You asked me why historians look down on cultural studies folk

Here's why. I cannot think of enough bad things to say about this motherfucker. He's got that brilliant self-righteousness only found among dedicated potheads - the kind who are truly, blazingly (hah, sorry) committed to the belief that marijuana is a gift from some god - and those in poorly-defined, utterly amorphous areas of study with no real methodology. He's also got that goddamn cultural studies mindset where everything they do is plated with the finest gold, and real world concerns and pursuits are beneath them. Vide:

A lot has been written over the past decade about the corporatization of the university and the subordination of a liberal education to business efficiency. The drug usage of scholars in the humanities may be an indication of that shift. I fear that we'll have finally, irrevocably, lost the culture wars when the humanists are doing the same drugs as the M.B.A. students.

Oh, gods above forbid that humanities people do the same drugs as the M.B.A. students! Oh, man, we have to keep our culture pure, and not party or enjoy ourselves in the same way, for verily, that leads to soulless corporatization! The personal is political, man. That's why my drug use is ok, because I support NORML.

What a fucking shower, to use a fun little anglicism. This concludes my substantive remarks on his article.

I'd like to take a second here to point out that this douchebag's pseudonym is "Thomas Quincey." Thomas de Quincey was, of course, the author of that great 19th century version of Go Ask Alice - Confessions of an English Opium Eater. The pseudonym seems a bit hard to take; after all, Mr. Quincey (the pseudonymous, 21ist-century version) seems aghast at the use of hard drugs in academia, and not at all struggling with his own favored chemical. Perhaps something more appropriate would have been a pseudonym that spelled out "THC," rather than trying to cloak himself in history.

This all just confirms my prejudices about cultural studies people. They're faintly silly. They're like Burrough's description of "tea-heads"- "naturally silly."

• The tl:dr from all of this - smoke all the damn pot you want - please, feel free - but for the love of god, don't become a cultural studies person.

(Via New Kid on the Hallway, which came to me via Notorious PhD)