Posted on 09/25/2007 1:51:47 AM PDT by suspects
If you’re Adolf Hitler’s agent and you’re trying to book a speaking gig, who do you call: Columbia University or the Carolina School of Straight Chiropractic?
If you’re looking for a student to slap on a circuit board and Silly Putty and head for the airport, do you ask a drunk coed from the community college or dial MIT?
If you want something done that’s really, really stupid, you need to find someone who is really, really smart. Or thinks they are, anyway.
I had this epiphany reading reviews of the newest exhibition at the Boston Center for the Arts. Entitled “Work Number 227: The Lights Going On and Off,” artist Martin Creed’s (for lack of a better term) “work” consists entirely of an empty gallery where the overhead lighting is turned on and off at five-second intervals.
Who is dumb enough to pay good money for that? Why smart people, of course.
There isn’t a self-respecting junior-high art teacher in Massachusetts who’d let a student pull this scam. But the Hub’s connoisseurs of haute couture have forked over big bucks for the artistic equivalent of “The Clapper” ($19.95 plus shipping and handling). And they’re proud of it.
Members of the MIT faculty are on record praising the faulty light socket show at the Mills Gallery. This might help explain why one of their own, Star Simpson, got her brilliant idea to strap on a circuit board and make some “art” at Logan Airport.
How dumb do you have to be to wear your “Play-Doh and battery pack” art in a high-security area? Or should I ask “how smart?” Because there isn’t an illiterate redneck in West Virginia who would try the stunt pulled by MIT’s super-Star.
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...
The invitation to Iran’s leader may seem less surprising, but no less disturbing, when one recalls that in 1933, Columbia president Nicholas Murray Butler invited Nazi Germany’s ambassador to the United States, Hans Luther, to speak on campus, and also hosted a reception for him.
"Today, right now, soldiers and Marines who are not allowed to participate in ROTC on Columbia’s campus are being attacked with weapons from Iran. How many Americans do you have to kill before you’re no longer welcome among Ivy League elitists?"
THAT is the crux of the whole thing--they allow this guy his free speech because that's what this country's all about, but allow recruiters on campus to help DEFEND that right to free speech which is the opposite of all this jerk stands for? HELL no!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119068446644638286.html
And yet Jewish students continue to enroll in the very expensive Columbia by the thousands each fall. And I haven’t heard reports of any withdrawing in response to this barbarian Holocaust denier being invited to speak there. Little wonder Bollinger and his ilk think it’s no big deal.
I guess I just don’t see the POINT in having him speak. I could understand bringing some controversial figure who rarely speaks in public there, but what was the purpose of this? He said nothing he hasn’t said before.
It was perfectly excusable to host the Nazi ambassador in 1933. Not so excusable in 1940. On the Iran timescale this is 1944, we know everything we need to about this little Shiite.
I think during times of hardship, a “conservative” view is the only one that works. Liberalism with all it’s little frivolities, can only seem to work if there is great excess and it’s easy for someone to make their way in the world. All those petty indulgences that a liberal thinks are of primary importance, all pale in comparison to something like survival, but since their survival is easily assured, they can forget about the truly important issues and worry about their ego.
Liberals can only be found where the excess is highest and they can still make a living without any understanding of how the world works. In effect liberals are trying to live on icing, without any idea of how to make a cake. Its like they always say... the fights in academia are so bitter because so little is at stake. their survival is assured by tenure, and that leaves them to indulge every little frivolous whim.
Eliminate tenure, and in a generation you will bring academia back to the political center, at the very least. Who knows...they might even lower themselves to start teaching again.
Mark
Exactly. He was going to be getting ample airtime for his “views” via his speeches at the UN and National Press Club. Providing an opportunity for a view that has been suppressed to be aired could be a legitimate thing for a university to do, despite the views being odious to the civilized mind, but that’s not what was going on here. Someone suggested that there may have been a behind-the-scenes deal to get the release of the Columbia alumnus who was being held prisoner in Iran, and my understanding is that said alumnus was indeed released shortly before the speech began. Not acceptable, in my view, but at least it would provide some sort of rational explanation for why Columbia did this.
IN - EFFIN - CREDIBLE!
Well said.
Liberalism and survival situations simply don’t mix.
Around these parts we refer to him as Timothy Snackwell.
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