REPLACING THE SIMPLE WITH THE CUMBERSOME? Critical Mass has more information about the continuing uproar at Emory University (don't some of these people have papers to grade or research to conduct?) where a faculty member used some barnyard language to describe how colleagues in related disciplines characterized her sub-field. Another faculty member took offense, and the entire Outrage Machine appears to be in motion. Professor O'Connor's key point is this: "As long as individuals like [Emory president James] Wagner and [vice president Robert] Ethridge continue to think that it is possible to strike a "balance" between 'freedom of speech and possible insensitive expression of opinion,' and as long as they think they are the people to do it, Emory will have a big problem." That balance has always been there. Once upon a time, there was something called good manners, perhaps too bourgeois a concept, and too redolent of the Old South, for the Emory administration, and perhaps as well for the professor, who might have been able to characterize her sub-field's marginal status without stirring up the Outrage Machine.