It can’t be denied that it has been a real pleasure to see the lady college presidents brought low over the past few days. The condescending, arrogant smugness that they displayed before the House Education and Workforce committee is standard behavior for the elites so eager to rule us for our own good. We see it from the congressional Democrats, from the DoJ and the rest of the bureaucracy, from the WEF, from Blackrock and Vanguard execs… and, needless to say, from academia.

We saw this clearly at the hearing. The lady presidents had their noses so high in the air that they couldn’t see the elephant trap that Elise Stefanik so adroitly prepared for them. Sally Kornbluth and Claudine Gay’s robotic delivery and raised-eyebrow disdain were bad enough, but the champ here was the smirking Liz Magill of UPenn, who fairly oozed smug superiority as she set out to put this uppity backwoods congresswoman in her place (“Stefanik? Realllly? What kind of a name is that, anyway?”) Magill fell hard, resigning on Saturday night, the most opportune point of the news cycle, and taking the university trustees board chairman with her. Elise S. can stencil two victories on the side of her fighter jet, with more to come.

So what’s the lesson here? There are several. First, as regards anti-Semitism: the American Jewish community is part of the American social fabric, and has been since the beginning (see Washington’s 1790 letter to the Touro Synagogue). Outside of a few backroad pigsties, Hamtramck, Michigan, and American college campuses, everybody knows this. That is the end of it. This despicable attempt by Kornbluth, Gay, and Magill to backdoor legitimize anti-Semitism as a viable leftist tactic is unacceptable and will not be accepted. The U.S. is not 1930s Germany, nor will it ever be.

Secondly, what the Hell is wrong with these people? Who acts this way? You can’t get beyond the age of twelve in American culture without realizing that smug arrogance gains you nothing and will get you nowhere. If you present a punchable face, you will be punched. How did Kornbluth, Gay, and particularly the smirking twit Magill miss this lesson? But then again, they’re all like that. Pelosi, Schumer, Gore, Sarandon, Hillary… There’s scarcely an exception in the entire left-wing pantheon. (Okay, I’ll give you DeNiro. He doesn’t act smug -- but only because he acts crazy.) It’s the default of leftist behavior.  

Finally, this is a textbook example on how to deal with the Left. While I’m sure the David “conservatives” (Frum, French, and Brooks) will come racing out wringing their hands (“We can’t do that! It wouldn’t be polite!”), the rest of us need to take Rep. Elise as our exemplar. Magill is out, Gay will soon follow, particularly after the revelation that she plagiarized part of her Ph.D thesis. Kornbluth may hang on for a while, but, shortly after the new year, she will step down to “seek new career opportunities.” (MIT is a technical and scientific institution, which naturally means a large Jewish student body and faculty).  That’s how this debacle ends.

That, playmates, is the way it needs to be done. Let us go amongst them.