memorandum” to have been. Needless to add, Cooney had no more scientific expertise than the modal member of the Professional Standards Committee has aptitude for reading the Faculty Code. Cooney gave every appearance of being yet another loyal hack, another “Bushie” doing a heckuva job. When Cooney finally left the council, he got a job for Exxon Mobil. Perhaps in a future entry in this blog, I may explore such “revolving doors” at Puget Sound. Given similarities between governance on campus and in D. C., let us use “to Cooney” as a verb for various subterfuges by administrators or apparatchiks.

One may “Cooney” a colleague by calling a meeting to entertain the views of constituents and colleagues only to quarrel with every premise or critical observation any underling dares to offer. One opens the floor to “input,” then disputes unwelcome ideas and welcomes disputable notions. Fool and tools may, of course, point out how the current administration [in Washington as at Puget Sound] every day in every way gets better and better without fear of condemnation and with reasonable odds of commendation. The lowly are free to assent to their own debasement present or future without concern that they will be Cooneyed, but let some rambunctious neophyte wonder why certain questionable practices prevail and administrative hysteria breaks out.

A classic “Cooney” is to refute decisively an argument that no one ever has or ever would make. Al Gore and his allies are beset for positions that they have never endorsed, for beliefs that they have never entertained, and for policies that they would never embrace. They are subjected to caricature assassination as surely as “reliable faculty” mischaracterize proposals and critiques on campus.

One may also “Cooney” colleagues by refusing to release or even hiding reports or other key documents. Unsolicited, unwelcome information must be quarantined lest the impressionable be impressed. Better to ration information on a “need to know basis.”

Of course, in the Era of Dubya no true leader permits democratic or republican self-governance. Rather, the true leader expands administrative or executive prerogative as far as he or she can. The crafty leader sees instantly that every lacuna is permissive for betters but prohibitive to the masses. Whatever measures the common folk enact should be circumvented secretly and soon so that, through precedents and precedence, they may be subverted blatantly later.

There are many more ways in which the powerless have been or will be “Cooneyed.” Let the audacious seek ever more ways in which to stifle dissent and to enervate discourse. Only by comprising as many corruptions as possible may we truly honor the Great Cooney as he deserves.

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