Max Karson: CU Boulder A "Racist Hell-Hole", His Moonbat Attempt To Start Dialogue On Race Backfires

Max Karson continues to fan the flames of the controversy of his own making, and the issue is not free speech, but racism:

A statement posted on the student newspaper’s Web site Wednesday singled out Karson as the only person suspended from contributing to the online-only newspaper’s content. But CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard on Thursday said all of the regular opinion-writing staff will be reassigned to other duties while changes are made.

“Max has been an editorial page assistant editor, and all of the duties of all of the editorial page editors have been suspended because the editorial page itself at the Campus Press has been suspended pending a restructuring and re-envisioning of what they’re going to do with it,” Hilliard said.
. . .
However, his letter to the Camera described his contempt for the opposition to him and the Campus Press.

“Sometimes it’s necessary to offend in order to provoke thought about difficult subjects,” Karson wrote. “For example, in my ‘Asians’ piece, I poked fun at Asian stereotypes for the purpose of mocking racist white people who never bother to understand or even consider Asian cultures and race relations at the University of Colorado.

So Karson is really a moonbat whose attempt to stir up a conflagration about race initially succeeded, but ultimately backfired when the object of the opposition became his own rather pathetic attempt at satire and not the “institutional racism” that, according to Karson, supposedly permeates CU Boulder:

I went to the rally full of excitement because I thought that the public conversation was going to move forward to the subject of racial tension at CU — a subject that is consistently ignored by the general public, school officials and the media. But as the event organizers got up and gave their speeches, I felt my insides sink.

Every single speech was focused on my writing. They called it racist, insisted that it was not satire, and demanded that we reject hate speech as a community. The opportunity to bring new stories and ideas to the conversation was wasted on an hour of angry protests against my jokes ridiculing Asian stereotypes.

And that’s what I can’t stand. I can’t stand that people would rather gossip about me than tell their own stories about racism. I can’t stand that the people who experience racism every day would rather waste their energy on demanding the suppression of clearly protected speech instead of adding their own speech to the mix. I can’t stand that our student leaders are simply giving more ammo to the angry conservatives who claim that liberals always suppress dissenting speech.

The sad irony of their CU-sanctioned protest was succinctly put into words by David Chiu: “We as a community seek the immediate resignation of the Campus Press staff and university faculty responsible for the publication of these articles. We do not want a scapegoat offered up for sacrifice to meet the demands of an infuriated public.”

Yes, David, you do want a scapegoat. I stood there and watched the attending university officials smile and nod while you spoke. Do you know why they were smiling? Because even though they’re the ones in charge of the racist hell-hole we call CU, you still managed to blame the hateful attitudes of thousands of people on a dorky, smart-mouthed kid with authority problems.

And your solution, of course, is the same as theirs. You think that if you shut me up, you’ll be one step closer to the “hate-free environment” you dream of. It reminds me of when university officials apologize for my piece instead of apologizing for the fact that minority students don’t feel safe at their school, and when the CU Student Union passed a self-aggrandizing resolution to condemn racist writing instead of encouraging public dialogue on the subject.

Racism has been driven underground and institutionalized over the past several decades. The days of hood-wearing and cross-burning, at least in Boulder, are over. Now racism lives in policies and micro-messages such as looks, remarks, and avoidance.

If you really want to fight racism, you have to allow people to express it, and then you have to engage it, not stomp it back into invisibility. No matter how much it hurts us, open dialogue is the answer.

My job as a journalist is to create that open dialogue by amplifying the voices of students — even students with racist or other hateful ideas that I disagree with. Your job as an activist is to engage those ideas with community dialogue, and if you find them hurtful or upsetting, to try to change the minds of the people who espouse them.

Perhaps Karson should work on coordinating his “journalistic” efforts with those of the “activists” on campus. Not only is Karson’s conception of what a journalist’s responsibilities should be (no doubt instilled by the stellar CU School of Journalism) off-base, his own estimation of his writing abilities as a critical thinker and dialogue-starter are poorly served by whining self-indulgence and poorly constructed shock-jock bloviations. Given Karson’s high opinion of himself, it is a surprise that he didn’t figure on his implicit allies–the professionally outraged–not picking up on his “brilliant” plan and making him the focus of their efforts.

Karson won’t be the first moonbat who believed that manufacturing and faking a racist incident–in this case poorly masked as “satire”–to “start a dialogue” would be a good idea. Sadly, he won’t be the last.

Recreate68’s Moniker, DNC Plans Draw Moonbats, Derision From Fellow Liberals

“I can’t figure out why, for the life of me, that somebody would want to re-create ’68,” she said. “Is it the riots or tear gas — or perhaps the assassinations? Or maybe the election of a Republican president? I’m not sure the name was completely thought out”–Denver Democrat Representative Diana DeGette

As Drunka notes, why only dudes? Isn’t Recreate68! supposed to be diverse? The photoshop possibilities are endless . . .

Drunkablog wanders into the cesspool over at Recreate68! to find out a bit of their planned “actions” during August’s Democrat National Convention–including Shake Your Money Maker:

It’s time to redistribute the wealth. Between security and corporate pay-offs, the DNC will cost over 100 million dollars for a party. We think the people deserve that money. Join us as we encircle the Denver Mint (where U.S. currency is produced) and use our collective power to raise the mint building in the air and shake the money out of it for the people. Don’t forget a sack to put all of your loot in. Bring noise makers, energy, spells, magic, costumes anything that gives you power, we will need it!

Other highlights include the sure-to-be-joyous (and not destructive–well, maybe not) “Festival of Democracy” and a daily themed “Days of Resistance”:

During the Convention, there will be five major protest, one each day. Each protest will focus on a symptom of the disease of an Imperialist, Capitalist, Racist system as seen in our communities. Some of the proposed themes are as follows:

Sunday – End All Occupations at Home and Abroad
Monday – Human Rights/Free All Political Prisoners
Tuesday – No Warming
Wednesday – No Borders
Thursday – No Racism/Imperialism

Advanced bongo, chanting, and dressing for activist success sessions will immediately precede each day’s festivities.

Drunkablog also notes that Recreate68! is finally garnering some attention from the MSM in the Beltway. Moonbat favorites including Medea Benjamin of Code Pink will be there:

Re-create ’68?

“What’s the political calculation that speaks to them of the wisdom of civil disobedience — which means a massive media spectacle — on the brink of a Democratic campaign that could plausibly put a Democrat in the White House who’s committed to withdrawal from Iraq?” asked Todd Gitlin, an anti-Vietnam War activist who was at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. “If the objective is to put a belligerent Republican in the White House, they should keep up the good work.”

The “belligerent Republican” of whom Gitlin speaks will almost certainly be Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who spent the summer of 1968 as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Organizers acknowledge that their “Re-create ’68” moniker has been met with skepticism as they’ve toured the country to gin up support among fellow activists. “A lot of people of course associate it with the DNC of ’68 and react negatively,” said organizer Mark Cohen. But the point, Cohen said, isn’t to reproduce the violence associated with the 1968 convention, just the strong sense of countercultural protest that coalesced against the Vietnam War. “We don’t call ourselves ‘Re-create Chicago ’68,’” Cohen offered.

Leslie Cagan, head of United for Peace and Justice, an anti-war group that has organized large marches in the past, said her group has endorsed the planned demonstrations in Denver.

Cynthia McKinney, a former Democratic congresswoman now running as a Green Party candidate for president, will be expressing herself at the demonstration, said organizers. They also plan to reach out to Ralph Nader, who is running as an independent, third-party candidate. The coalition is seeking the support of ANSWER, an anti-war organization with a more radical approach to street protest than UFPJ’s.

A major march against the war on the Sunday before the convention will be followed by a week of action, some of which will include nonviolent civil disobedience.

“Nonviolent” as in “breaking things, trashing the place, and generally acting like goons–but peacefully.”

Riiight.

Other liberals aren’t so keen either on Recreate68’s moniker, including Denver Democrat Representative Diana DeGette:

Rep. Diana DeGette, a Democrat who represents Denver, was only 11 in 1968, but she said that she’s flummoxed by the notion that anyone would want to re-create the dark days of that year. “I can’t figure out why, for the life of me, that somebody would want to re-create ’68,” she said. “Is it the riots or tear gas — or perhaps the assassinations? Or maybe the election of a Republican president? I’m not sure the name was completely thought out.”

DeGette added, however, that her husband is a top official at the American Civil Liberties Union and that she is pushing for the demonstrators to have a “robust right” to speak their minds.

Gitlin, a former president of Students for a Democratic Society, fears that the protests in Denver will be too much about people speaking their minds and not enough about obtaining the results that they want.

“In the ’60s,” he said, “there were competing strains: the desire for results and the desire for self-expression. This seems to belong squarely in the self-expression camp.”

Gitlin said that trying to re-create the feeling of another era “makes about as much sense as throwing a costume party. It’s absurd to think you can re-create the culture of a moment. History is a succession of irreproducible moments.

You can’t recreate the moment–but the moonbat stupidity is eternal.

Recreate68’s Moniker, DNC Plans Draw Moonbats, Derision From Fellow Liberals

“I can’t figure out why, for the life of me, that somebody would want to re-create ’68,” she said. “Is it the riots or tear gas — or perhaps the assassinations? Or maybe the election of a Republican president? I’m not sure the name was completely thought out”–Denver Democrat Representative Diana DeGette

As Drunka notes, why only dudes? Isn’t Recreate68! supposed to be diverse? The photoshop possibilities are endless . . .

Drunkablog wanders into the cesspool over at Recreate68! to find out a bit of their planned “actions” during August’s Democrat National Convention–including Shake Your Money Maker:

It’s time to redistribute the wealth. Between security and corporate pay-offs, the DNC will cost over 100 million dollars for a party. We think the people deserve that money. Join us as we encircle the Denver Mint (where U.S. currency is produced) and use our collective power to raise the mint building in the air and shake the money out of it for the people. Don’t forget a sack to put all of your loot in. Bring noise makers, energy, spells, magic, costumes anything that gives you power, we will need it!

Other highlights include the sure-to-be-joyous (and not destructive–well, maybe not) “Festival of Democracy” and a daily themed “Days of Resistance”:

During the Convention, there will be five major protest, one each day. Each protest will focus on a symptom of the disease of an Imperialist, Capitalist, Racist system as seen in our communities. Some of the proposed themes are as follows:

Sunday – End All Occupations at Home and Abroad
Monday – Human Rights/Free All Political Prisoners
Tuesday – No Warming
Wednesday – No Borders
Thursday – No Racism/Imperialism

Advanced bongo, chanting, and dressing for activist success sessions will immediately precede each day’s festivities.

Drunkablog also notes that Recreate68! is finally garnering some attention from the MSM in the Beltway. Moonbat favorites including Medea Benjamin of Code Pink will be there:

Re-create ’68?

“What’s the political calculation that speaks to them of the wisdom of civil disobedience — which means a massive media spectacle — on the brink of a Democratic campaign that could plausibly put a Democrat in the White House who’s committed to withdrawal from Iraq?” asked Todd Gitlin, an anti-Vietnam War activist who was at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. “If the objective is to put a belligerent Republican in the White House, they should keep up the good work.”

The “belligerent Republican” of whom Gitlin speaks will almost certainly be Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who spent the summer of 1968 as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Organizers acknowledge that their “Re-create ’68” moniker has been met with skepticism as they’ve toured the country to gin up support among fellow activists. “A lot of people of course associate it with the DNC of ’68 and react negatively,” said organizer Mark Cohen. But the point, Cohen said, isn’t to reproduce the violence associated with the 1968 convention, just the strong sense of countercultural protest that coalesced against the Vietnam War. “We don’t call ourselves ‘Re-create Chicago ’68,’” Cohen offered.

Leslie Cagan, head of United for Peace and Justice, an anti-war group that has organized large marches in the past, said her group has endorsed the planned demonstrations in Denver.

Cynthia McKinney, a former Democratic congresswoman now running as a Green Party candidate for president, will be expressing herself at the demonstration, said organizers. They also plan to reach out to Ralph Nader, who is running as an independent, third-party candidate. The coalition is seeking the support of ANSWER, an anti-war organization with a more radical approach to street protest than UFPJ’s.

A major march against the war on the Sunday before the convention will be followed by a week of action, some of which will include nonviolent civil disobedience.

“Nonviolent” as in “breaking things, trashing the place, and generally acting like goons–but peacefully.”

Riiight.

Other liberals aren’t so keen either on Recreate68’s moniker, including Denver Democrat Representative Diana DeGette:

Rep. Diana DeGette, a Democrat who represents Denver, was only 11 in 1968, but she said that she’s flummoxed by the notion that anyone would want to re-create the dark days of that year. “I can’t figure out why, for the life of me, that somebody would want to re-create ’68,” she said. “Is it the riots or tear gas — or perhaps the assassinations? Or maybe the election of a Republican president? I’m not sure the name was completely thought out.”

DeGette added, however, that her husband is a top official at the American Civil Liberties Union and that she is pushing for the demonstrators to have a “robust right” to speak their minds.

Gitlin, a former president of Students for a Democratic Society, fears that the protests in Denver will be too much about people speaking their minds and not enough about obtaining the results that they want.

“In the ’60s,” he said, “there were competing strains: the desire for results and the desire for self-expression. This seems to belong squarely in the self-expression camp.”

Gitlin said that trying to re-create the feeling of another era “makes about as much sense as throwing a costume party. It’s absurd to think you can re-create the culture of a moment. History is a succession of irreproducible moments.

You can’t recreate the moment–but the moonbat stupidity is eternal.

Rocky Mountain News Inquiry Prompts Clinton Campaign To Remove "Bill In Blackface" Event From Web Site

“We’ve hired some high-end comedic talent to ease the way into Primary Day! Want to see HRC in cat-scratch mode? Bill in blackface? How about Mark Penn doling out pizza crusts and doughnut holes to the volunteers? We’ve got it all!”–Cleveland campaign event for Hillary Clinton

Wayward supporter or Obama’s revenge for those photos?

From the Rocky:

Inquiries from the Rocky Mountain News prompted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign to remove a supporter’s “Bill in blackface?” event announcement from Clinton’s official campaign Web site.

The notice appeared in an “action center” section of www.hillaryclinton.com where average supporters are allowed to publicize local events that are not necessarily sanctioned by the campaign.

In this case, the notice promised “Laughter at NAFTA Rally!” on Monday in downtown Cleveland.

The description:

“We’ve hired some high-end comedic talent to ease the way into Primary Day! Want to see HRC in cat-scratch mode? Bill in blackface? How about Mark Penn doling out pizza crusts and doughnut holes to the volunteers? We’ve got it all!”

The event was listed at:

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/actioncenter/event/view/?id=10076

An archived version of the announcement is available HERE.

Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee called the language of the announcement “inappropriate and offensive.”

“Any one of our supporters can host an event using the action network on our Web site and post it up there,” Elleithee said. “If we ever find anything objectionable and it doesn’t reflect what our campaign is about, we remove it, as we did in this case.”

Whoops! A little too late in this case–not what Hillary needed at this moment.

Campaigns in the digital age will be forced to scrutinize all content provided through open-forum, user-generated sources. Great for organizing grass-roots supporters, but subject to the potential for misguided supporters inadvertently damaging their own candidate, or hacking by the opposition.

Posted by Republican Princess.

Recent News Indicates Global Cooling Currently Under Way

From the fellows over at the EPW blog, “A sampling of recent articles detailing the inconvenient reality of temperature trends around the planet.”

An additional roundup of the global cooling/climate change.

Max Karson’s Campus Press "Satire" Draws Rally And Suspension, Even More Calls For Apologies

“It will never be law, however, because the Supreme Court, no matter how conservative or liberal it might be, will never approve its manifest capriciousness, both as law and social policy. But it can weasel its way into practice if people who should know better, people such as Chancellor Peterson and Dean Voakes, validate “offensiveness” as the arbiter of free speech in university discourse. That is the kind of thing that really does do damage”–Peter Michelson, Professor emeritus of English at CU

Max Karson

Rallying to protest Max Karson and the Campus Press, singing “We Shall Overcome”

Max Karson’s “satirical” editorial continues to enrage the professionally outraged activists at CU:

The University of Colorado student author of an opinion column that garnered national attention for saying Asians “hate us all” and should be hated back was suspended from the Campus Press newspaper staff Wednesday.

“Max Karson’s duties with the Campus Press have been suspended pending a restructuring of the opinions section,” according to a statement posted on the student paper’s Web site Wednesday.
. . .
The statement goes on to say that the publication’s editors are in the process of organizing an “open, public forum to address diversity sensitivity in our news coverage” and are rewriting their ethics policy.

The announcement came the same day university officials said they’re close to announcing major changes in the way the paper is operated and overseen.

The transparency of the process is astounding:

Faculty members within the CU School of Journalism and Mass Communication met behind closed doors for more than two hours Wednesday to discuss how to best change the management structure of the Campus Press, a class that operates within the school, so that offensive content doesn’t get published.

Concessions, concessions–and more apologies from the CU administration:

Paul Voakes, dean of the journalism school, did release a statement from the faculty group that served equally as an apology.

“This (column) is the antithesis of what we’re trying to teach in our school,” Voakes said. “The faculty and I take responsibility for the offense that the Campus Press obviously has caused.”

He called Karson’s column an “editorial mistake” that should have been caught.

Even local politicians have gotten involved:

Boulder City Manager Frank Bruno released a statement saying, “Discrimination is not what Boulder is about.”

Unless you’re a conservative in Boulder.

More faux rage, and the Feds!:

Also, about 150 students gathered on the University Memorial Center south plaza for a rally and demonstration against the Campus Press.

Chris Choe, a 21-year-old senior and member of the Korean American Students at Boulder group who led the rally, said he hopes the university’s administration fundamentally changes how content is reviewed before it’s published by the class.

“I want to see responsibility,” Choe said. “I want to see that this isn’t being marginalized.”

Later, the group migrated to a large auditorium on the campus for a forum among Campus Press representatives, CU officials and student leaders.

Federal mediators brought in by student organizers from the U.S. Department of Justice moderated the public meeting, in which students continued to call for changes at the online student paper and in which Campus Press editors offered apologies for any pain that Karson’s column caused.

Finally, the Campus Press editors offered their mea culpas to the seething ragists:

“The mistake that I made when I published the article was thinking that my reactions spoke for everyone,” Editor-in-Chief Cassie Hewlings, who sat somberly through the meeting, told the crowd. “I am so incredibly sorry. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.

“I’ve learned more this past week than I have my whole 22 years of life.”

You’re right Cassie. There is no place for free speech–including stupid, misguided (but publicity-seeking) satire–in Boulder, or at CU.

Text of the complete Campus Press apology.

Professor emeritus Peter Michelson excoriates the cult of “offensiveness” that threatens free speech on college campuses (but can’t help himself in taking a swipe at conservative media in the process):

In the context of education these are plausible punishments. But the real lesson here is that free speech at CU — i.e. speech for which one will not be, as the Chinese have it, “re-educated” — is subject to the literary standards of a not particularly literate chancellor, the offensiveness quotient of a Student Diversity Advisory Board and anonymous “professional journalists of color,” and opinion standards of “experienced opinion editors.” If these journalists and editors of opinion were to include personnel from, say, The Washington Times, The National Review, and the Fox network as well as the tasteful local media, to say nothing of the Camera’s Heath Urie and CU’s own PR department, then the standards of vulgarity, mendacity, incompetence and offensiveness should not set the bar beyond the reach of even such a determinedly errant student writer/editor as Max Karson.

But then, how “wrong” was Mr. Karson? If one goes to the Campus Press Web site, one can read his column. Contrary to the chancellor’s characterization, it is clearly indicated as opinion and commentary, and it is conspicuously obvious as satire. Further, its satirical context reveals how the presumably professional Camera reporter’s description “got it wrong.” So why would the dean of the journalism school ignore the evidence before his eyes, precisely what the Campus Press faculty adviser had seen and apparently approved, and take up the chancellor’s righteously wrong-headed cudgel?

The real issue here is not whether Mr. Karson’s satire is poor or sophomoric. Nor is it an issue of “damage,” as the chancellor claimed. Whatever the resolutions of CU’s Student Union Legislative Council or the public “upset” for which Dean Voakes felt obliged to apologize, Karson’s article could not and has not damaged anyone or thing, including the reputation of the university. The real issue is that the chancellor feared or was told it was “offensive.”

Offensiveness is what accounts for how the reporter, the chancellor and the dean took a shot at Kid Karson’s epistle and “got it wrong.” A cult of offensiveness has developed out of a “feel good’ ethos, whereby everybody is supposed to have the right to feel good. Its ideology thrives on college campuses and even extends to the law. Serious legal scholars have proposed that First Amendment rights be measured by the offensiveness quotient of an utterance, that one’s right to speak be moderated by whether it offends Mrs. Grundy or the ACLU or the Moral Majority or the Muslim community or the Asian community or Chancellor “Bud” Peterson.

It will never be law, however, because the Supreme Court, no matter how conservative or liberal it might be, will never approve its manifest capriciousness, both as law and social policy. But it can weasel its way into practice if people who should know better, people such as Chancellor Peterson and Dean Voakes, validate “offensiveness” as the arbiter of free speech in university discourse. That is the kind of thing that really does do damage.

So much for diversity of opinion at CU.

Max Karson’s Campus Press "Satire" Draws Rally And Suspension, Even More Calls For Apologies

“It will never be law, however, because the Supreme Court, no matter how conservative or liberal it might be, will never approve its manifest capriciousness, both as law and social policy. But it can weasel its way into practice if people who should know better, people such as Chancellor Peterson and Dean Voakes, validate “offensiveness” as the arbiter of free speech in university discourse. That is the kind of thing that really does do damage”–Peter Michelson, Professor emeritus of English at CU

Max Karson

Rallying to protest Max Karson and the Campus Press, singing “We Shall Overcome”

Max Karson’s “satirical” editorial continues to enrage the professionally outraged activists at CU:

The University of Colorado student author of an opinion column that garnered national attention for saying Asians “hate us all” and should be hated back was suspended from the Campus Press newspaper staff Wednesday.

“Max Karson’s duties with the Campus Press have been suspended pending a restructuring of the opinions section,” according to a statement posted on the student paper’s Web site Wednesday.
. . .
The statement goes on to say that the publication’s editors are in the process of organizing an “open, public forum to address diversity sensitivity in our news coverage” and are rewriting their ethics policy.

The announcement came the same day university officials said they’re close to announcing major changes in the way the paper is operated and overseen.

The transparency of the process is astounding:

Faculty members within the CU School of Journalism and Mass Communication met behind closed doors for more than two hours Wednesday to discuss how to best change the management structure of the Campus Press, a class that operates within the school, so that offensive content doesn’t get published.

Concessions, concessions–and more apologies from the CU administration:

Paul Voakes, dean of the journalism school, did release a statement from the faculty group that served equally as an apology.

“This (column) is the antithesis of what we’re trying to teach in our school,” Voakes said. “The faculty and I take responsibility for the offense that the Campus Press obviously has caused.”

He called Karson’s column an “editorial mistake” that should have been caught.

Even local politicians have gotten involved:

Boulder City Manager Frank Bruno released a statement saying, “Discrimination is not what Boulder is about.”

Unless you’re a conservative in Boulder.

More faux rage, and the Feds!:

Also, about 150 students gathered on the University Memorial Center south plaza for a rally and demonstration against the Campus Press.

Chris Choe, a 21-year-old senior and member of the Korean American Students at Boulder group who led the rally, said he hopes the university’s administration fundamentally changes how content is reviewed before it’s published by the class.

“I want to see responsibility,” Choe said. “I want to see that this isn’t being marginalized.”

Later, the group migrated to a large auditorium on the campus for a forum among Campus Press representatives, CU officials and student leaders.

Federal mediators brought in by student organizers from the U.S. Department of Justice moderated the public meeting, in which students continued to call for changes at the online student paper and in which Campus Press editors offered apologies for any pain that Karson’s column caused.

Finally, the Campus Press editors offered their mea culpas to the seething ragists:

“The mistake that I made when I published the article was thinking that my reactions spoke for everyone,” Editor-in-Chief Cassie Hewlings, who sat somberly through the meeting, told the crowd. “I am so incredibly sorry. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.

“I’ve learned more this past week than I have my whole 22 years of life.”

You’re right Cassie. There is no place for free speech–including stupid, misguided (but publicity-seeking) satire–in Boulder, or at CU.

Text of the complete Campus Press apology.

Professor emeritus Peter Michelson excoriates the cult of “offensiveness” that threatens free speech on college campuses (but can’t help himself in taking a swipe at conservative media in the process):

In the context of education these are plausible punishments. But the real lesson here is that free speech at CU — i.e. speech for which one will not be, as the Chinese have it, “re-educated” — is subject to the literary standards of a not particularly literate chancellor, the offensiveness quotient of a Student Diversity Advisory Board and anonymous “professional journalists of color,” and opinion standards of “experienced opinion editors.” If these journalists and editors of opinion were to include personnel from, say, The Washington Times, The National Review, and the Fox network as well as the tasteful local media, to say nothing of the Camera’s Heath Urie and CU’s own PR department, then the standards of vulgarity, mendacity, incompetence and offensiveness should not set the bar beyond the reach of even such a determinedly errant student writer/editor as Max Karson.

But then, how “wrong” was Mr. Karson? If one goes to the Campus Press Web site, one can read his column. Contrary to the chancellor’s characterization, it is clearly indicated as opinion and commentary, and it is conspicuously obvious as satire. Further, its satirical context reveals how the presumably professional Camera reporter’s description “got it wrong.” So why would the dean of the journalism school ignore the evidence before his eyes, precisely what the Campus Press faculty adviser had seen and apparently approved, and take up the chancellor’s righteously wrong-headed cudgel?

The real issue here is not whether Mr. Karson’s satire is poor or sophomoric. Nor is it an issue of “damage,” as the chancellor claimed. Whatever the resolutions of CU’s Student Union Legislative Council or the public “upset” for which Dean Voakes felt obliged to apologize, Karson’s article could not and has not damaged anyone or thing, including the reputation of the university. The real issue is that the chancellor feared or was told it was “offensive.”

Offensiveness is what accounts for how the reporter, the chancellor and the dean took a shot at Kid Karson’s epistle and “got it wrong.” A cult of offensiveness has developed out of a “feel good’ ethos, whereby everybody is supposed to have the right to feel good. Its ideology thrives on college campuses and even extends to the law. Serious legal scholars have proposed that First Amendment rights be measured by the offensiveness quotient of an utterance, that one’s right to speak be moderated by whether it offends Mrs. Grundy or the ACLU or the Moral Majority or the Muslim community or the Asian community or Chancellor “Bud” Peterson.

It will never be law, however, because the Supreme Court, no matter how conservative or liberal it might be, will never approve its manifest capriciousness, both as law and social policy. But it can weasel its way into practice if people who should know better, people such as Chancellor Peterson and Dean Voakes, validate “offensiveness” as the arbiter of free speech in university discourse. That is the kind of thing that really does do damage.

So much for diversity of opinion at CU.

Colorado’s December Missionary Shootings–More Details Emerge

Matthew Murray

Wow.

Matthew Murray went home after the first round of shooting at a missionary training center in Arvada, slept in his own bed, and then left home once again, attacking New Life Church in Colorado Springs, killing four in all (extensive previous coverage). President Bush honored heroine Jeanne Assam, whose quick action helped save lives at New Life Church.

Jeanne Assam

More details have emerged, as the parents opened up to Focus on the Family radio:

The parents of a gunman who went on a shooting rampage at two religious campuses say they were not “clued in” to the depths of his bitterness.

The parents of Matthew Murray talked to 9Wants to Know through their spokeswoman, saying they are finally ready to talk about their struggle.

In December, Murray, 24, killed two staffers at a missionary training school in Arvada and two teenage sisters outside New Life Church in Colorado Springs the next morning.

In between the shootings, Ronald and Loretta Murray say he came home to sleep in his own bed. They talked to him that night and had an inclination that something was wrong.

Ronald called Matthew from a business trip about 1:30 a.m., two hours after the attack at Youth With a Mission in Arvada and said Matthew seemed agitated and out of breath. He told his father he’d been in a fight at an Applebees restaurant.

The next morning, Loretta says Matthew told her he was going to church. That is when she believes he drove to New Life Church and killed two people before taking his own life.

Ronald said his son “had never expressed a desire for violence toward anybody,” and that neither he nor Matthew’s mother knew he owned weapons. “We were not clued in to the depth of his bitterness.”

The Murrays say Matthew was laid off a few months before the shootings. They say he was upset that the computer company where he worked let him go because there wasn’t enough work.

Matthew had told his parents the night of the shootings in Arvada that he was going out with friends that night for his birthday. The cousin called Loretta just before midnight, sharing his concern about Matthew’s emotional state.

She said she prayed; called her husband, who was out of town on a business trip; and urged him to call their son. She then broke down in tears, “crying out to God for Matthew.”

Murray’s homeschooling and possible mental state were also discussed by his parents:

In Internet writings Matthew had been posting for months before the shooting, he raged against his strict religious upbringing and home schooling. His parents say they do not believe the home schooling had anything to do with the violence.

They said they taught him about generosity, truthfulness and forgiveness.
. . .

Murray’s parents say to their knowledge, Murray was not on any prescription medication, but they say he suffered from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and had taken Ritalin in the past.

Murray’s parents say he stopped taking that at his own request six years before the shootings.

An autopsy on his body found he had ingested amphetamine and the tranquilizer benzodiazepine, which is sold under several brand names – including Xanax.

Murray’s parents say they didn’t know he was the gunman in both shootings until late Sunday night when, after searching the family home, officers told them their son was dead and they believed he was the gunman in both incidents.

They believe their son had problems communicating and writing because of his ADHD, was brilliant at computers, and felt rejected and marginalized, unable to forgive his perceived tormentors.

Colorado’s December Missionary Shootings–More Details Emerge

Matthew Murray

Wow.

Matthew Murray went home after the first round of shooting at a missionary training center in Arvada, slept in his own bed, and then left home once again, attacking New Life Church in Colorado Springs, killing four in all (extensive previous coverage). President Bush honored heroine Jeanne Assam, whose quick action helped save lives at New Life Church.

Jeanne Assam

More details have emerged, as the parents opened up to Focus on the Family radio:

The parents of a gunman who went on a shooting rampage at two religious campuses say they were not “clued in” to the depths of his bitterness.

The parents of Matthew Murray talked to 9Wants to Know through their spokeswoman, saying they are finally ready to talk about their struggle.

In December, Murray, 24, killed two staffers at a missionary training school in Arvada and two teenage sisters outside New Life Church in Colorado Springs the next morning.

In between the shootings, Ronald and Loretta Murray say he came home to sleep in his own bed. They talked to him that night and had an inclination that something was wrong.

Ronald called Matthew from a business trip about 1:30 a.m., two hours after the attack at Youth With a Mission in Arvada and said Matthew seemed agitated and out of breath. He told his father he’d been in a fight at an Applebees restaurant.

The next morning, Loretta says Matthew told her he was going to church. That is when she believes he drove to New Life Church and killed two people before taking his own life.

Ronald said his son “had never expressed a desire for violence toward anybody,” and that neither he nor Matthew’s mother knew he owned weapons. “We were not clued in to the depth of his bitterness.”

The Murrays say Matthew was laid off a few months before the shootings. They say he was upset that the computer company where he worked let him go because there wasn’t enough work.

Matthew had told his parents the night of the shootings in Arvada that he was going out with friends that night for his birthday. The cousin called Loretta just before midnight, sharing his concern about Matthew’s emotional state.

She said she prayed; called her husband, who was out of town on a business trip; and urged him to call their son. She then broke down in tears, “crying out to God for Matthew.”

Murray’s homeschooling and possible mental state were also discussed by his parents:

In Internet writings Matthew had been posting for months before the shooting, he raged against his strict religious upbringing and home schooling. His parents say they do not believe the home schooling had anything to do with the violence.

They said they taught him about generosity, truthfulness and forgiveness.
. . .

Murray’s parents say to their knowledge, Murray was not on any prescription medication, but they say he suffered from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and had taken Ritalin in the past.

Murray’s parents say he stopped taking that at his own request six years before the shootings.

An autopsy on his body found he had ingested amphetamine and the tranquilizer benzodiazepine, which is sold under several brand names – including Xanax.

Murray’s parents say they didn’t know he was the gunman in both shootings until late Sunday night when, after searching the family home, officers told them their son was dead and they believed he was the gunman in both incidents.

They believe their son had problems communicating and writing because of his ADHD, was brilliant at computers, and felt rejected and marginalized, unable to forgive his perceived tormentors.

Colorado Voter Registration–February Update

**Update–from my new post over at Schaffer v Udall: what the new numbers and a mediocre showing by Democrat Senate candidate Mark Udall in his party’s preference poll on Super Tuesday mean for Colorado’s much-hyped Senate race

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Following the record turnout on Super Tuesday (complete recap here), there has been an increase in attention from the MSM to the ascent of the unaffiliated/independent bloc in Colorado, a stable Democrat segment, and the “demise” of the GOP.

Last month’s voter registration analysis, ahead of the Colorado caucus, demonstrated the rise in unaffiliated voters. New numbers of Colorado voter registration and affiliation have been released by the Secretary of State. Here is a comparison of voter statistics for February 2004, 2006, and 2008–as well as two handy graphs illustrating each party’s registration since January 2004, as well as the overall total for the three main voting blocs in absolute terms:

02/04
R-1044195–37.1%
D-855542–30.4%
U-911510–32.4%
T-2811247

02/06
R-1044843–36.2%
D-871689–30.2%
U-969915–33.6%
T-2886447

02/08
R-1013466–34.92%
D-885623–30.52%
U-1003003–34.56%
T-2902092

Colorado voter registration trends from 01/2004 to 02/2008 (click to enlarge):

Total Colorado registered voters (Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliateds only, click to enlarge):