Professor Morrissey

The British pop media have been debating the incident in which Morrissey walked off the stage during a concert, because someone in the crowd had tossed a beer bottle on stage, hitting him on the head. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/nov/09/morrissey-walks-offstage The question was whether Morrissey was justified in refusing to continue the concert, thereby denying a crowd their 30-40 pounds worth of pleasure.

It is not too hard to imagine why Morrissey walked off the stage: he did not really want to be there in the first place. Twenty-five years after his youthful stardom, it must be no fun slogging around small venues in the north of England when you have become accustomed to Los Angeles. But the bills must be paid, and discs sold, so even aging dandies need to mount a well-lit platform to woo and wow the masses.

Professors can be a little like petulant rock stars, too, without the high pay, stimulants and groupies, of course. They, too, can grow tired of their audiences, they, too, can wish for anything but to teach the same course over and over again. Tom Jones may have enough work class grit in him to belt out "She's a lady" for decades on end, but lots of high strung professors get really sick and tired of teaching "Ode to a Grecian Urn," or Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," or subject-noun agreement in both English and French. I bet even chemists run through the definition of a mole with the speed of Dylan revisiting an old tune.

But not all of aged stars, and professors, feel so. The key is never to blame the students—or the audience in Morrissey's case. It is a weary old saying but alas it is so: They are there to learn, as well as be entertained. That they can't properly form the passive voice should not be held against them. It is incumbent on professors to explain. And if they only know the lyrics to "Girlfriend in a Coma" and nothing else, then, sadly, Morrissey needs to show them once again how the song goes.

Instead of walking out on the crowd, you can turn your ire against the system that obliges you to teach the same courses over and over again. You can blame the university press that did not accept your manuscript last year. You can blame your spouse for not wanting to take that job in Oregon. Whatever you like, just don't blame the audience, even if they give you a hung-over explanation for why they did not turn the paper in on time. Beer bottles get tossed around on campus, perhaps not directly at professors, but some of it splashes out in the class room,--in the form of lethargy, lateness and all around ignorance. And in the end, professors have options old rock stars lack.

Plenty of old professors are pleased to have an audience. They may have no connection to the undergraduate life, but they are glad that folks are still showing up to hear them run through their greatest hits. Once they realize that the house in the Hamptons is not a natural born privilege, they don't mind singing "Luka" one more time-- with feeling.

Even though a make-up concert is the planning, http://www.nme.com/news/morrissey/48330 my analogy can only go so far: professors almost never leave a class halfway through their own lecture and Morrissey was always a bit of a whiner (unlike us academics).