ASU Flunks Out
I spent this past weekend at a journalism conference hosted at Arizona State University -- specifically at the downtown Phoenix campus at the Cronkite School. It's a sparkling, $71 million building crammed with fetching gadgets, computers, digital newsrooms and studios. The J-School also has some truly outstanding faculty and programs.
Too bad it's all being squandered on a school that ought to be renamed henceforth Podunk U. The geniuses who invited the former president of the Harvard Law Review and the current President of the United States to be its commencement speaker next month have also decided NOT to confer the usual honorary degree on Barack Obama. What a hole that will leave on his trophy wall. How will he sleep at night?
"His body of work is yet to come," says an official at the university in explaining why Obama was not nominated for any "achievement of eminence." Note this is the same university that Obama could have gotten into with half his GPA and his SAT scores.
ASU was a place, in fact, that yours truly considered enrolling in out of high school back in 1968 when, along with the University of New Mexico, it was admitting students with something like a 98.6 body temp and a 2.0 GPA. (Mine was higher, for sure, but I was a lazy student and I kinda liked the idea of going to a bonehead school). In the end, I decided against moving to Tempe and went instead to a local Cal State campus which, much to my delight, turned out to be a radical hotspot. Better an SDS member than a desert-baked Sun Devil fan, any day of the week.
In that context, this whole silly episode is but one more suggestion that -- much as 40 years ago-- we are once again living in revolutionary times. Whether its Lehman Bros. or the local newspaper or, in this case, an ossified state university, it seems there are just more and more institutions that seem increasingly irrelevant. It certainly creates the sensation that if we are not on the cusp of some new era, we damn well ought to be.
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April 9th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
Racism, pure and simple.
April 9th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Well … Marc, it’s not irrelevant.
ASU is one of three schools Obama selected for commencement addresses.
The other two?
Notre Dame and Annapolis.
Each selected because it’s highly relevant for his political strategy.
The honorary degree he could give a fig about …
April 10th, 2009 at 3:46 am
I’m so upset about this I’m going to send a tea bag to the ASU administration. That’ll show them.
(If you’re not familiar with this new form of protest, see this:
http://wonkette.com/407651/best-teabagging-threat-ever
or this:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=teabagging
or go here, to the important new website “Top Conservatives On Twitter” with info for teabagging twits :
http://www.tcotreport.com/
Apparently this idea has roots in Rick Santelli’s CNBC rant to a bunch of commodities traders pissed off about bailouts…or at least mortgage bailouts that weren’t destined for Wall Street…and invoking the Boston Tea Party – which makes the concept especially exciting for participants, because Halloween only comes once a year.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:27 am
“It certainly creates the sensation that if we are not on the cusp of some new era, we damn well ought to be.”
If you would put some of the Mundane astrology forecasters on your faves list you would, in fact, discover that we are on “the cusp of some new era”.
Virtually all good Mundane astrologers have graduate degrees and often are professionals and academics.
This ought to send you all tittering into the night.
April 10th, 2009 at 6:51 am
What a surprise. In a comment extended beyond this topic, reg mocks people who produce and pay taxes but want to keep more of their own money, yet he has shown himself to be behind shiftless people who line up to seize that money with government force. reg hates “working families.”
Why would reg mock a symbolic reference to the Sons of Liberty fighting the Tea Act and support today’s version of the Intolerable Acts over our natural rights?
Maybe reg knows that tax protests worked in our early history and led to freedom from tyranny. reg doesn’t want a repeat of history – not when it’s his highness Obama seizing and squandering the money.
Despite Bradley’s assertion, Obama really does like fancy accolades and would like an honorary degree suitable for American royalty. Perhaps, Obama should be awarded a degree in economics with the hope that he would actually earn it by showing that he understands the subject by stopping this disasterous route to socialism and budgetary blow-outs.
Othewise, give Boy Wonder the honorary degree of Th. D – Doctor of Thinkology, suitable for brainless scarecrows and himself.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:40 am
I can feel Woody’s fauxtrage from here.
Heh, indeed.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:49 am
Marc: we are once again living in revolutionary times
Hey, revolutionary…like the Boston Tea Party!
New Bumper Sticker:
Cuba got “change” in 1959
Be careful what you wish!
April 10th, 2009 at 9:46 am
So when the British lowered the tea tax, the colonists dumped tea off a British ship into the harbor. The event had more to do with the Parliament granting a quasi-monopoly to one group than to the size of the tax, which actually was lowered.
I’ve seen this teabag pseudo-symbology before. Some years ago, one housewife from CA stapled a teabag to a postcard and sent it to some legislator, and ended up being interviewed on television for her particular tax revolt. Her movement is long since forgotten. It was pretty clear that she, too, was ignorant of the actual history of the Boston Tea Party.
Considering that the colonists were arguing for representation in the national government, I wonder what this modern tea party argument is all about, other than the fact that the current minority is unhappy with representative government.
Of course the idea that the modern tea partyists are being manipulated by the top five percent income earners and those who would pay inheritance taxes on multimillion dollar estates, why that is simply unimagined.
April 10th, 2009 at 9:50 am
“ignorant of the actual history”
Hey buddy, you’re talkin’ about Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. These are towering figures of our times….
April 10th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Everybody knows that the founders were Christianist, anti-tax, pro international corporations, universal suffrage-supporting, anti-abortion, pro-drug war, unitary executive-loving, automatic weapon nuts. The line from Sam Adams to Woody is straight and clear, or at least amber, and any attempt at revisionism is just that. Conservatives are fighting for the exact same things the founders stood for, except for slavery which is really the liberals’ fault because Lincoln was a REPUBLICAN.
April 10th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Since ASU is a public university, the administration has to be careful about antagonizing its potential supporters in the legislature–or for that matter among private donors. Since Arizona has enough nuts per capita to have elected a couple of hypocritical whack jobs like John McCain and Jon Kyl, it makes sense for ASU to tread cautiously in awarding a degree to someone who, unlike McCain, actually has written his own book.
Yes, I made this comment especially for Woody, this blog’s resident brick wall, with the significant difference that it is easier to reason with a brick wall.
April 11th, 2009 at 7:51 am
Bill, you said Obama selected…does that mean he had a list of schools that he WANTED to give the commencement address? Or he gets a list from all those that have him on his wish list then HE chooses those he prefers–for political purposes? Or did he and his team deliberately evaluate what schools he wanted to tackle–meaning their demographic to woo?
So then silly season commences with the right wing in charge of the school (so it seems giving honorary degrees to Goldwater/O’Connor etc) it becomes a game. Obama wants to address this demographic because of who they represent and the school gets to snub a liberal and a black man. Cool.
April 11th, 2009 at 10:25 am
Bob G, it sounds as if your history source is King George rather than Samuel Adams.
The Boston Tea Party was about taxation without representation.
In addition, the so-called “tax reduction,” passed in order to compete with Dutch tea, was not a reduction in taxes that colonists paid but a refund to the East India Company and from which the colonists didn’t get a shilling back themselves. Furthermore, the Crown passed the Townsend Act which levied more taxes on colonists to offset that revenue drop. Then, Paliament repealed the Townsend taxes but left the tea tax on the colonists. Then, the East India Company tried tried to conceal the builit-in taxes, but failed.
The lesson should be that people will get tired of being taxed with no power in government and will rebell.
The irony is that liberals, of all people, used a “Boston Tea Party” theme to attack Richad Nixon, as if liberals knew anything about taxes other than raising them.
A Footnote to History: It was actually Indians that boarded the tea-bearing ships in Boston Harbor and threw the cargo overboard. Because the Indians drank so much of the tea and couldn’t hold it, the result was one of their inventions – “tea-pee.”
April 11th, 2009 at 10:46 am
For any of you who doubt my versions of history and if you missed episodes of Mr. Peabody’s WABAC machine, hang this on your time travel machine: Time Travel Cheat Sheet
April 11th, 2009 at 11:06 am
“taxed with no power in government”
You lost a fucking election. Grow up, whinyassbabies !!!! Youre real problem is that you hate democracy when you can’t manipulate it (see Woody’s racist comments about who should and shouldn’t vote, etc.)
April 11th, 2009 at 11:37 am
I do hate democracy. I prefer a constitutional republic. However, we appeared to have reached a tipping point to where a President has obtained consent from over 50% of representatives to steal from the minority.
Obama is taking to new heights FDR’s lesson to Democrats on how to buy votes with other people’s money.
And, you, reg, claim that legitimate public debate from opposition is whinning?! Tell that to liberals who break laws and all sorts of social civility in their mob protests! But, for you, maybe Obama will attack the First Amendment right after he destroys the Second one.
Instead, if you loved America, you should be thankful that some people are trying to preserve our nation and freedoms.
Here’s your teabag.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:38 am
BTW, let’s remember the topic, as I found myself slipping off into this historical tax discussion.
April 11th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
I have to say that listening to Woody helplessly weep and whine is one of the fringe benefits of an Obama victory. I love it. It’s music to my ears. I love the idea that he wastes all this time tap-tapping his keyboard with impotent wingnut outrage. It’s even more hilarious that he does this on Marc’s blog, where he’s taken about as seriously as a yipping mutt. All that angsty, self-righteous anger, all that time spent typing those whiny sentences and wacko links–pathetically wasted and ignored. Please continue, Woodpecker, your laugh-inducing presence on this blog. I mean it. It’s only light entertainment, and ultimately amounts to absolutely nothing, but a laugh a day for the rest of us makes it completely worthwhile.
April 11th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Apparently they have had a change of heart: http://thisweekwithbarackobama.blogspot.com/2009/04/asu-apologized-to-obama-and-honors-him.html
April 11th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Dan O, thanks. What a bunch of weenies the ASU turned out to be. I’m so tired of apologies that aren’t necessary.
April 11th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
“I do hate democracy.” Then the usual bilge about who does and doesn’t “love America.” Yes, Kyle…the laugh-o-meter definitely gets worked over relentlessly by our resident troll. About the only things that AREN’T funny are the perisitent, lame attempts at racist humor.
April 11th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Woody mentions a “tipping point” – since Obama’s tax policies are utterly uncontroversial and make Eisenhower-era tax rates look like Mao Tse-Tung in comparison, since the TARP bailouts were initiated under W’s Treasury Czar Henry Paulson, and the Reagan/Bush(es) Presidencies were the ONLY administrations since WWII which oversaw budget deficits risiig rapidly as a % of GDP rather than declining, the “tipping point” for most of these loons is obviously the color of our current President’s skin.
April 11th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
“…..the “tipping point” for most of these loons is obviously the color of our current President’s skin.”
Wow reg, you’re getting desperate. And over an argument with Woody no less.
I believe it’s fair to say the color of our President’s skin was a net positive for him. In fact, as I remember it was he that reminded the voters of his race more than once.
Black racism, and the use of the ‘racism’ label in white liberal arguments with conservatives, is the new racism.
April 12th, 2009 at 1:13 am
So explain what the “tipping point” is for crazies like Woody and Glenn Beck …. since the arguments they use are some combination of hysterical and fabricated.
Frankly, I think you’re desperate to deny just what a sewer the “conservative” movement has turned into. Woody himself exhibited some pretty foul racism in these very threads during the election campaign. Your “new racism” is the old right-wing whining – like asserting “Bush derangement” when we developed critiques of W that turned out to be rock-solid and, frankly, beyond some of our worst fears. The attacks on Obama by the “teabaggers” go beyond any coherent issues, straight to the realm of hysteria.
Sorry. Try again when you’ve got something.
April 12th, 2009 at 9:03 am
reg thinks it’s racist to want a literacy test for all voters, even when the motive is to provide for informed and competent voters. He must think that blacks would fail it in larger percentages. He would call it liter-racy.
April 13th, 2009 at 12:16 am
I believe it’s fair to say the color of our President’s skin was a net positive for him.
You and Geraldine Ferraro.
In fact, as I remember it was he that reminded the voters of his race more than once.
Your memory faculty is directed by your racism.
April 28th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?
April 10th, 2010 at 4:25 am
Hello, great blog post.
May 13th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
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