John Kelly of the Washington Post is a worthless tool

"Woke up this morning
with an attitude
Took a look at the headlines
Put me in a real bad mood"--Don Henley, "I will not go quietly" (Note: if you listen closely, you can hear Axl Rose doing backing vocals)

One of the greatest things about Texas A&M University is its tradition. That tradition takes the form of many events: Bonfire, the Aggie Ring (and ring dunking!), Silver Taps, Midnight Yell and, of course, the 12th Man.

All of those pale in comparison to Aggie Muster, held ever April 21 in honor of those current and former students--Aggies all--who have passed away in the last year. It is a hallowed, honored event, so much so that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates returned to A&M Tuesday to serve as the guest speaker.

Muster, in a greater sense, is a symbol of all that is good in Texas and most of the United States. It shows the value of honor, loyalty and friendship; it shows the faith people have in a reward for a life well-lived and the promise of something good waiting beyond this earthly realm.

In other words, it's sufficiently threatening, reactionary and hokey for the Washington Post to rip it, which is exactly what "columnist" John Kelly has done on his blog. (Note: I was once a columnist, too, and I didn't exactly think comparing people to neanderthals was a pithy way to get a chuckle from my audience.)

For those of you unwilling to subject your computer to high levels of arrogance, disdain and elitism (and a horrible attempt to make himself out to look like a gumshoe, complete with the old school hat), I will excerpt from Kelly's screed:

Frequently during my brief stay at Texas A&M I've wondered to myself: Does anybody in the outside world know what's going on here?

This is not to suggest that College Station is cut off from the outside world. Television signals penetrate the perimeter. Newspapers are delivered. There are no roadblocks or checkpoints. My e-mail appears to get through.

And yet this is a place apart, a bubble so full of strange rituals that I sometimes feel moved to flee, to drive out of town, stop at the first house I see and bang on the door. "Oh thank god," I'd say, when the door was opened and I fell across its threshold. "Do you know what's going on back there? We've got to call for help."

You will see buzz-cut uniformed students in polished boots tucked into jodphurs. Spurs -- spurs! -- jingle as they walk.

Being on the A&M campus occasionally feels like being on the set of "300." This is Sparta.

Add in a few shots about A&M being conservative and--gasp!--Christian, and Johnboy is rolling. And he hasn't even gotten to Muster yet, when he really ratchets up the classless meter:

Muster basically works like this: Whenever two or more Aggies are within 100 miles on April 21 they are supposed to get together and remember those graduates who died the previous year. And so yesterday they gathered -- in some 325 places around the world, we were told. It's like something from the Bible.

(But, since the Bible is also vile and reactionary, Mr. Kelly decides to compare to "The Lottery," a short story by Shirley Jackson in which members of a village take part in a lottery to see whether they're going to be stoned to death. Other villages, the reader learns, have gotten rid of the lottery, but this town thinks that's stupid and the old (and, as we see, barbaric) ways are best.)

And that must be part of this ritual's purpose. Muster celebrates the departed -- "our fallen Aggies" in the language of Muster -- but it's also a memento mori: You too will die and when you do, your name will be read here, a candle lit in your honor. Your essence will join the ether and become part of the great Aggie spirit. I don't see this catching on at George Mason or Frostburg State.

Some students and faculty, I'm sure, scratch their heads at all the hocus-pocus...And I will say this: The Aggies put on a hell of a show.

Well, isn't that just special.

So let's recap: Arrogant northeast nitwit comes to College Station, freaks out at the site of the NAZI CORPS OF CADETS. Is AGHAST at CHRISTIAN SYMBOLOGY (more imagined than real), sniffs at the concept of honoring the lives of your friends and fellow man and decrees that the school and its traditions are too stupid and naive to survive in the more effete and intellectually secure Washington D.C. area.

Ok, since I know the Washington Post will never ever give me a place to rebut this fine honer of the alleged journalistic craft (even though I have won more AP awards than John Kelly), I will do so here.

I once lived in D.C. metro area, and I can tell you without equivocation that Muster would, indeed, never thrive at George Mason, Georgetown, American, Maryland-College Park of Frostburg State. And that's their loss. People at those universities, much like the people of D.C.--and certainly, the employees of a breathtakingly haughty newspaper--walk stiffly because they think the axis of the earth has been shoved up their backside. They are astoundingly arrogant, myopic in their views and uncaring about anything that does not directly affect them. Their cynicism, which they consider healthy, has devolved into a remarkable obsession and hatred of those who don't look like them, talk like them or think like them.

Armed with this attitude, they consider themselves "open minded". Mr. Kelly is a poster child for this group. But they are not "open minded"; to the contrary, they are foolish, intolerant bigots. Their groupthink reinforces their idiocy to the point where they think it's just great fun to insult those who think and act a little differently as a bunch of Crusading Neo-Nazis who think the earth is flat. And that includes their silly little traditions like Muster.

You know, the one where the Secretary of Defense read 22 names of young men and women who have died in the service of their country since 9/11/01. The one where a former President of the United States, his wife and 12,000 other people were moved to tears as friends, family and loved ones were remembered in a kind, solemn, special way.

In John Kelly's mind, every one of those people are untermench--inferior, subhuman creatures who need their mythological God and their silly little traditions to survive. They couldn't hang in John Kelly's world--the real world. It's not very different from the mindset slave owners like Thomas Jefferson had when referring to "the help."

Well, Mr. Kelly, let me tell you something: I've seen more of the world than you ever will and I can tell quite easily that my writing skills are on par (actually, quite superior) to yours. I have had conversations with several presidents of the United States and was very comfortable discussing global affairs with the current secretary of defense. I'll go out on a limb here and say that I'm a hell of a lot smarter than you.

I'm also an Aggie, and I'm far from the smartest Aggie I know.

I don't appreciate when two-bit twits who are too stupid to realize they're in a dying industry try to allude to my fellow Aggies being "Little Eichmanns" and the source of all that's wrong in the world today. Texas A&M is not in the Stone Age and College Station is not the primordial ooze. There's a lot more filth up at Foggy Bottom than there is in Aggieland.

You don't get A&M and you don't understand its traditions; I get that. What I don't get is how one can have both the vanity and the nerve to not only not try to understand where the people at A&M were coming from, but mock it and dismiss it out of hand. It's not good enough, is that it? Does it lack the intellectual gravitas you require? Is it....inferior?

I know that honor, dignity and respect are lost concepts on the east and west coasts. The idea that people would love a place and care enough about a human life to shed a tear for someone they haven't met is something that made a brief re-appearance after 9/11 but was quickly mocked and scorned back into hiding by members of the intelligencia--after all, it's stupid and foolish, right? Well, it's not considered that here. It's considered the right thing to do.

There are places in the world were things are still seen in black and white, not shades of gray tarred by arrogance, cynicism and disdain. One of those places is Aggieland. I guess that makes it a sufficient target for the high-minded scribes of The Post.

Honestly, I don't get how people like John Kelly get to be considered "elite." They're too easily offended by people of differing upbringings, people who have different values and think differently than they do. They're not interested in intelligent discourse or discussion; they're out to mock, scorn and annihilate those who don't meet their homogeneous, yet "diverse," view of society.

Way to keep those little people down, Johnboy. You missed a great opportunity to work with Bull Connor in Selma back in the day.

Oh, by the way--Gig 'em. You can screetch your violins now, doofus.

(Retired editor's note: Apparently Mr. Kelly was in College Station for a week, guest teaching a Journalism 490 class. This brings two questions to mind--is it really intelligent to criticize your host when you still have 72 hours left in town, and is it any wonder kids come out of J-School utterly screwed up?)