As for the “tame-ness” of the comment: I disagree. The homophobic quality of the comment about me makes it far less than tame to me.

Why would students be pissed off about my class? It’s hard for me to read what the kernel of insight is in that statement. I suspect a lot of it has to do with grade inflation at Columbia. About 50% of the students get an A or A- for their end of term grades. My mean is about a 78%. I will curve. But many students have expressed frustration that they aren’t getting a clear A. My classes are very hard. That often pisses students off who are used to being told how wonderful they are. But they also find them rewarding (I get very positive evals – some of the highest in the departments I’ve taught at).

As for the self-indulgence of blogs, I’m actually fairly sympathetic to your position. That said, when I had a blog of my own, I never made any claim that it was a “sociology blog”, nor did I ever ask anyone to read it. Yet some people would read it and have this pissy attitude that it was too much about me and my life and not enough about sociology. While I’ve had more interest in blogging about academia since starting the team blog, I still don’t have much inclination to blog about sociology. I don’t think this means I shouldn’t blog, especially since for God knows what reason there are some people that enjoy the blogging I do. So all I can do is urge others to do their best to ignore me, and I can’t imagine that ignoring me is all that difficult.