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Thursday, April 13, 2006

Leftwing media day!

Today’s a great day, everyone!  No, it’s not because David Horowitz is comin’ to town and you’d better be good for goodness’ sake.  It’s Jamie’s Special Olympics track-and-field day!  Surely you remember last year’s debut, in which Jamie ran his first-ever 50m in 14.82 seconds.

We’re looking to shave at least a second off that time this year.  I’m bringing the digital camera and will be sure to let you know!

Now, as for matters Horowitzian.  Yes, it will be a day full of cognitive dissonance, but that’s just fine with me.  We’re Cognitive Dissonance Central around here.  At 5:15 today, the good folks at Radio Free Penn State are having me back, this time for a 45-minute conversation with Professor of Education David Warren Saxe.  Then at 6:30 this evening, I’m taking part in a Celebration of Horowitz on the steps of the Penn State library.  It should be fun!  My float is almost done.  Thanks to everyone who stopped by and helped with the carnations!

As for the Great Man Himself: in honor of his visit to my fair campus, I am not going to say anything to discredit him on this blog today.  Instead, I will let David do the job himself.

For you might imagine that David Horowitz would be feeling pretty good about things.  His book is national news, available in thousands upon thousands of bookstores from coast to coast, even in airports.  He has just concluded a rollicking conference in which he picked up the support of people like Lamar Alexander and new House Majority Leader John Boehner.  He’s been on Hannity & Colmes at least half a dozen times in recent weeks, as well as the Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough shows.  He’s testified to Pennsylvania’s subcommittee on academic freedom and written about the experience in the Los Angeles Times.  Is he pleased with all the attention?  Is he happy about how conservative media have been the wind beneath his wings?

Um, no.

Here’s his blog post from this Sunday, April 9:

Getting my message out is harder than you think. The media work off the talking points of the teacher unions. And so far I am getting virtually no help at all from the conservative press (Human Events and the Washington Times excepted) or from conservative websites.

The poor dear!  Walking around the country with nothing but a hand-lettered sandwich board, David Horowitz is getting virtually no help at all in getting his message out.

For who can underestimate the power of the teachers’ unions to dictate their agenda to the mass media?  Remember when American Federation of Teachers president Edward J. McElroy advised the Bush Administration that the United States would be “greeted as liberators” if we invaded Iraq, and the Washington Post, ever the AFT lapdog, promptly fell in line behind the invasion?  And who can forget the machinations of the National Education Association, whose press liaisons worked together with Judith Miller of the New York Times to spread the news that Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA agent and that Iraq was only minutes away from deploying weapons of mass destruction? 

It’s true, David Horowitz appeared on Fox News.  But even there, he was hounded and persecuted:

Those who saw the Hannity & Colmes segment may have noted that Colmes accused me of promoting legislation in Ohio that would give the state power over education and restrict professors’ speech. This is standard fare for the leftwing media (and for libertarian media like Reason and the Wall Stret Journal).

Well, it’s true, Horowitz has no Stret Creed with the Wall Stret Journal.  Unhinged as the WSJ can be when it comes to Clintonistan, they tend to let the Michael Savage / David Horowitz wing of the party operate on a different frequency.  And as for Fox News, what can you expect from leftwing media?  They have that powerful Alan Colmes, who dares to suggest that David Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights was sponsored in Ohio by state senator Larry Mumper, who famously said that universities should stay out of “religion and politics.” Suggesting that the Ohio bill have restricted professors’ speech is just standard fare for the loony left.  And, as Horowitz notes,

It is also false. I have no legislation in Ohio that would do any such thing. I had legislation in the form of a resolution which would not have restricted professor’’s speech or introduced any statutory requirements. But the legislators who sponsored the resolution agreed to withdraw it (with my blessing) when Ohio’s universities agreed to institute academic freedom reforms that will protect students from political discrimination and encourage intellectual diversity.

Despite these facts which are irrefutable the campaign of lies against my efforts continues; leftwing operatives feed journalists and talk show anchors like Alan with these lies and they repeat them. This campaign is complimented by a ferocious campaign of slander to portray me as a liar and my facts as unreliable. (See dangerousprofessors.com for some of these attacks.) This pincer movement couldn’t be more diabolical or unprincipled.  And is aided by the silence of the conservative media which—with the exceptions mentioned above—has yet to come to my defense.

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Hmmm.  Narcissistic personality disorder much?  Why, he doesn’t even thank Pat Robertson for all his help in rooting out leftist campus killers. You know, maybe conservative media should think twice about promoting this guy.  He sounds kinda whining and ungrateful, don’t you think?  And kinda pathetic, even.

THUGGERY UPDATE, April 14:  Ralph Luker, ordinarily a wonderful blogger, agrees that I am “thug-like” when I criticize his hero, KC Johnson.  You know KC—he’s the fellow who wrote on Campus Watch, “the Chronicle of Higher Education published an essay by Penn State English professor Michael Bérubé advising professors to treat conservative students as they would students with learning disabilities or who exhibited aberrant behavior.” That was over a year ago. When KC has the intellectual honesty or the common human decency to retract or apologize for that remark, we’ll consider him something other than a Horowitz protégé.  (Actually, Horowitz has done some serious hatchet work on my essays, as you know.  But even he’s never gone quite that far.)

Posted by Michael on 04/13 at 08:52 AM
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