Rudeness on the Left [UPDATED]
By amba | Related entries in General Politics, In The NewsJohn McCain was booed, heckled and mocked as he gave the commencement address at the New School in New York today. Some faculty members behaved as childishly as students:
[D]ozens of faculty members and students turned their backs and raised signs in protest and a distinguished student speaker pointedly mocked him as he sat silently nearby. [ . . . ]
Some 1,200 students and faculty [had] signed petitions asking the university president, former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, to rescind the invitation. Petitioners said McCain’s support for the Iraq war and opposition to gay rights and legal abortion do not keep with the prevailing views on campus.
Right, college is about never hearing an idea you disagree with.
Kerrey, a Democrat who served in the Senate with McCain and, like McCain, is a decorated Vietnam War veteran, addressed the controversy almost immediately after the 2,700 graduates and thousands of other parents and friends filed into Madison Square Garden for the ceremony.
“Sen. McCain, you have much to teach us,” Kerrey said to a smattering of boos and hisses. He urged students to exercise the open-mindedness he said was at the heart of the university’s progressive history.
A senior class speaker said she’d thrown away her prepared remarks to declare that “The senator does not reflect the ideals upon which this university was founded.” After her speech and McCain’s, Kerrey praised them both for the courage to express their convictions in words instead of catcalls.
McCain’s speech — essentially the same one he gave at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University last Saturday — was a call for Americans to disagree passionately yet civilly — with respect. Maybe that’s easier to say graciously, condescendingly, from a position of power than from a position of helpless rage. Yet even when you’re down and out, there’s a compelling power to civility that tantrums and taunting sacrifice.
UPDATE: Althouse has more links and details. Ann thinks McCain was more or less asking for it, and that he blew an opportunity to be cool and spontaneous and funny, as one of her commenters saw the pre-9/11 Dubya do at Yale. It sounds as if McCain’s feelings were genuinely hurt! Man, a politician needs a thicker skin than that! But another Althouse commenter makes my point:
[O]ne has to wonder if the morons in the crowd who heckled him realized that they (a) just made John McCain even more palatable to moderates and (b) just strengthened his bona fides amongst conservatives while (c) making the Left look like a bunch of jackasses.
This entry was posted on Friday, May 19th, 2006 and is filed under General Politics, In The News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 20th, 2006 at 2:02 am
Well, McCain doesn’t embody a lot of what makes up the New School. As I’m sure you’re aware, it’s a well regarded university of design and art. Hardly a place where the majority of McCain’s views are going to be appreciated.
I say protest if you want. Just don’t expect to be respected if you have a reflexive reaction to those who you disagree with.
May 20th, 2006 at 8:30 am
Much more than just design and art. Also humanities and social and political sciences. I believe it was founded in the 1930s by scholars who were fleeing the Nazis.
I’m not saying people shouldn’t protest or dissent, just that they lose sympathy, stature and the power of persuasion when they do it childishly.
May 20th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Indeed, but it’s known specifically for its art programs. Well, let me say that’s what me and my friends know it for.
And yes, I agree. These people lose sympathy. However, and I don’t say this lightly, when you have an administration that is so forceful and so unapologetic, expect those who disagree with them to become equally as strident for fear that they won’t be heard. There’s balance in all of this and the Daily Kos, vocal left is completely understandable in our current historical context. Honestly, Kos and his kind are downright moderate in comparison to other anti-war factions as little as 35 years ago.
May 21st, 2006 at 3:36 pm
It’s pretty patronizing for a Republican like McCain to lecture liberals on civilized discourse, when his party has made it its job to call liberals un-american, unpatriotic, terrorist-enabling communists over the last 5 years. The day he calls out Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Coulter, Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly and their ilk for what they have done to the national discourse, then he can complain about liberals. He should clean his own house first.
May 22nd, 2006 at 12:53 pm
I agree with Michael completely. But not only should his post apply to McCain, but amba as well.
If you are going to whine about rudeness, you should look at where 99% of it comes from. Hint: it’s not the Democrats.
May 22nd, 2006 at 1:18 pm
From the clips I saw on TV it sounded like McCain was giving a stump speech. I don’t think that students and guests booing were tactful but there is a sense of rage bubbling up in America. It sounds insulting to say we should cleanup national debate and discourse after all the mudslinging and lies we have gone through these past years.
To McCain’s credit he would try his best not to get involved with the personal and unfounded attacks from the Republican party (well he once did).
May 22nd, 2006 at 6:07 pm
Yup. Which is fine, but you have wanted your graduation to be a forum for someone else’s political machinations? Me neither.
And if you want rudeness, consider the reactions of a (soon to be former?) McCain staffer to Ms. Rohe…
May 22nd, 2006 at 6:23 pm
There is rage bubbling up in America, but this “you clean up your act first!” crap is childish and INEFFECTUAL. The idea that “I’ve got an excuse to be rude because the other side is rude” only showa that you can’t think of a better way to show up the other side. When your enemy gets you in a red-faced tantrum, he’s won. Figure out how to win over the voters, not how to VENT. That means figure out how to be SUPERIOR rather than in a snit because you are INFERIOR (at politics, at winning over the voters!). The Republicans fight outrageously dirty, but the Democrats fight POORLY. Now McCain is taking the high road, and is scoring points for it with voters who are fed up with venom. (Of which McCain hiimself has been the victim more than the perpetrator!!! Watch him for an example of how to cunningly rise above it, and make your opponents look petty and yourself look magnanimous and calm!)
May 22nd, 2006 at 7:18 pm
Amba,
See my link above, is that the high road?
That said, I tend to agree that each side should police its own. I just don’t see much worth policing here – this is largely how debate should work – counterspeech.
May 23rd, 2006 at 7:25 am
amba, I don’t think you know what childish is. What is childish is glomming on to a sitsuation that is not the norm for one group, while ignoring what is the norm for another.
This was not McCains graduation, it was the students. A stump speach from someone 180 degrees away from the students, is not what they deserved.
Pooh is right, he is nowhere near the high road. I doubt that McCain didn’t know what his staffer wrote on Huffington Post.
May 23rd, 2006 at 11:07 am
Same comment I made to Justin’s post, “Discuss.” If a school hauls in an inappropriate speaker for graduation, expect people to be angry and expect them to do something about it. Free speech people. What’s with everyone saying it’s “rude” to protest at graduation. So what? Civil disobedience is never going to be polite. People are not polite about these things because saying, “Oh, excuse me, please get another speaker because this one you have scheduled is offensive to me,” doesn’t work. When are protests polite?