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Thursday, August 17, 2006

Horowitz Center announces name change

LOS ANGELES— Just six weeks after David Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture almost made local news by changing its name to the David Horowitz Freedom Center, the organization has announced that yet another name change is in the works.

“The David Horowitz Freedom Center turned out to be a little bit unfortunate,” admitted Board of Directors Chair Jess Morgan.  “For one thing, it suggested to our donors that David had been incarcerated and that we were setting up a foundation to ‘free’ him.  You know, like ‘free Mumia’ or ‘free Bobby Seale.’ That came as something of a surprise to our supporters.”

But that wasn’t the only difficulty with the new Horowitz Center, Morgan reported.  “The other problem was that everybody and her brother is attaching their name to ‘freedom’ these days,” Morgan said.  “If it’s perpetual global war you want, you call yourself a ‘freedom center,’ if it’s the Jews and minorities you’re after, you call yourself a ‘liberty lobby.’ It turns out that even Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has a ‘freedom center’ set up somewhere in Beirut.  So the Horowitz Freedom Center wasn’t nearly as salient or as distinctive as we thought it would be.”

In early July, the Horowitz Center sent out a press release that touted Horowitz’s many accomplishments, noting that

David Horowitz, an important American writer and thinker since the 1960s, has been called “the Left’s most brilliant and articulate nemesis.” He is the author of several books, most recently The Professors, which describes the corruption of American universities by political ideologues. He founded the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in 1988 with the intention of establishing a conservative presence in Hollywood and showing how popular culture had become a political battleground. Under his leadership during the next 18 years, the Center attracted 70,000 contributing supporters and established programs such as:

* The Wednesday Morning Club, a lunch forum that provides a platform in the entertainment and media industry for conservative speakers and ideas [not to be confused with the Tuesday Night Music Club];

* Restoration Weekend, an annual event which has featured national leaders of the conservative movement [not to be confused with the American Renaissance Conference];

* The Individual Rights Foundation, an organization that litigates high-profile conservative and libertarian public interest cases [not to be confused with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education];

* Students for Academic Freedom, a national coalition of student organizations with chapters on 160 campuses, whose goal is to end the political abuse of the university and restore its academic integrity [not to be confused with Students for a Democratic Society];

* FrontPage Magazine, the Center’s online journal, features “news of the war at home and abroad.” FPM receives 1.5 million visitors and 620,000 unique visitors a month (with 65 million hits) and is linked to more than 2,000 other websites [not to be confused with the Front Magazine Network]; and

* DiscoverTheNetworks.com, launched in 2005, is the largest publicly accessible database, defining the chief groups and individuals of the Left and their organizational interlocks. DTN has had more than 8 million visitors in its first 18 months of operation [not, not, not to be confused with Discover the Nutwork].

“This is a truly impressive array of activities,” said Morgan, “especially if you don’t know what ‘hits’ and ‘links’ are.  We think ‘Freedom Center’ doesn’t really do it justice.  Here, in just one office with David’s legendarily small staff, you get boatload upon boatload of primo-quality wingnuttery at a discount rate.

“Accordingly, we have decided to rename our enterprise The David Horowitz Savings Center.”

Morgan pointed out that The David Horowitz Savings Center combines the madcap fun of Townhall.com, the wacky unpredictability of Tech Central Station, and the glassy-eyed fanaticism of the Club for Growth—all while offering copies of David Horowitz’s books at astonishingly low, low prices.

“We offer David’s new book, The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party and Turned it into the Pot-Smoking, Free-Loving, Private-Property-Abolishing Phenomenon We Know and Hate Today at a forty percent discount,” said Morgan.  “We offer David’s previous book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America and How They Seized Control of George Soros, Katie Couric, and Ned Lamont at a thirty percent discount. We’re also offering autographed copies for only $50 and personalized copies for $100.  We’re practically giving away The End of Time for twelve bucks—fifty percent off, just for you, very special. Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes is nine dollars. Why Are We in Iraq is $2.05.  These two books we will personally deliver to your house!”

Morgan could not confirm rumors that an extremely rare, “almost error-free” edition of The Professors would be auctioned off to pay for the redesign of the David Horowitz Freedom Savings Center.  “An almost error-free edition of that book would be a real hen’s tooth,” Morgan acknowledged, “and probably almost as valuable, on the open market, as a first edition of Blake’s Songs of Innocence.  I cannot confirm or deny the existence of such an edition at this time.  But hey, listen, while I’ve got you here—if you would be so kind as to take this box of spare copies of Unholy Alliance: How a Radical Son Left His Illusions about the Destructive Generation at the End of Time off my hands, I’d really appreciate it.”

Posted by Michael on 08/17 at 09:12 AM
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