Prof: The concept of American exceptionalism is ‘absurd’
Professor Rachel Gans-Boriskin commented on coverage of the Mueller report, suggesting that journalists should have done more to emphasize it to "Americans who allowed Trump to make it through the primary, let alone into the White House.”
A Simmons University professor dismissed the concept of American exceptionalism as "absurd," when commenting on the election of Boris Johnson as prime minister in the U.K.
A professor from a Massachusetts school took to Twitter in late July, accusing Americans of being irrational and insisting that the concept of American exceptionalism is “absurd.”
Simmons University communications professor Rachel Gans-Boriskin, who identifies herself online as “Politics in Pink,” implied that the Mueller testimony’s ineffectiveness was a result of Trump voters’ incapability of “rational analysis,” in a Thursday Twitter thread discussing the Mueller report.
“Given the framing, [the testimony] did not go well,” Gans-Boriskin wrote. “Journalists using the ‘nothing new’ standard have missed the substance & Democrats have been unwilling/unable to mount a vigorous case. For some reason, they thought laying it all out for Americans to just see it, would work.”
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Gans-Boriskin then clarified to what type of Americans she was referring.
“You know, the same Americans who only read the headlines of the articles they share,” she said. “The same Americans who allowed Trump to make it through the primary, let alone into the White House.”
“Rational analysis is not exactly the American way,” she added.
This example of the professor’s disdain for the “American way” is not isolated.
Two days prior, she asserted that the “notion of ‘American Exceptionalism’” was “absurd,” pointing to Boris Johnson becoming prime minister of the U.K. as a rationale for this.
“I think it’s important to take a moment and acknowledge that Boris Johnson is actually going to be the next Prime Minister of the UK,” she wrote in the tweet referenced by her previous one. “Wow. Just wow.”
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Gans-Boriskin runs a blog called “Politics in Pink.” The publication, which claims to publish a variety of feminist voices, is meant to combat the supposed reality that political concepts are often “dumbed down” or simplified for women.
“It felt to me that when we talk to women about politics, we talk in narrow terms or we are condescending to them,” Gans-Boriskin notes.
On the website, she proclaims that her blog is meant for the “smart young women, many of whom are just beginning to pay attention to politics,” whom she suggests she teaches at Simmons.
Campus Reform reached out to Gans-Boriskin for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @celinedryan
