University Bans Bristol, Spreads Oppression, Bigotry, Hate

The message is, “Don’t bother coming, Bristol, or we’ll shout you down..."
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Jonathon Burns imagines a scenario in which Washington University’s student government had treated Al Sharpton the way it treated Bristol Palin:

Sharpton would OWN the media cycle. He’d have the heads of the entire Washington University administration. He’d demand to speak. He’d demand a higher honorarium. He’d demand greater minority employment, and a Wash U contribution to Sharpton’s National Action Network. Plus, he’d want public apologies from dozens of people, sensitivity training for the student government, and a host of other minor concessions. He’d publicly embarrass the students and the school for their patent racism.

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Millions of college students have been indoctrinated with the importance of diversity – so long as that diversity includes approved races, ethnicities, political ideologies, backgrounds, etc. If you’re conservative, from a rural area, and you’re supporting abstinence, well, let’s just say that kind of diversity isn’t desired.

No, instead of supporting diversity, the celebrated ideal of college land, let’s applaud and bow to bigotry.

And of course the Establishment Media is in lock step behind the bigots. Huffington Post and St. Louis’ own Riverfront Times each attacked Bristol (instead of the bigots).

Let’s not kid ourselves, here. what has transpired at Wash U is nothing short of bigotry and hate.

The leftists are attempting to cloak that bigotry and hate by arguing that that their main reason for banning Bristol is that they consider her speakers fee to be too expensive. But Burns refudiates that lie by pointing out that Gloria Steinem, whose usual fee is $20,000, plus two round trip first class tickets, was brought to Washington University to speak last spring:

No, these antics by a pocket of the student body weren’t about money. They were about shutting down, boxing out and otherwise suppressing Bristol. They were about preventing a point of view from being expressed on their campus simply because they didn’t like the Bristol’s ethnicity. So they decided to use heavy intimidation.

We disagree with Burns on one minor point. Bristol's ethnicity has nothing to do with it. Her surname and her point of view, on the other hand, have everything to do with it. If her name were Bristol Boxer or Bristol Biden, and she had intended to speak against abstinence, she would have been welcomed by campus "progressives" with open arms.

But such supposition and imagination have no place in the 1972 world of campus radicalism these leftists live in. Back here in the real world, Bristol's attorney issued this statement:

"Bristol was invited to speak with college students as part of a panel. Evidently she has now been disinvited because of apparent concerns by some vocal members of the undergraduate community.”

“Bristol is deeply disappointed that an institution that publicly claims to 'listen to diverse and sometimes conflicting perspectives, to contribute rigorous academic standards and unbiased scholarship to discussions, and to encourage a civil discourse in which a pluralistic society can respectfully address complex and difficult issues' would withdraw an invitation to a speaker because of 'uproar' over their assumed content of her message or even worse, because of her last name."

- JP