Okay. Sorry if I got the wrong impression.
I will point out that the people who are in positions to get the chair in the first place already have rather secure employment compared to the rest of us, so I’m not crying over their lot in life, especially since so few of them seem inclined to stop the slide into proletarianization of the humanities more broadly.
I admit to tenure. But I worked as an adjunct before I got a full time job, and I keep hounding on the exploitation of adjuncts. One reason it sucks to be chair is the absolute lack of power: If you say to admin, I want to open a new full-time faculty line, you’ll get back “Yeah, no, just hire more adjuncts.” The only thing that might work, maybe, perhaps, is unionizing and then having contingent faculty unions cooperate with full-time unions (often different unions), in order to leverage bargaining power more broadly. But I don’t know.
Hopefully, you’re in a place where that’s feasible. I’m afraid I’m not. That would be the final nail in the coffin, as it were.
And for the record, I’m annoyed not that people get tenure (the fact that you adjuncted and managed to get tenure gives me some small bit of hope). The point of getting tenure is to give job security for what can be a contentious job. Too many people seem to see this a permission to ignore the larger picture of what’s happening in academia. There is a singular unwillingness to reach a hand down for too many people who do have tenure already, especially at the point of being in a position to be in a leadership position in a department, ya know. Maybe it’s different in your department, but the one I’m in now has been making noise about things like job diversity, but has done little to practically address the issue.
Here’s a link to a score you can play while watching the video:
I’d prefer the analogy of two libertarians fighting over the last can of creamed corn in a prepper bunker.
Those dung beetles don’t take no shit!
Well, I suppose they do take shit. They’re dung beetles. I mean they don’t take shit off each other.
Well, that’s not right either. They are literally trying to take shit off each other.
I’m not very good at this.
“The critic’s symbol should be the tumble-bug: he deposits his egg in somebody else’s dung, otherwise he could not hatch it.”
– Mark Twain (Notebook, 1904)
But you’re not actually shit at it, though.
I loved the “I wonder which one will win” line and immediately started researching how to set up a global franchise for dung beetle fights (the money’s in the betting). With cock/dog fighting rightly illegal, this could be a natural replacement. (But the first rule of Dung Club…)
Yeah, I saw this footage on Fox News, but it involved Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade fighting over what was a better defense of Trump.
Two politicians running for mayor of [insert name of your city here].
Late-stage capitalism
Goliath beetle wrestling:
My favorite dung beetle clip of all time:
This would make a great reality show. The beetles would have to have numbers of something painted on them to tell them apart. Perhaps they could have sponsors’ names and logos on them. Too bad that can’t be organized into teams.
The first skill that comes to my mind is knowing how to write. That’s a really big deal, and a hard-learned skill, and many people go through four years of college without ever picking it up.
A discussion on the possible metaphorical meaning of a prized, contested-for ball of shit. And a lengthy one, at that.
BBS never lets me down! 
Late-stage Crapitalism.
