Essays in Idleness

In golf, a competitive sport I have managed to avoid, I gather the trick is to get the lower score, or the lowest to win the match or set a record. I will not say that this is boring. I have known people who enjoyed golf, even played it, and one of them tells me it is a glorious excuse for idleness in the fresh country air; though to be a spectator at a golf tournament, well, one should get a life. I’m sure there is an argument for baseball, as opposed to cricket, if one is a participant, outdoors. Football, of course, does not need this argument, for it has cheerleaders, for instance those attached to the Dallas Cowboys. I’ve often wondered what they will shout after Texas goes Mussulman. (Suggestion: “I slam, / You slam, / We all slam, / For Islam!”)

But once, in that ancient time before even the Idler magazine began, I had the opportunity to speak with the formidable George Grant in Halifax, where he’d been teaching. I had already been writing for the newspapers, and so, given our respective métiers, we fell into a comparison of the two “professions.” We were soon discussing: which is the lower form of human life? I of course said it was journalism, from my experience; but from his, it appeared that university professors sank lower.

Grant, with his superior intellect, quickly won the contest, however. His winning stroke was that even politicians exist on a higher moral plane, when running for public office. It is because a “professional politician” will at least keep his nose clean, and otherwise try to exhibit some commonplace, family values. This is often necessary to his deceit. He might go to further lengths by concealing such practices as fraud or adultery, until he has acquired a little charisma.

Neither journalists nor professors are obliged to do this. But professors win by obtaining tenure.