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Daily Illini Editors Suspended

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Originally from The Charlotte Capitalist ™,

[Welcome Norbizness readers! Please show your liberal support of freedom of the press! Write to the University of Illinois and condemn them for squashing dissent at a student newspaper!]

The other day I posted on The Undercurrent's letter to the staff of the Daily Illini for having the courage to print the Mohammed cartoons. Let us not forget that the left controls college campuses and the left considers the Islamists to be their brothers-in-arms. I guess this was to be expected:

Illinois Student Newspaper Editors Suspended for Running the Danish Cartoons [via The Volokh Conspiracy via Instapundit]

Well as Andrew Sullivan said:

You can see Saddam Hussein in his underwear and members of the royal family in compromising positions. You can see Andres Serrano’s famously blasphemous photograph of a crucifix in urine, called Piss Christ. But a political cartoon that deals with Islam? Not our job, guv. Move right along. Nothing to see here.

It would be interesting to perform a review of the Daily Illini over, say, the last six years and see if this is the greatest "sin" of its editors. I doubt it.

UPDATE: This story is gaining steam. The Chicago Tribune throws the BS flag on Mary Cory, the publisher of the DI.

The problem with Mary Cory's letter--and a big reason I ripped her for humbug yesterday -- is that she simultaneously asserts "the right of the editor in chief to have full editorial control of the paper" while denying that right.

Further, she says that "the public will erroneously think the editors were suspended for running the cartoons" when, in fact, we all know that's exactly why they were suspended.

I agree. Ms. Cory sounds like a real PC-type. Her editor may have been guilty of some questionable practices, but in the end, Cory's story doesn't hold water.

In addition, I've got some interesting visitors to this post...a major network and the office of the president of a major university. Not terribly unusual, but oddly focused upon one post in a short time frame.

UPDATED (Feb 17th)

Edited by softwareNerd
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I used to go to the UIUC and remember a cartoon that they published showing Jesus at a party using sex toys, and it no one complained or got in trouble. Not that they should have...I mean it was pretty funny...but I'm guessing that it was highly offensive to Christians and definitly blasphemous.

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Originally from The Charlotte Capitalist ™,

In a post yesterday concerning the firing of the editor of the Daily Illini because he published cartoons of Mohammed I said:

Let us not forget that the left controls college campuses and the left considers the Islamists to be their brothers-in-arms.

Well, that got some folks on the left all wound up!

Wonkette got in the mix, but added nothing to the conversation. Matt Willis added this:

The ultimate boogeyman: The Left!

This is pretty much the intellectual level of the left these days. One, they either don't acknowledge or seem to understand that they exist or that they hold a certain set of ideas. What is odd about the response from all three is that they did not focus at all upon much my assertion about their influence on college campuses or their protection of Islamofascists. Not one word about that from anyone of them.

They all focused on the fact that I (and others) had even identified a philosophical tendency called "the left". Saying "left" to them was like saying "poop" to a four year old (or to Peter on "Family Guy"). "Ha, ha. He said left."

Two, the response is always venomous -- full of name-calling, but no ideas. In fact, the intellectuals over there got so excited, they figured out this philosophical axiom:

PS Andy, You suck and North Carolina hates you.

Metaphysics at its best, non?

Are there any true idea people on the left anymore? I would like to hear of them. The idea of "ideas" seem foreign to them. The guys over at Norbiz asked:

I mean, imagine if you replaced "The Left" with ... "an international cabal of Jewish bankers."

Well, imagine all day long if you like. But again, "the left" is allegedly based upon a system of thought. That is, uhhh, different from a race. Serious question, does the left see itself any longer as a set of ideas or a system of thought?

Do we have a reverse Cartesian problem here in the minds of the left? "I don't think, therefore I don't exist?"

Now, that may seem silly, but if you don't consider ideas important or don't recognize that you hold a certain set of ideas, why would you then associate yourself with that set of ideas. Well, you wouldn't.

Therefore, the notion of the left would be a boogeyman to you.

Look at Tommy Tomlinson at The Charlotte Observer today who I am sure does not associate himself with being leftist. He attempts to lump school board members into categories. Now this is good, because it does show some level of conceptual thinking. But look at how he does it.

But here's the thing. Cramer, Griffin and Tate are the sane ones. They're the radical middle. They're the ones most likely to see all sides of an issue and vote with common sense.

They're outnumbered.

To the right are Larry Gauvreau, Ken Gjertsen and Kaye McGarry. Gjertsen and McGarry have flashes of sanity but mostly they follow Gauvreau, who seems to believe that there shouldn't be a school board, and the schools ought to be run like a private business, such as Enron.

To the left are Vilma Leake and George Dunlap, who fight for an important issue (racial equity) but turn off just about everyone they deal with, including most folks who agree with them.

In the middle is Coach Joe White, who might be the nicest man in town, but based on his chairmanship of this board, I wouldn't let him run a church raffle.

What is the nature of his grouping? It is certainly not ideas. The "middle" is defined as seeing all sides of an issue and voting with common sense. But he provides no educational principles or ideas to define what is common sense.

Racism is apparently important to Tommy and Vilma Leake and George Dunlap, but is education an issue in their grouping? No, just that they "turn off" people.

Joe White is somehow associated with being "nice". Funny that "nice" doesn't come to mind when associated with someone who thinks he knows better what to do with kids than their parents.

Now look what happens when someone actually has an...idea. Based upon my conversations with Larry Gavreau in the past, I don't think he is for eliminating public education (Unfortunately. For the record, Larry and I differ on many, many things). He has said he is for tax credits and vouchers in some sort of mix with public schools.

But what is important is Tommy's reaction to an idea. Tommy immediately associates the notion of a private or capitalist school system with Enron. Now Tommy has to be either an out-and-out propagandist or he is expressing his world-view that any privately run endeavor must be a fraudulent failure. That may be due to the fact he has spent years in the Knight-Ridder culture of falsified circulation numbers and subsequent desire of major stockholders to unload papers such as The Charlotte Observer.

But either way, it reflects the completely concrete bound, emotionalist, anti-idea approach of the left and...the name-calling: "Ha, ha. Look what Larry Gavreau said. He said voucher. Gavreau is an Enron guy".

The sad thing is that the left, that is a system of thought, does exist. It still has power. But the good news is that it really has nothing to say. There is an intellectual vacuum out there. And there is the opportunity to fill it with ideas. Rational ideas.

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