This is Eli Lake and you're listening to the re-education.

Our guest today is Commentary's executive editor, Abe Greenwald, and we will be discussing cry bullies.

There was a time in America when bullies plagued our schools and workplaces.

We all know the type, the jock who stuffed the freshman into a locker,

the terrible boss who berates an employee in front of her colleagues, the yellers, the punchers,

the practical jokers.

And at least when I grew up in the 1980s, the bullies

usually got away with it. Snitching was considered shameful. The best chance one had to defeat a bully

was to fight him yourself. This dynamic was probably best captured in the 1984 movie Revenge of the

nerds, where a group of outcasts at the fictional

Adams College are kicked out of their dormitory in their first week of school after the football

team burns their frat house down in a raucous party. The homeless freshmen try to rush fraternities

to avoid living in cots laid out at the gymnasium, but no one accepts them. So they form their own

frat and the jocks go to war with them. Eventually, the nerds learned to stick up for themselves

and in the process stick it to the jocks. You just got your asses whipped by a bunch of goddamn nerds.

As you hear in this clip, the coach, played in the scene by young John Goodman,

implores the bullies to exact revenge.

Well, if I was you, I'd do something about it.

He incites a pogrom.

The bullies burn the nerd frat house.

I'll get up and redeem myself in the eyes of my father, my maker, and my coach.

Well, let's get those nerds.

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