Professors are the worst kind of authority figure because they're impotent and their uniforms are boring and they know it. Let's talk about my property professor. He's not evil except insofar as he is absolutely unselfaware, and tries to infect future lawyers with absolute unselfawareness of the type that will enable us all to pity poor people while buying and selling them.

First of all, know that he is a friend of the common man. You can tell because he voted for Kerry, went to college in the 60's, and lives in New York. Plus he tells us several times per class that he is an "unreconstructed new dealer" and declared the property rights movement "racist."

He's also a friend of his students. You can tell because he doesn't cold call us, doesn't make us buy a textbook, and says things like "of course everyone here agrees with... [insert friend-of-the-common-man boilerplate]." He cannot imagine that we are not friends of the common man. Because we are his friends.

He has told us that the party with the better, higher-priced lawyer always wins in litigation. Presumably he's sorry for this, since he is a friend of the common man. But he jokes constantly about us, his friends, all joining major law firms. The kind that win all the time.

He does not believe that his students are common men. He contrasts us with the poor destitute kids who join the military because they have no choice and get blown up in Iraq. He called us the winners and soldiers, losers.

The economic class you're born into matters. But there are non-luck factors at play too. The people I know who joined the military aren't the poorest people I know. And you can join a branch of the military that's not headed to Iraq. There are choices every step of the way. A young adult can make a living as a waiter or a fisherman or a mechanic in my hometown. People blow that off for Iraq because they want respect.

Meanwhile, an NYU law student could make a living at any of a hundred other occupations-- teaching, social work, owning a business. It's not a secret that we're on the road to unhappiness here, and possibly to hell too if you're into that kind of thing. But we choose law over those hundred other occupations. Why? Because law is more interesting.

Oops, I meant to say because we want respect. Way more than our share. Paid in the form of envy, resentment, and sexual favors from economic "losers."

So my prof seems to think people go to NYU Law and Iraq for exact opposite reasons: because they either have status or they don't. I think we're all doing it for the same reason: we need status. We're all losers.

He's the most status-whoring of all. He wants the status of subscribing to a retro ideology, the status of being friends with 25-year olds, and the status of being down with the common man. Good thing you don't need mental coherency to get the status of tenure.