Condi - Rutgers - PJ O'Rourke's childish column demeaning Rutgers U.

[underpants]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/18/my-commencement-speech-to-rutgers-geniuses-go-forth-and-fail.html

by P. J. O’RourkeMay 18, 2014 6:45 am EDT
Greetings, Class of 2014. So Condoleezza Rice was too offensive for you. Just wait until Monday morning. Did you learn how to spell KFC?

I hear Condoleezza Rice stood you up. You may think it was because about 50 students—.09 percent of your student body—held a “sit-in” at the university president’s office to protest the selection of Secretary Rice as commencement speaker. You may think it was because a few of your faculty—stale flakes from the crust of the turkey pot pie that was the New Left—threatened a “teach-in” to protest the selection of Secretary Rice.

Condoleezza Rice was named National Security Adviser in December 2000, less than a year before some horrific events that you may know of. She became Secretary of State in 2005 ~~~that is quite a leap you took there PJ~~~ during an intensely difficult period in American history (which your teach-in was not going to teach you much about). And she saw the job through to the end of the fraught and divisive George W. Bush presidency, making moral and ethical decisions of such a complex and contradictory nature that they would have baffled Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle (of whom I suppose, perhaps naively, you have heard) put together.

Some of your professors don’t believe that Secretary Rice would be worth listening to. Some believe you need to be taught to disapprove of her morals and ethics. I am quoting your state’s Star-Ledger newspaper: “‘Attending the teach-in will be a strong signal that we will not sit quietly while a small group of irresponsible people dishonor our beloved university,’ said history professor Rudolph Bell.”

Rudolph “Jingle” Bell. It is to be hoped poor Rudolph doesn’t have a very shiny nose.

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. P.J. O'Rourke is a right-wing nutjob.

I've met him (a good friend is his first cousin and we've both attended said friend's daughters' weddings) and he's way out there.

[billhicks76]

5. PJ Officially An Alcoholic Fool

She is a war criminal. She lied about 911 and WMD in Iraq. She's lucky to even be walking free.

[struggle4progress]

6. +

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. I look forward to listening to Ms Rice

just as soon as she's on the stand at the Hague. Graduation is supposed to be a joyous occasion, not one on which to be lectured by war criminals.

And to be honest, I think this whole 'college is a place to be exposed to all sorts of viewpoints' stuff to be bunk, probably thought up by some right winger. I didn't go to college to hear the 'fair and balanced' idiocy being put forth by people who refuse to study enough science to understand why their opinions don't deserve to be considered equally with actual scientific results. I went to learn actual science, to find out about reality, not to learn about the fantasies upon which poor policies that result in criminal actions were based.

You can have opinions about many things, and sometimes those opinions are equally valid. But opinions are nowhere near equal to actual facts or data or statistical correlations, and in many areas, they're completely irrelevant.

It's bad enough to be given the usual pablum about how you can 'be anything you want' if you 'work hard' at graduation. To have war criminals lecture you is even more disgusting. I would have gotten up and walked out of any of my graduation ceremonies if any of the Bush cabal of war criminals were given the podium to spend time trying to rewrite history.

[underpants]

3. +

[marble falls]

4. Oh well. Maybe he's got a "new" book to flog and he's trying to raise a buzz.