Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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If I ever launch a political campaign, I'll do it at Bill Ayers' house because I hear Bernadine makes a hell of a cheese ball by JS Magruder The best way to perpetuate the stereotype of Nebraskans being a bunch of backward, narrow minded, corn-fed yokels is, well... to act like a bunch of backward, narrow minded, corn-fed yokels. Naw, I'm not talking about our Safe Haven law, I'm talking about the outrage over Bill Ayers (yeah, him again) being invited to speak at a seminar at the UNL school of education.
I wasn't going to bother writing about this because, come on, I've already spent more time (like, maybe twenty minutes but that's arguably still too much) writing about Bill Ayers than I ever imagined I'd be doing back when he actually was some sort of threat. Now, I'm forced (again) to sit here thinking about someone I previously hadn't thought about since 1971. What's worse, I'm actually starting to feel sorry for the guy. If this weren't so pathetic, I'd think it was actually kind of funny (in a sick way, like when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize) but people are responding to a "terrorist" being invited to
Judging by what I'm hearing on local radio and reading in the comment thread at the paper, the people screaming the loudest don't know squat about the Weathermen, and probably never heard about Ayers until he became an unwilling participant in a Republican dirty trick. I always despised the guy, but I also have enough respect for academic freedom that I'm not penning off angry letters to the Board of Regents. Oh that's right, we send our children to university so they can learn "correct thought." It would be a very sad situation if the result of this was to cave to the fist-waving-loud-mouth-ignorant bullies, and "un-invite" him. I suppose it isn't surprising that our politicians are using this to their advantage (what? Politicians pandering? Impossible!) but it's still a little disappointing. Now this is it. I'm not going to write about Bill Ayers again, unless he gets appointed Secretary Of Education. Before I could even finish typing this, they totally caved and uninvited him, citing 'security' reasons. I guess "security" in the sense of the university needs the financial security of large donors. There you go kids, today's lesson is money talks and you'll think what we want you to think. So long as Obama remains ahead in the polls I'm able to roll my eyes and semi-chuckle as McCain and Palin shriek all this horrid hype about a long-ago bad guy who has, by all accounts, been utterly reformed. But it's going to be a lot less amusing if the McCain-Palin lies and smears encourage someone among their brain-dead believers to take violent action ...  | Latest entry | Recent entries | Older entries | |
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