Presumably, you heard the faculty and students at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey revolted against the idea of Condoleeza Rice being their commencement speaker. A commenter over at Alicublog had an appropriate response to the Republicans’ outrage and claims of free speech suppression.
Helmut Monotreme
How uncouth of the students and faculty at Rutgers to be upset by the choice of commencement speakers. After all, who among us has never embroidered the truth? And when we did that didn’t it lead to trillion dollar wars, the de facto legalization of torture, thousands of dead American soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis? So aren’t we all just a little like Condoleeza Rice? Aren’t campaigns to un-invite her to speak at university commencements just a little too much like *some mutually agreed on atrocity* for red blooded Americans to be comfortable with? Shouldn’t we forgive this rich and powerful person and pay her $30000 or $40000 for an hour’s speech?
Well, when you put it like that, the president of Rutgers looks like a real asshole.
Rutgers is in Jersey, right? QED
Aren’t commencement speeches normally sort of honorary things that people do for free? I mean, I would understand a college paying for their flight, a nice hotel, meals, etc. But 40,000 bucks? Maybe I’m naive but I thought people did these things for free (or maybe for an honorary degree), out of the goodness of their hearts.
Perhaps not when it comes to a Bush admin official in Joisey.
My favorite memory re: Rice is is Will Ferrell constantly yelling “Hey Cawn-dee!” in all his Dubya impressions.
Not since the super-charged-financialization of the US Economy.
Colleges Pay Huge Honorariums
Hmm, $30K. Isn’t that the going rate for one adjunct?
Seems pretty high for an adjunct. I can get you two for that price.
decimal point. it’s 3 k
Wow. Now, Toni Morrison is a genius who might actually be worth the money, but still…
Univesity presidents lost their moral compass by duplicating Clark Kerr’s multiversity after Clark Kerr lost his. Wonder how much DoD money was hanging on Condi’s appearance.
Any university president braindead enough to invite Condi in the first place is likely very angry with the members of the “academic community” who forced her cancellation. And also likely hearing the wrath of the Governor and not a few well-heeled alums.
Due to the invasion 200,000+ Iragi dead, a vast majority civilians, 5000 American soldiers, 300 mercenaries. Why would you pay that sociopath to be a commencement speaker? We went from “Greed is good,” to slaughter is good. Let her speak a Cheney’s funeral if he is not already actually dead. This whole no pulse thing is suspicious.
Nice to see students speaking truth to power and winning. If it were up to me (and most of you I’m sure) Condi, Cheney, Rumsfeld and a bunch of others would be in prison for war crimes. But given that we can’t have that, I’m glad we can at least watch them spend the rest of their lives being told they should be ashamed of themselves.
Wait, you mean university students and administrators have free speech rights too? I thought those were only for bigots and war criminals.
I’m sure there’s a very nice University somewhere near The Hague that would just love to invite Condi and Yoo as commencement speakers.
With some “special events” to follow.
I love the way Henny Penny completely dismisses any facts about the Iraq invasion. He gracefully overlooks all this:
It was the worst foreign policy blunder in generations.
It cost over 500,000 lives.
It cost the US over 1 trillion dollars.
It caused a regional power shift and strengthened Iran.
It provided a recruiting poster for al Qaeda.
Bush and Co lied their asses off.
No, here is what matters when you sum up the Iraq fiasco:
Well, yes (re: “looks like a real asshole”).
But then again, the same charge could be pointed at “look forward, not back” Obama for his refusal to hold accountable with War Crime prosecutions the likes of Rice. When he thus legitimizes her, why wouldn’t Rutgers’ (clueless) Prez?
FIRST
Well…yeah!!! He does.
But then…he’s not alone. University administrators up and down the line not only look like assholes, the majority of them are assholes. Any relatively sane college teacher or student will tell you the same thing. The whole administrator establishment that accompanies the burgeoning cancer that we laughingly call a “bureaucracy” in this sad excuse for a country is a nesting place for assholes. Up and down the line, not just in academia. The money is great and the actual work that they do is mostly unchallengeable. How can you rate work that doesn’t really exist? High level administrators always have plenty of ambitious sub-administrators to do the real dirty work for them, so all the bosses really need to do most of the time is play frontman at conferences, delegate authority from the office and hustle fat cats for more money.
The Rutgers guy was just hiring one of his own.
Yeah. Right.
She just sat around delegating authority too. Did she ever waterboard anybody? No, of course not. She was too busy delegating the dirty work to her subordinates.
Which of these two criminals really belongs in prison?
Poor little West Virginia trailer trash-educated Lynddie English or “intellectual royalty” Condoleeza Rice?
Please!!!
There is much talk bandied about on leftiness media about Barack Obama’s “legacy.” The verdict of history regarding his reign? (If indeed real “history” survives the depredations of the all-encompassing surveillance state, a serious question at this moment in time.) That verdict will be a shameful one. He talked the good talk but he didn’t take the necessary actions to back it up.
Take down your frogmarch icon, Booman. It’s false advertising as long as you support the DemRat party as it stands today.
The real criminals are still free and still in power.
Meanwhile, back at the PermaGov ranch…
I got yer prototypical high-level American university administrator, right here. He’s a little…extreme…but the extremity simply defines the type a little better.
William M. Bulger, Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger’s little brother and the insider half of what was a thriving inside/outside team In Boston for 50+ years.
I’d rather deal with Whitey, myself. At least there wouldn’t be any guesswork involved.
Bet on it.
AG
As a Rutgers grad, I’ve been watching this for a while. There basically were two bad decisions here.
The first one was to invite Rice. I never would have invited her and, as some others have suggested, if they’d involved the graduating students in any meaningful way (say by including a couple on the committee picking the speaker), it’s unlikely she would have been invited. This was by far the worst decision.
After that, though, I’m actually kind of proud of the university for neither trying to suppress the response or disinviting her. A real opportunity for comment on her actions in the context of a pretty prominent university event is something I would have liked to see. And, while I wouldn’t have chosen a graduation speech as the venue, it’s good to have unpopular, even incorrect, views expressed on campus, if for no other reason than to give people a chance to correct them. That’s what academe should be.
And so the second bad decision belongs to Rice. Her reason for not attending – that she didn’t want to disrupt what should be a happy day – was transparently false: Most of the activity was going to take place away from and at a different time than the graduation ceremony, and in any event all reports indicated it was only a relatively small number of people. She’s trying to make her decision not to speak about Rutgers, when in fact it’s all about her and her unwillingness to confront her legacy as a key member of the Bush Administration. My suspicion is that, having gotten a taste of what it might be like when she spoke at the University of Minnesota in April, where there were some noisy protests, she decided that she’s going to stick to friendly venues where people will be too polite to tell her what they really think of her. Life in the bubble is much more pleasant, at least for people like her.
No.
They’re for everybody.
Even you.
AG