Douglas Kellner
        Education

            “Philosophy of Education” professor Douglas Kellner is something of a buried treasure on the UCLA campus.  While in public not much of a fire-starter, especially compared to the roustabout behavior of his more active radical colleagues, Kellner is an absolute tiger on paper.  A close look at Kellner’s personal history and theoretical background reveals a professor whose political views are a witch’s brew of worldwide conspiracy, Marxoid theory, “critical pedagogy,” and an overwhelming dose of anti-Bush hatred.

            In Kellner’s brief memoir titled “Philosophical Adventures,” he describes his fairly stable middle-class upbringing and subsequent adolescence.  The tale, predictably enough, is narrated in an ironic tone full of retroactive progressive insights.  In one instance, Kellner puts a radical spin on a random childhood anecdote.  Through his red-colored lenses, his youthful attempt to buy candy for all his fellow neighborhood children becomes a nascent exercise in communism.  Kellner likewise feels obligated to highlight every stereotypical point in his transformation from boomer kid to young radical.  Kellner tells of discovering the big city, Little Italy in particular, which was where he “bought [his] first ounce of grass.”  Like so many of his counterparts, Kellner ended up taking a long sojourn through Europe, where “A bad flu and free medicine taught [him] the rationality of socialized medicine.”  As if that weren’t groovy enough, Kellner also “learned the emancipatory possibilities of free love.”  All this leads to the logical question: could Kellner’s youthful rebellion possibly be more clichéd?  In a word, yes.  Kellner returned to the United States and by 1968, “was studying continental philosophy at Columbia University when the student uprising erupted.”  While “unprepared for the explosiveness and impact of the student rebellion,” Kellner caught on quickly and “became active in New Left politics, participating in major anti-war demonstrations.”

            While many baby-boomers were radical during their college years, Kellner’s political extremism never faded.  The first reason is that by becoming a professor, Kellner never had to actually leave the theory-based fantasy world of college to pursue a real job.  Second, Kellner didn’t catch on with just any school.  No, after earning his Ph.D., Kellner won a position at the University of Texas-Austin, home of one of the loopier, more extreme faculties in the country.  While nominally in the heart of conservative cowboy country, Austin is really in a countercultural world unto itself.  Kellner contributed to the scene in his own freaky way by joining a “University of Texas Progressive Faculty” group, and by co-hosting, with fellow radical Frank Morrow, a public access cable television show called “Alternative Views.”  The views were indeed alternative.  The show, which ran from 1978 to the mid-1990s, was a true piece of black helicopter conspiracy madness.  “Alternative Views,” investigated everything from “The Elites Who Govern Us” (apparently the Trilateral Commission, The Bilderberg Group and the Council on Foreign Relations), to supposed links between Nazis and Republicans, to the more pedestrian white supremacist threats like the Ku Klux Klan. 

Most inflammatory of all was a number of “Alternative Views” episodes which aired allegations of connections between the CIA, the Mafia, and George H.W. Bush; between the Bush family and the Nazi party of Germany; and, for good measure, the Bush family’s intersections with the savings and loans scandals of the early 1990s.  This obsession would form the bedrock of Kellner’s later preoccupation with President George W. Bush, a man who in his mind represents evil incarnate. 

            Kellner’s mania against Bush was only reinforced by the murky circumstances under which Kellner left his comfortable, tenured position at the University of Texas.  As Kellner tells it:

“The Austin adventures came to an end in the mid-1990s when George W. Bush became Governor of Texas and a rightwing cabal took over the UT-Philosophy Department.  Austin had been a great place to live with a vibrant counterculture and political culture and for decades the University of Texas had been an excellent location to teach.  But as the University became more rightwing during the Bush years, many of us saw the (w)righting-on-the-wall, saw Austin and UT drowning in the sewer of corruption and mediocrity that distinguished Bush family politics, and decided to move on, leaving Texas to the Bushites.”

            While Keller’s story seems instructive, there’s clearly just as much not being said.  Even Kellner’s devotees, always alert to the distant thump of black helicopter rotors, must have experienced a certain amount of doubt at his suggestion that newly elected Texas Governor George W. Bush concerned himself with the ideological composition of one state school’s philosophy department.  Even California Governor Ronald Reagan, elected in 1966 on explicit promises to “clean up the mess in Berkeley,” took such narrow actions in only a few extreme cases.  While Reagan did oversee the ouster of card-carrying Communists like Angela Davis and Blase Bonpane, his control was typically higher level, as in his role in the dismissal of UC President Clark Kerr.  No doubt there is some sort of story behind Kellner’s careful phrasing, but it’s far more likely to have the stench of sour grapes.

            For that matter, UCLA’s decision to hire Kellner, especially in the post in question, has the stench of politics about it.  Kellner, from the time that he was hired to his departure in 1997, was a philosophy professor at UT.  But at UCLA, Kellner came nowhere near the philosophy department.  Instead, he was installed into the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies (GSEIS) Education Department, with an inscrutable specialization in “Philosophy of Education.”  The situation has the inarguable appearance of a position being created for Kellner, not of Kellner filling a pre-existing job opening.  Fitting a position around the academic is a rare courtesy extended only to true academic superstars.  By normal standards, Kellner would not qualify.  But to the GSEIS faculty like Peter McLaren and Daniel Solorzano, a fellow extremist like Kellner was valuable property, and someone well worth the professional courtesy. 

            Kellner, like his critical pedagogy brother-at-arms Peter McLaren, has helpfully assembled a splashy website replete with music and sound effects (including the sound stylings of DJ Spooky).  And, like McLaren, it offers voluminous, nay, overwhelming evidence of its subject’s status as an utterly politicized academic.  Reviewing the materials, Kellner’s Bush-hatred appears to be an almost bottomless, pressurized canister of disgusted, hyperbolic language.  Begin with Kellner’s weblog, titled “BlogLeft: Critical Interventions.”  The journal’s ideological agenda is apprehended with a quick glance at the immediate top left of the page which plays a repeating video clip in which President Bush displays his middle finger to the camera.  Predictably, no explanation is given as to the source or authenticity of this clip.  Vulgar video aside, the weblog boasts hundreds, if not thousands of anti-Bush entries thanks to the near-religious fervor with which Kellner has been adding to the weblog since April 2002.

            Back at his main webpage, Kellner helpfully features in full text nearly every single piece of his public writing since the 1970s.  To review even a handful of the 110-odd pieces is to see a seething resentment of all things conservative. 

            One piece, a typical Kellnerian blast titled “An Orwellian Nightmare: Critical Reflections on the Bush Administration” ends by stating:  

“as a response to the September 11 terror attacks, the Bush administration has answered with an intensified militarism that threatens to generate an era of Terror War, a new arms race, accelerated military violence, U.S. support of authoritarian regimes, an assault on human rights, constant threats to democracy, and destabilizing of the world economy. The Bush regime also provides political favors to its largest corporate and other supporters, unleashing unrestrained Wild West capitalism, exemplified in the Enron scandals, and a form of capitalist cronyism whereby Bush administration family and friends are provided with government favors, while social welfare programs, environmental legislation, and protection of rights and freedoms are curtailed.

Consequently, I would argue that Bush administration unilateralist militarism is not the way to fight international terrorism, but is rather the road to an Orwellian nightmare in which democracy and freedom will be in dire peril and the future of the human species will be in question. These are frightening times and it is essential that all citizens become informed about the fateful conflicts of the present, gain clear understanding of what is at stake, and realize that they must oppose at once international terrorism, Bushian militarism, and an Orwellian police-state in order to preserve democracy and a life worthy of a human being.”

            As the saying goes, the song’s the same; only the names have changed.  This kind of hyperbolic hysteria, so common among the Michael Moore/MoveOn crowd, is from Kellner too forceful to be mere posturing.  And, much like Peter McLaren’s own hyper-verbose ramblings, the process of fully unpacking (an academoid phrase meaning “closely analyzing”) Kellner’s views strains a word processor, not to mention any prospective reader.  It’s not an easy task to fully analyze a writer who effortlessly dispatches paragraphs containing sentences that (as above) consistently run anywhere from four to six lines long.  Worse yet, Kellner and his ilk really believe their own writing.  While it seems almost fantastical, a significant portion of the population has been won over by these dense concatenations of lies, exaggerations, and mischaracterizations, and is utterly convinced that the world might end unless “they” are stopped, and stopped soon.

            If it’s possible, Kellner sets himself even farther outside the mainstream by combining “traditional” radical politics, if such a phrase can be used, with a social paranoia that would put the John Birch Society to shame.  Kellner coyly states that his personal politics support “radical democracy and social justice” and that he supports candidates with “uplifting visions of social progress, justice, [and] democratic social transformation”  Such disclaimers make Kellner sound like the average disaffected voter, someone attracted to the candidacy of Ralph Nader through perhaps too scattered to make it to the polls on time.  But political paranoia, not peaceful visions of better politics, fills Kellner’s head.  Besides improbable claims of an Orwellian police state developing under President Bush (the pertinent question being, if Kellner is right, why haven’t they picked him up yet?), Kellner is convinced he knows the real story about President Bush, who is in his words a “rascal,” and a “very, very bad guy”:

“After years of frat boy ribaldry at Yale, Bush got his father to pull strings so he would not have to go to Vietnam and he got into the Texas National Guard Air Reserves.  During his lost years in the 1970s, he reportedly went AWOL for a year from National Guard duty, was a heavy alcohol and drug abuser, and a nairdo-well [sic] failure who finally decided to put together an oil company when he was already well into his 30s. Investors reportedly included the bin Laden family and other unsavory types and his initial company Arbusto went bust and was taken over by Harken Energy, with family friends again jumping in to bail Junior out. Harken received a lucrative Barain [sic] oil contract in part as a result of Bush family connections, and the Harken stock went up. But as a member of the Board of Directors, Junior knew that declining profits figures for the previous quarter, about to be released, would depress the value of the stock, so George W. unloaded his stock, in what some see an in illegal insider trading dump. Moreover, young Bush failed to register his questionable sale with the SEC, although later a paper was produced indicating that he had eventually recorded the sale, some eight months after he dumped his stock (it helped that his father was President when Junior should have been investigated for his questionable business dealings).

Once again, Bush sold out for a hefty profit and then ran as Governor of Texas, despite no political experience and a shaky business history. His two terms in office wrecked the state economy as it went from surplus to deficit thanks to a tax bill that gave favors to the wealthiest, sweetheart deals and deregulation bonanzas to his biggest campaign contributors, that helped make Texas the site of the most toxic environmental pollution and outrageous corporate skullduggery in the country.

Promising to do for the U.S. and global economy and polity what he did for Texas, Bush had the gall to run for President, stealing the 2000 election with the help of the Bush family gang in Florida and family consigliere [sic] James Baker (Kellner 2001), as well as the treason of a gang of Supreme Court thugs, whom fabled prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi (2000) dubbed the “felonious five”. During his first 100 days in office, Bush gave his biggest corporate contributors unparalleled tax and regulatory breaks, which threatens to push through the most scandalous transfer of wealth from poor to rich since the Reagan-Bush regimes and to seriously weaken the U.S. and global economy.”

Perhaps most galling of all to Kellner is the fact that people just won’t listen to this story.  In interview after interview, article after article, Kellner vents frustration at encountering incredible Internet news on Bush that is “left out of mainstream media.”  He praises “critical voices, largely found on the Internet” that stood against the prospect of military retaliation following the terrorist attacks of September 11, and gives particular credit to the work of Buzzflash.com (which has carried his books as subscriber premiums), Red Rock Eater News Service (a product of his GSEIS colleague Philip Agre), Alexander Cockburn’s demented Counterpunch.org, and particularly, BushWatch.com. 

 Thanks to these sources, Kellner advises, “the Internet compensates for the pathetic state of our establishment media and provide some hope that the truth about the Bush family dynasty, Election 2000, and the theft of the presidency will circulate and have appropriate consequences.” 

            Of course, Kellner knows all about the evil Bush family dynasty.  And, as usual, it’s part of a vast conspiracy that the mass media won’t touch.  An interview with Buzzflash.com gives a typical (though not by any means solitary) example: 

“I mention in my book “Grand Theft 2000” that when researching the Florida recount wars, there was a newspaper report of a talk that had been given by John Loftus, who was a former Justice Department investigator and investigative journalist, who had just lectured about Prescott Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush's father. Prescott Bush was a banker for National Socialism who helped manage Union National Bank, which helped finance the Third Reich in the 1930s and 40s. Moreover, Herbert Walker, who George W. Bush was named after, was also involved in a lot of corporations that were financing and overlapping with National Socialism, but the Bush family history has never been explored by the mainstream media or major historians, which I find an incredible scandal.”

BUZZFLASH: Funding the Nazis.

DOUGLAS KELLNER: The Nazis! So Bush family background was never really covered by the mainstream media. All of the scandals that George H.W. Bush had been involved in, S&L scandals, Iran-Contra, CIA scandals, none of this colorful family history was part of the media discourse during Election 2000. Whereas it's clear now that we see Bush as a President, he's a Bush family man, involved in a lot of family business connections like Enron and military adventures. Obviously Bush's father has played a big role in his life and Bush's brother, Jeb Bush, helped steal the election for him in Florida, so I think Bush family history is very, very significant and important, and it was almost completely overlooked, and continues to be.”

Later in the interview, Kellner works in a few more whoppers:

“The Bush family is unusually corrupt and scandalous, as I learned when I was a Professor at the University of Texas. I was in Texas for over twenty-five years, and for eighteen years I had a public access TV show, Alternative Views. So I interviewed everyone in town. People like Ralph Yarborough, who'd beat Papa Bush in the 1958 Texas Senate race and seriously hated him. John Henry Faulk, the folk humorist who wrote Fear on Trial and broke the blacklist, was a sharp Bush critic; John Stockwell who was the head of the CIA Angola operation, and who worked under Bush when he was CIA director discussed Bush's role in Iran-Contra, in arming Islamic radicals in Afghanistan when they were fighting the Soviets, and his close connections with Noreiga [sic] and Saddam Hussein, before he turned on them. These people had story after story about the Bush family and how corrupt and dangerous they were.

Ross Perot, as you might remember, ran against Bush I as president in 1992 in part because he was upset about the corrupt business practices of the three Bush boys.

Mother Jones had a great cover story about that time called "My Three Sons" that documented Neil Bush's S&L scandals, all of the corrupt real estate and housing and different business deals that Jeb Bush was involved with in Florida, allegedly involved with real Mafioso type of crooks. And George W. Bush basically made his fortune through Harken Oil and many of his biographers claim that he engaged in insider trading, just like the Enron crooks. This insider trading story circulated during the 1994 Ann Richards' campaign and was widely discussed in Texas. So far the national media have not bothered to look into allegations that George W. Bush had himself assimilated his initial nest egg through insider trading.”

Look at all this information, Kellner fairly screams.  How is it that nobody has the cojones to report it?  Given the less than chummy relationship between Bush and the mainstream media, a massive conspiracy seems unlikely.  Remember too that the media Kellner slams for refusing to run Bush/Nazi connection stories is the same one that tried to sink Bush’s 2004 re-election effort with the false National Guard expose.  Like most conspiracy theories, Kellner’s contention doesn’t pass a basic standard of believability.

Lack of mainstream attention doesn’t stop Kellner from throwing around his Nazi theory as though it were an established fact.  Nazism, in fact, is something of an obsession for Kellner.  Kellner has spoken seriously of a “Bush Reich,” and said that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2004 Republican Convention remarks

“sounded like a Nazi speech for Hitler, as Arnold gushed about Bush's vision, will, courage, perseverance, steadfastness, and capacity for action, gushing “He’s a man of inner strength.  He is a leader who doesn’t flinch, doesn’t waver, and does not back down.”  Heil Bush!” 

Alas, not even here do the Nazi associations stop.  In his article “Media Spectacle and Politics in the Contemporary Era,” Kellner speaks of an unnamed “many” who “believe the United States is devolving into fascism under Bush and Cheney.”  Worse yet, “it is not the sort of “friendly fascism” that Bertram Gross described in 1982, for never has a more vicious bunch occupied the higher levels of government. Like Hitler and German fascists, the Bush-Cheney clique use the Big Lie to promote its policies, promote aggressive militarism in the quest for world hegemony, and relentlessly promote the economic interests of the corporations and groups that finance it.”

            In the “Media Spectacle” article, Kellner sets out to put some meat on the bones of his “big lie” claims with an examination of Bush’s language, which he calls “Bushspeak.”  Kellner, however, is not making predictable jokes about Bush’s common malapropisms.  Rather, he criticizes, in one example, Bush’s “incessant assurance that the “evil-doers” of the “evil deeds” will be punished, and that the “Evil One” will be brought to justice, implicitly equating bin Laden with Satan himself.”  Kellner’s complaint sets a new low standard for the hate-America crowd, as it literally disputes the idea that Osama Bin Laden can properly described as evil, and denies that we can logically distinguish between Islamofascists and Western democracy.  To Kellner’s way of thinking (which is similar to that of fellow radicals Robert Watson and Saree Makdisi, only taken to an even greater extreme), we have no right to call our attackers evil, since they say the same thing about us.  If society were operated from this assumption, it would be impossible to draw conclusions about anything so long as the point were disputed by two sides.  Someone says Hitler was a bad man, another person says he was a good man.  Kellner and his postmodernist ilk absorb the dispute, then throw up their collective hands, having decided that because each side strenuously insists the other is in the wrong, we can never know the truth.

            Expanding on his Bushspeak theme, Kellner says:

“Such hyperbolical rhetoric [Bush’s use of the word ‘evil’] is a salient example of Bushspeak that communicates through codes to specific audiences, in this case domestic Christian rightwing groups that are Bush’s preferred subjects of his discourse. But demonizing terms for bin Laden both elevate his status in the Arab world as a superhero who stands up to the West, and angers those who feel such discourse is insulting. Moreover, the trouble with the discourse of “evil” is that it is totalizing and absolutistic, allowing no ambiguities or contradictions. It assumes a binary logic where “we” are the forces of goodness and “they” are the forces of darkness. The discourse of evil is also cosmological and apocalyptic, evoking a cataclysmic war with cosmic stakes. On this perspective, Evil cannot be just attacked and eliminated one piece at a time, through incremental steps, but it must be totally defeated, eradicated from the earth if Good is to reign. This discourse of evil raises the stakes and violence of conflict and nurtures more apocalyptic and catastrophic politics, fuelling future cycles of hatred, violence, and wars.”

            From any other professor, this brainless sort of criticism might cause the reader to wonder if the ideas were badly edited or if the author was having an off day.  But this is Kellner, the kind of person who’s hosted television shows about the Trilateral Commission.  He’ll believe, and say, anything that crosses his frontal lobe.  His derision for speaking in absolutes, even when discussing no-brainer issues like terrorism, is a legitimate sample of his thinking.

And conspiracies?  Kellner’s got plenty.  Take the following example in Kellner’s exchange with the United Kingdom outlet of the hate-America news collective “Indymedia”:  

(UK Indymedia): “Most anti-war activists and journalists in Europe assume that the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings resulted from a conspiracy which likely involved Bush Administration officials – in order to provide a pretext for the subsequent U.S. military attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq. In the U.S., however, 9/11 conspiracy researchers have often been ridiculed by various U.S. corporate and alternative media gatekeepers or pundits, in the same way that Oliver Stone was ridiculed following the release of the JFK movie. Why do you think most U.S. left media editors are less willing than their European counterparts to publish articles that provide their anti-war readers with evidence of possible Bush Administration involvement in a conspiracy which resulted in the September 11, 2001 collapse of the World Trade Center buildings?

 Kellner: In my book, I explore the case for conspiracy and conclude that either the Bush administration knew the attacks were coming and exploited them to push through their rightwing domestic and foreign policy or they were utterly incompetent, failing to see all of the obvious signs of the coming Al Qaeda attack. Whether there will ever be a thorough investigation that gets to the bottom of the 9/11 attacks, or whether like the Kennedy assassination, it continues to be a source of speculation and theorizing, remains to be seen.”

             How civilized of Keller!  He’s not sure whether the 9/11 attacks were a case of Bush administration conspiracy, but he’s keeping an open mind.  An open mind, that is, that concludes that whether it was outright conspiracy or mere incompetence, the Bush administration is at fault.  This, come to think of it, is Kellner’s default position on everything political.

             Lest the reader assume that Kellner’s conspiracy theories revolve merely around the current executive branch, Kellner wrote about a number of other issues before his burning hatred of Bush obliterated all other conscious thought from his brain-pan.  In his article “Presidential Politics: The Movie,” Kellner writes: 

“Furthermore, if you are a conspiracy buff, and U.S. politics and cinematic culture nurtures such perspectives, Carter was ultimately done in by another film, a behind the scenes spy thriller, which never floated to mainstream media perception. In this largely untold and unknown story, the Reagan-Bush team was negotiating with the Iranians to keep the U.S. diplomats hostage until after the election in return for payment in arms and murky diplomatic promises. There was indeed precedent for such (treasonous) behind the scenes scullduggery. [sic] There were reports in several later history books that in 1968, when poor old Hubert Horatio Humphrey (HHH) was engaged in a close presidential race with Richard Nixon, the deceitful and villainous Henry Kissinger, in cahoots with a Vietnam Tiger Lady, blocked LBJ’s peace negotiations with the Vietnamese. HHH barely lost the election, and the Vietnam war went on, eventually leading to the first major U.S. military defeat. Although several books were later to document Kissinger’s perfidy, and a string of other political crimes, the villainous Kissinger was able to survive and thrive as a corporate deal-maker and political mucker, and so far no muckraking film has taken him down.

Cut to 1980 and another covert spy thriller: The Reagan-Bush team is worried about an “October Surprise,” the release of Iranian hostages, that would give Carter a boost in popularity, overcome his biggest negatives, and win him the presidency.

Consequently, the Reagan-Bush team opened up “back door” diplomatic relations and negotiated with the Iranians to continue to hold the American diplomats hostage until after election. Several Iranians and arms dealers involved in the exchange confirmed the story, as did several foreign intelligence services that had high level Reagan team officials, including former CIA director and Vice-President candidate George H. W. Bush, meeting with Iranians. Moreover, the U.S. hostages were released on the day of Reagan’s inauguration, U.S. arms started showing up in Iran, an Israeli plane crashed in Turkey carrying U.S. arms, and the later events of the Iran/Contra affair situate a great crime – and so far unmade Oliver Stone film – at the origins of the Reagan presidency.

Hence, although one could indeed argue that the Reagan administration was an unmitigated disaster, it was not presented in this way by the media or any films or television programs and was thus not perceived negatively on the whole by broad sectors of the public, either then nor now. In fact, generally speaking, certain political or economic scandals and failures do not make for good movies or coherent narratives, as these events, like the S&L scandal, or Iran-Contra are too complex to capture in an easily consumable film. There are, arguably, great films to be made of Reagan era scandals but since many of the major participants are now in the Bush II administration and the population is hysterized by Terror War, it is highly unlikely that there will be a cultural and political reconstruction and rethinking of the Reagan era in the near future. Thus Reagan’s acting presidency is still one of the most successful presidential narratives of recent history.”

            Kellner tells tales of alleged Republican conspiracy and crime with such obvious relish.  And why not?  Conspiracy theories are like the theory of institutional racism: they aren’t based on empirical evidence, so they can’t actually be disproved.  And, like institutional racism, conspiracy theories serve to confirm fervently-held but essentially unprovable suspicions.  It’s no surprise, then, that conspiracy theories work with everyone: from an angry ghetto youth convinced that someone else is responsible for his bad grades and inability to attend a good school, to the sophisticated white college professor nursing an unnamed grudge against Texas conservatives.  And never mind if there’s no evidence.  This is an article of faith.  As such, even a lack of evidence is proof of a cover-up.

            Kellner goes on like this, article after article, book after book.  It’s a rich harvest, and trying to cover all of it is impossible in all but the broadest summaries.  But there are plenty of highlights.  The 1991 Gulf War?  Kellner believes it was a stage-managed drama, the media muzzled while America rained undeserved devastation on the defenseless Iraqi Army.  The media?  They’re not liberal, but rather, corporate lapdogs that only attacked one president in the past 25 years – the only one who was not a Republican.  And if you thought there was nothing in common between Bush, Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein other than a trio of military conflicts, well, you haven’t been keeping up on your Kellner.  His idea?  Because all three invoke God and speak of victory over an enemy, none is more moral than the other is.

            In several of his articles, Kellner clucks at Bush for supposedly using polarizing, Manichean language to deliver his “Big Lies” – a so-called “Bushspeak.”  This criticism comes from someone who derides the president as “Bush Junior,” “Bush II,” a “rascal,” a “fascist,”  and every other radical-derived slur known to man.  If the war of words against Islamic terrorism constitutes a Bushspeak, then Kellner’s constant invective certainly qualifies for its own name – let’s call it Kellnerspeak.