I rummage through my duffle bag for the stash of bargain rate mail order cigars that I’ve brought along, then I grab a beer from the fridge. Cognac gives me a headache, maybe because it’s French. When I return to the porch, Bob, Dad, and John are deep in venomous conversation. Bob takes a pull of his cognac, then gets back to it,

“...and that Tim Robbins, did you hear his antiwar diatribe the other day? And then there’s Sean Penn touring the slums of Baghdad and telling us that there’s no need to go to war! Who do these celebrities think they are?”

Dad adds to the complaint, “I read a list of all these celebrities and how far they got in their education. You don’t find any that actually finish college, let alone go in the first place, except that lesbian Jodie Foster.”

I want to say that education has nothing to do with intelligence, I know all the prevailing theories, I have evidence sitting right next to me. Before I can get to it, Bob returns,

“Yeah, these people don’t even have any sort of qualifications, yet they use their position to speak out against our country. I just hate that.”

Rush Limbaugh is a college dropout, Reagan regularly fell asleep during Cabinet meetings, and he ran us into a trillion dollar deficit, George Dubbya couldn’t pass my comp class without downloading his papers from the Web; sanctimonious William Bennett, replete with the best Ivy League conceit that money can buy, gets fat preaching to the commoners about virtue while he gambles away eight million at the Vegas slots. It’s the Republican Mantra: Do as I say, not as I do. I got mine, so up yours. Malcolm X changed the world, and he never even got past the fourth grade.

“You know,” Bob says, “Call me an elitist, but it would be much better for us if only three percent of the people in this country voted!”

I’m confused about why John has flown all the way here in a private jet to fish with us. I know it’s got something to do with Bob being invited to join the Board of Directors at John’s company, so some sort of job interview is supposed to be happening here. I guess the whole trip is a tax write-off for everybody but me. I’m just here to fish. I’m not hearing any business talk though, just a bunch of arch-conservative hate speak, until John turns my way. “So you’re a teacher? What do you teach?”

I’m engrossed in my smoke, watching it drift beyond the porch roofline and up towards the stars, so I barely hear him. Dad answers for me, “He teaches writing, at Cal State Fullerton.”

I look over and catch on to the conversation, “I also teach intro courses...in the Liberal Studies department.”

John twists his face in confusion, “Liberal Studies?”

“Yeah,” I say, “we study Liberals.”

As soon as I use the “L” word, I regret it, because Bob latches on and turns to a new complaint. “You know what they’re trying to do at my daughter’s school? I got a supplemental bill yesterday for six hundred dollars, to pay for their Arts program! What a bunch of crap, she already takes private dance lessons.”

John waves his cigar and preaches, “We really need to do something about all of this, we need to get back to the basics. Teachers aren’t doing their jobs. They seem to be more focused on self-esteem than knowledge. Hell, at my son’s school, they’ve stopped assigning grades! And you know what? When I was in school, I didn’t have an Arts Program, my God! Math, Reading, Writing; that’s what kids need!”

“So Tom, how many students do you get in your writing classes that are under prepared?” asks Dad.

He’s asked this before, and so I give him what he wants just to get out of it clean. “Oh, about a third of them, but I only teach upper division classes these days, so I really don’t know about the freshmen and sophomores.”

This doesn’t work. Maybe Dad feels strength in numbers, so he presses. “What do you teach in the intro courses?”

“All the Humanities, from Art History to Science to Philosophy.”

“Philosophy? Which philosophers?”

“Oh, these days I’ve been using Hume, and a bit of Existentialism. You know, God, Godlessness, the soul as an artificial construct of the human psyche, how Morality is subjective from culture to culture, depending on the reaction each action receives from others, you know, I just try to make them think...”

Dad shakes his head, balls his fists, “But you don’t really teach them anything.”