Doctorow's Malpractice (Hofstra students use boos responsibly)

Opinion Journal.Com ^ | 5/25/04 | Peggy Noonan

[jocon307]

Did you hear about the college commencement speaker who was almost booed off the stage Sunday because his commencement address was an anti-Bush rant? The speaker was E.L. Doctorow. The college, God bless it forever, was Hofstra University on New York's Long Island.

Newsday reported that Mr. Doctorow--or, as Newsday put it in the first paragraph, "E.L. Doctorow, one of the most celebrated writers in America"--gave a 20-minute address "lambasting President George W. Bush and effectively calling him a liar." It didn't go over too well. Mr. Doctorow announced to the crowd that he himself is a storyteller. But the president too, he said in a flight of dazzling cleverness, is a storyteller. The president's stories are not so good thought "because they are not true."

This is where the booing began.

[jocon307]

Long Island's finest moment in my lifetime. Good on 'em.

They have not forgotten.

[JDoutrider]

The liberals are finally gettin a taste of their own medicine...to this I humbly add..Thank GOD!

[martin_fierro]

Here's the money line:

I am a conservative. I have spoken at three college commencements. Each time I spoke I talked about the students, and the life ahead of them, and the nature of their achievement. I spoke to them about them. I didn't tell them Jimmy Carter is a retard or Bill Clinton is a pig. It would have been wrong to do that. It would have been boorish. It would have deserved boos.

[saquin]

Proud Hofstra alumnus here. Class of '92.

[jocon307]

agreed martin, agreed.

You know, I think we conservatives call it "manners".

[Clemenza]

Kudos to every New Yorker's favorite safety school for showing that they know a CLYMER when they see one!

E.L. Doctorow is the most OVERRATED authour of the second half of the twentieth century. May he be forgotten in the current one...

[Bubba_Leroy]

Agreed, though this one was a close second:

Fast Eddy Doctorow told a story at the commencement all right, and it is a story about the boorishness of the aging liberal. An old '60s radical who feels he is entitled to impose his views on this audience on this day because he's so gifted, so smart, so insightful, so very above the normal rules, agreements and traditions.

[Clemenza]

The sad thing is, Nassau and Suffolk counties will still probably go for Kerry, as they have gone Dem in every election since 1992.

[IncPen]

I am a conservative. I have spoken at three college commencements. Each time I spoke I talked about the students, and the life ahead of them, and the nature of their achievement. I spoke to them about them. I didn't tell them Jimmy Carter is a retard or Bill Clinton is a pig. It would have been wrong to do that. It would have been boorish. It would have deserved boos.

Reminds me of Mary Matlin's famous line in the '92 campaign: (paraphrasing) "Others may call Bill Clinton a dope smokin' skirt chasing liar. But we would never do that."

[Dont Mention the War]

Kudos to every New Yorker's favorite safety schooling that they know a CLYMER when they see one!

LOL!

E.L. Doctorow is the most OVERRATED authour of the second half of the twentieth century. May he be forgotten in the current one...

That's likely to happen. The first thing I thought about this story when I heard of it a few days ago was, "E.L. Doctorow? There's a name I haven't heard for a while!"

[Ruth A.]

Yeah for Peggy--once again.

(By the way if he were a conservative, Newsday would have described him as "conservative writer Ed Doctorow, who had a bestseller in 'Ragtime' in 1974," not "one of the most celebrated writers in America.")

Thank you for the parenthetical insight. For being a "celebrated" writer, he rang no bells for me. Perhaps they meant: one of the most obscure minor American authors.

[NYCVirago]

Doctorow, and these other liberal commencement speakers who feel the need to bash Bush, seem to have forgotten that graduation day is not about them -- it's about the students. I had a Democratic senator speak at my college graduation -- he kept politics out of his speech, and I was grateful. Unfortunately, we had some lefty protestors calling him a war criminal and trying to disrupt the graduation, which ticked me off to no end, but that's another story.

[samtheman]

The first thing I thought about this story when I heard of it a few days ago was, "E.L. Doctorow? There's a name I haven't heard for a while!"

Which is precisely why he pulled this rude prank. Michael Moore has shown the way. You can be a fake intellectual snob, a boring psuedo-intellectual slob, and get wide recognition simply by bashing Bush.

[Mich0127]

That was classic...Hofstra is a liberal breeding ground (I am at the law school there)!

I wish I went...I would have thrown water balloons at that weenie!

They always let these leftist nuts speak out and litter our beautiful campus with propoganda and stickers (which Jmstein7 and myself spent 15 minutes scraping off of a lampost!)

[Tabi Katz]

"I thought this was a totally appropriate place to talk about politics because that's the world our students are entering," sociology professor Cynthia Bogard told Newsday. "I only wish their parents had provided them a better role model."

Sociology, huh? Not surprising. I don't know whether to be thoroughly ashamed of myself for having chosen such a major in my younger, dumber days, or proud that I somehow made it through without becoming a mind-numbed liberal!

Someone would do well to inform dear Ms. Bogard that not all college students are entering the world of the Dumbocratic National Committee, and parents are not obligated to indoctrinate their children with idiocy, as she and Doctorow no doubt believe. The word "Chutzpah" comes to mind.