Watson is a professor in the English department.
By Robert Watson
It’s wonderful how many reverse Robin Hoods leap out of
the woods to protect the rich and powerful from criticism by a
couple of graduate students.
But do the arrows they shoot (Letters,
Viewpoint, Feb. 22) reflect the values of “clear and
critical thinking,” “respect, courtesy” and
“elegance” they find lacking in the students? Check out
these examples:
“They are gutless people who hate America and hide behind
their treasonous words.” That would hide it?
“They have been brainwashed by their liberal professors,
and they know it.” If you know it, then …
Furthermore, if your first choice for commencement speaker
isn’t Laura Bush, it must be “Osama bin
Walker.”
Now check out the respect, courtesy and elegance:
“They’re a bunch of elitist spoiled snots,”
“go to hell,” “shove it,”
“crackpots,” “snot-nosed brats,”
“idiots,” “so stupid,”
“pathetic,” “whackos,” “absolutely
disgusting,” “arrogant, elitist, spoiled brats.”
It’s hard to know which to admire most in these responses
““ their logical minds, elegant tongues or generous
hearts.
Wonder what libelous student rants could have provoked such
disgust and fury? Here they are:
“”˜We’re disappointed that the selection for a
student event had no student input,’ said Estela
Zarate.” Bush “”˜was selected for her political
celebrity,’ said Tara Watford, a doctoral student in
education. “˜The commencement speaker should speak to us based
on achievements in the field'” (“Students protest
Bush speaking at commencement,” News, Feb. 20).
Wow, how nonsensical and boorish can you get! I don’t know
them, but clearly Zarate and Watford are “as closed minded,
idiotic, mean spirited and unjust as can possibly be.”
They’re lost in the world of “facelifts and
Ferraris” that is the typical grad-student lifestyle, though
some might foolishly have imagined it more typical of the Bush clan
and their Enron pals.
UCLA’s “puffy-headed elitists” don’t
understand the importance of being “gracious” because
they’re too “illogical.” In fact, the word
“elitist” turns up amazingly often here, considering
the social and economic status of the Bush family compared to that
of public school students.
One writer hopes to get Zarate’s government loans cut off.
Another gloats that she will now be blackballed from ever getting a
decent job. A third wants the dean to look into preventing Zarate
from receiving her degree. A fourth wants to ship her immediately
into combat. And what’s especially impressive is that the
letters want all of this done in order to prove to Zarate how
important it is that all views be tolerated and that free speech
prevail.
The letters insist that the students must be “afraid of
hearing another viewpoint” as if the Bush administration
never made the newscasts, and patriotic cheerleading from
Washington politicians would be startling news.
These correspondents can’t seem to register the difference
between tolerance ““ allowing people to differ without being
endangered for it ““ and endorsement, which is implied by the
choice of the commencement speaker.
By the way, did the letter-writers who vow to cut off UCLA
funding notice that it was “liberal UCLA professors”
who invited Laura Bush to begin with?
The letters “expect, nay, demand tolerance, respect,
courtesy, and basic human decency towards the first lady,” a
demand they support with snide speculations about the personal
morals of Hillary Clinton.
Speaking of “clear thinking,” another letter attacks
the students for requesting a different graduation speaker
“without first hearing what Bush has to say.”
Another sequitur worth pondering: “Perhaps one day when
you truly learn something of life, you will appreciate the thoughts
of others. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
Also, apparently “there isn’t one of them (liberals)
who will fight for this country under any circumstance.” This
might surprise Senators George McGovern and John Kerry, who
repeatedly risked their lives in combat while people like George W.
Bush were using family privilege to stay safely at home.
The politely expressed objections of these two students,
we’re told, “is not free speech! It is worse than
McCarthyism. It is Stalinism.” This is just another example
of the fair-minded historical perspective that students twisted by
UCLA’s liberal professors can never hope to achieve.
This liberal tendency, several letters concur, “explains
why the public educational system has been such a dismal failure in
teaching our children to read, write, and think objectively.”
Isn’t the main problem that teachers are paid minuscule
salaries to work under miserable conditions in unsafe buildings
without even basic supplies to teach masses of unparented children
who’ve been force-fed commercial video trash their whole
lives? Nope. According to these “objective” letters,
it’s because two grad students aren’t grateful enough
about the opportunity to hear another Bush speech. And we academics
just lack the “common sense” to see that.
Odd, isn’t it, that everyone screams about censorship,
disrespect for successful people, and ideological bias when
campuses don’t genuflect piously enough before right-wing
orators, but nobody seems to ask how often Toni Morrison (to pick
another “elegant, accomplished woman”) gets invited to
give the keynote address to General Motors’ annual
stockholders meeting, let alone how many leftists are allowed onto
the boards of major Wall Street banks?
Laura Bush seems good-hearted and would surely give a nice
speech here. I try not to hold against her my belief that her
husband stole the presidency, plunged the economy into recession,
shredded half the Bill of Rights, aggravated world tensions, and
shoveled our budget surplus and natural environment over to his
corporate pals, all this beginning long before the 9/11 atrocities
(which were helpfully funded by the $43 million Bush sent the
Taliban last May over the objections of those silly feminists and
“liberal morons” at universities).
Maybe the publicity would even be worth the extra $55,000
Bush’s speech would cost UCLA during a budget crisis.
Still, it’s understandable that Estela Zarate wants a
voice in choosing an appropriate speaker for her graduation, and
it’s remarkable how much mindless vituperation came spitting
at her from around the country, insisting that anyone who
criticizes a government action or official must be punished, a
principle of “open-mindedness” and
“tolerance” those “Marxist instructors”
running UCLA can’t seem to understand.
When the Communists seized power in Asia, as when the Nazis
seized power in Europe, a first priority was executing professors.
Totalitarian rulers, whatever their ideology, have always hated
academic intellectuals, because we believe in thinking
independently and articulating dissent. Our job is to challenge
whatever ideas are currently dominant, not to be
“ditto-heads.” That’s made it easy for dictators
to rouse mobs like the one in The Bruin to attack us, under the
guise of defending “patriotism” against
“elitism.” Disrupting conventional beliefs and
hierarchies upsets people.
So the next time a dissenter like Zarate provokes these
vitriolic clichés about spoiled liberal academics who
don’t understand the real world, remember some phrases
you’ve been hearing a lot since Sept. 11. They hate us for
what’s best about us; they hate us for our freedoms.