The Commentariat -- May 16, 2014
CW: I'm baaaack! Sort of.
Paul Krugman: The Republican "party's intellectual evolution (or maybe more accurately, its devolution) has reached a point of no return, in which allegiance to false doctrines has become a crucial badge of identity."
Tim Egan: Political correction, from the left & right, is depriving grads "of hearing something that might spoil a view of the world they've already figured out."
News Ledes
AP: "Jeb Stuart Magruder, a Watergate conspirator-turned-minister who claimed in later years to have heard President Richard Nixon order the infamous break-in, has died. He was 79."
New York Times: "The Indian National Congress, which has headed India's government for nearly all the country's post-Independence history, conceded defeat to the opposition leader Narendra Modi on Friday, as voters rendered a crushing verdict on their country's flagging economic growth and a drumbeat of corruption scandals. Election officials had not yet finished counting the 550 million votes cast in the five-week general elections, but the contours of Congress's defeat quickly became clear."
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Reader Comments (13)
This morning's wonderment.
I'm not sure how to react to Tim Egan's piece. On the one hand, I like to consider myself tolerant of diverse opinions (and people); on the other I have a visceral negative reaction to Conde Rice, at least to the policies she supported. I'm disturbed , even embarrassed that a leading university employs her and am actually offended when she appears on television at one of that university's sporting events, sublimating something or other, I would guess. Every time I see her I picture that mushroom cloud that wasn't and am reminded that policy, as academic and abstract as it can be, has real-world consequences, and wonder, brilliant as she might be, if she's ever figured that out.
Had I been a Rutgers student, I'm not sure how I would have dealt with her commencement address selection. If the past is any help here, since I never attended any of my own college graduations, I'd guess if I had not protested, I would have simply skipped the ceremony and urged others to do so, and left Conde to speak to herself, enclosed in her own self-referential bubble. She's had plenty of practice.
But I'd like to know what others think. How far should our liberal genuflection at the shrine of tolerance be carried?
You can vote without showing an ID.
Colbert rightly claims Rove has "shit for brains." Good for a weekend laugh.
http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/pb1byh/karl-rove-on-hillary-clinton-s-health
@Ken
I agree with your perplexity regarding the Egan piece. Obviously differences in opinion and world views are important in a university setting and should be encouraged. Yet, if I were a Rutgers students I feel that I would have taken the same path of resistance. Regardless of her personal "accomplishments", she has lost any semblance of authority in my eyes given her integral role in the Bush debacle and the moral degradations her legacy has imprinted on our country on a global scale, not to mention the devastation and death. Perhaps owning up to her egregious errors could have restored some of her integrity as a public official, but we all we know that's simply not the case. Beyond that, she still believes she has enough credibility to critique the Obama administration and its attempts at finding a suitable conclusion to the Bush administration's legacy of manipulative lies and deceit of which Condi is directly implicated.
In my opinion, once certain unforgivable actions have taken place, those people responsible forfeit their "privilege" to participate in certain social gatherings such as this. Egan oversimplifies the question by considering it as "silencing the opposition", rather it's a moral stand against lies, deceit and torture in the name of our flag and country.
I thought Egan's column was asinine; tolerance, the ultimate excuse for inaction. It's an advertized democracy, which implies that every jackass has a right to speak. But it also implies that others have a right to shout them down.
Ken,
Egan brings up some points, but there are considerations he hasn't minded. First, the concept of a commencement speaker. Okay, I've never been one for censoring speech, but you have to consider that you are providing an invited speaker with a pretty important pulpit with no worries about rebuttals. Just imagine what Paul Ryan would do with that.
He suggests that Rutgers students may have been deprived of Condi's "brisk, strong, witty defense of something (some may) disagree with", Okay, maybe. He goes on to say that that deprivation might be necessary to keep those who have already made their minds up about something from hearing a different point of view. Fine. Different points of view are great. But lies?
Sorry.
I have no idea what she would have said, but her role in tearing apart the lives of millions based on lies is well documented and finely parsed. She HAS no defense for that. So maybe she'd talk about something else. Who knows? But if you're hoping that students will learn that there are other points of view out there in the world during the last few minutes before ending their matriculation, I think it may be too late. This isn't to say that different points of view should not be heard.
One solution may have been to allow her to speak but to offer students, prior to commencement, a variety of forums that would allow for her public roles to be discussed.
I'm not suggesting that commencement is no place for raising issues of national or international import (think of MLK as a commencement speaker talking about civil rights back in the 60's; probably not an acceptable thing for many, but who could argue the importance and salience of those issues?), it certainly could be. And the wishes of the students don't always need to be followed, although they should be addressed. I'm not a fan of sitting through a commencement speech full of empty bromides, but if I'm going to have to listen to Condi Rice go on and on about the wisdom of the conservative mind, I think I would use it as a jumping off spot to start a different conversation with my newly graduated offspring or relative. It could be therapeutic. For both of us.
Knee jerk censorship on either side is abhorrent and rather silly. But I also wonder how far our indulgence should extend to speakers whose points are well known.
Hey, unless she was going to confess her sins and beg forgiveness for supporting the Bush War and Lie Machine.
Hell, I'd pay to sit through that.
Maybe Ms. Rice could have spoken of hubris, and offered a cautionary tale about the corrosive effects of groupthink and wishful thinking.
But, like you Mr. Winkes, I would not have heard it, would be hundreds of miles down the road before the convocation.
Gaudeamus igitur and all that.
I read that Newt Gingrich was unhappy about Karl Rove's "Hillary has brain damage" crack. Apparently Former Speaker Amphibia was upset because it sounds like a personal attack. Wow. Newt Gingrich offended by ad hominem attacks. Kinda like hearing Curtis Lemay complain about bombing runs.
But Newtie also had a problem with the nature of the attack, which hinted at the possibility of future mental incompetency, a charge, he recalled, directed occasionally at his holy divineness, Saint Ronald of Reagan.
But, as usual, there's a big difference.
Clinton is not mentally unstable. Reagan was and there are plenty of first hand accounts of him checking out, zoning out, greying out, whatever you want to call it, during cabinet meetings and national policy discussions. Lesley Stahl, in a memoir of her days as a White House reporter, recalls meeting him in the Oval Office and him not having any idea who she was or why she was there. "Reagan didn't seem to know who I was. He gave me a distant look with those milky eyes and shook my hand weakly. Oh, my, he's gonzo, I thought." A staffer warned her not to ask any questions. Not a statement you want to hear connected to a sitting president.
So, there is a difference. But does it surprise anyone that conservatives' most sacred personage was non compos mentis, at least often enough for everyone to notice, during his tenure in the White House?
"Holy shit, Mr. President! Don't press that button....!"
@Re: Condi: when I heard her "mushroom cloud" bleat, I thought it was the most ridiculous statement by a government official I had ever heard. I haven't changed my opinion since then.
Even if Iraq had had a nuke (which strained credibility) how were they supposed to get it here? Building a nuclear weapon isn't something one does in the basement with a chemistry set. Nor is building a reliable delivery system a piece of cake. What I couldn't understand (and still can't) was how many people swallowed that bullshit. If you're gonna be a winger, check your brain at the door.
Re: "Here's a little sumthin' to mull over in the unemployment line."
Con Rice; " Hi kids, hot huh? Hi parents, expensive, huh? Hi Professors, boring huh? I'm here today to tell you to sell your soul to the devil. Sure at first it seems like a bad deal. After awhile you won't feel the hot poker at all. Lie, cheat, it's all good. Look at me, I got a membership at Augusta National before I bought a set of golf clubs. So forget morality, get on the wagon to hell and the world's your playground. Thank you and where's my check?
JJG,
She gets paid in advance. No money, no speechee.
@Ak ah, the whimpy payment plan! I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a Hamburger today! Or in her case, I will gladly destroy your country today for a WMD Tuesday.
Am so glad there was a discussion here re: the Rutgers/ Rice situation. After I read Egan's piece this morning I mulled it over while going about my chores coming to the conclusion that I would have been one of the protesters. There is a big difference between hearing someone speak who may have diverse views from the majority on the campus and paying someone like Rice that exorbitant fee plus an honorary whatsit who helped lead us into our own mushroom cloudiness by lies and deception. And one wonders who the hell at Rutgers thought it would be a dandy idea to bring her into the fold?
I recently read that Rice has joined the Benghazi crew who keep digging and digging and digging–––as though she has the right to dig at all!
P.S. I bet our C.R. is in the process of moving–-getting ready to say farewell to that sunshine state that promises blue skies but delivers nothing but cloudy days day in and day out. Whatever she is doing I wish her well, but hope she isn't doing too much by herself.