Lies.com people are talking about a New York Times reporter’s anti-war commencement speech at Rockford College. As soon as the audience got the gist of what war correspondent Chris Hedges was talking about, they started booing, chanting, and blowing air horns. Several times people in the audience jumped onstage to disconnect Hedges’ microphone.
It’s certainly debatable whether a political speech like Hedges’ belonged at a graduation ceremony. (Although anyone with half a brain would realize a war correspondent for the New York Times might have a thing or two to say about the current conflict.) But what’s much worse is the behavior of the graduates and audience, who couldn’t even sit politely and listen to views counter to their own. My mother taught me to behave better than that.
The press coverage also gets under my skin. “Speaker disrupts RC graduation” reads the headline I linked to above. No, it was the audience that disrupted it. And the saga of poor graduate Mary O’Neill, who was “stunned” by Hedges’ remarks, and left the ceremony “in tears”?
Poor thing.
This story is fascinating because it sheds light on the state of discourse in this country, which is to say, it doesn’t exist. Maybe next year, they can just sing “America The Beautiful” at the Rockford College commencement. It’d make the ceremony shorter, anyway.
The most dangerous thing people are being taught in America today is that by being offended, we are entitled to anything.
In the real world, if you’re offended by something, that’s pretty much tough luck. In the imaginary world of American safety and prosperity, if you’re offended by something, you’ve somehow been raped.
Conservatives talk about liberal whining. They’re such pussies.
The time to protest and voice opinions would have been when the university announced who the speaker was going to be. Not hard to figure out what he was probably going to speak about given the circumstances, as you said.
I remember when graduation commencement speeches were about giving graduates words of wisdom, positive ideas and inspirations they could tuck away for the future.
“In the real world, if you’re offended by something, that’s pretty much tough luck.”
-As far as people being offended and just needing to “deal” with it, I think that the trend of people being offended and personally harmed by anything and everything in this country has been getting out of hand for quite some time and is hardly anything new or confined to conservatives vs. liberal opinions. -From someone being offended when offered a “GOD bless you” by a well-meaning soul to people being brought to tears by a contrary point of view. Can anyone say anything anymore without offending someone? I does not seem so.
It has gotten pretty damn ridiculous, and has been so for quite some time IMHO.
These students learned quite a bit to get their degrees, didn’t they? No independent thinking allowed. Intolerance of differences. Willingness to take violent action when offended. Cry to get your way. Looks like Rockford College may be the model for the Republican educational platform.
“Friendship, or let me say Love, is the most potent enemy of War”
{Booo!}
Sad and telling.
that’s crazy this mentality of clamping down any opposing views about the war my goodness. I see how the students would be upset especially just graduating 2 weeks ago from college myself (YEA!) but getting up and trying to take the mich away that’s not so much “this is not appropriate” to demending that every other person should submit to your will and i’ll make you submit! And yes people should have protested earlier.
Some were talking about press coverage and i saw this article in associated press and i forgot the smart journalist’s name but he made a speach to students about how the media failed to accuratly portray the war by missing the basics we learned in gradeschool the who what when where and how. We only got the were right the war being in iraq. It seemed all the back lash for anitwar prospects sudued the press to cater to the administration. I’m not saying to completely protest and badname the war in the press but it seemed basic debate was not implemented so basically we only got oneside view of the war. No footage was given over the civilians there not that i wanted it shoved in everyone’s livingrooms to promote guilt to stop the war but just put everything out on the table and weigh out what is needed what’s working and that was not done!!! I was so freakin CLUELESS with the media comming through. I keep hearing complainst of a liberal media and yeah maybe that’s right but this article mentioned that you need to question the administration and ideas (which did not happen, or you got smacked visciously if you did which shut a lot of people up!) to make sure we’re on the right path for EVERYONE or try to get somewhere. Essentially the media was displaying the administration, and filtered out anything that would create controversy to spark resistence for what we were doing. People complained about people supporting the troops and i believe a lot of us did but i still want to know all the facts. I felt so lost and helpless with where to go for the right inormation compounded with the backlash of others who are on the other side compounded with the fact that it is all based on little information!! Hope i didn’t offend anyone but really i just wanted to point out that the media didn’t really deliver what really happened with the war dispite 24hr coverage which all of a sudden STOPPED and now i hardly hear a darn thing!!