Austin:
It is no longer amusing that the news media screams for freedom of the press to print their news and then castigates individual citizens that happen to have views they do not agree with. In this edition of hypocrisy there were a group of young people that decided to throw a theme party and decided that this party's theme should be "Compton Cookout". Participants were asked to come dressed in gold chains, "ghetto" clothes, and girls were asked to come as "ghetto chicks". The newspaper indicated that this party was thrown by a group of students from the University of California San Diego and the school presented the requisite condemning press release.
I agree that the party was in poor taste, however, the school should not have had an opinion because the party was not thrown by a student group and did not take place on school grounds. Should Home Depot pass out apologies when their employees make these kind of errors in judgement? The school is also trampling the first amendment in this case.
One thing I wonder is where Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are this week? Are they on vacation? This should be something right up their alley. (Remember the Duke lacrosse incident?) Well, the truth is that since this happened in California it won't elicit the same reaction from the race baiters that it would have had this happened in Tuscaloosa, AL or Athens, GA. Had this happened in Alabama or Georgia we would be hearing about it for the next 3 months.
My main concern is what would have happened if this was a group of African-American students having a "Red-Neck" party. My guess: Nothing. No one would have said a word about a group of black students mocking a group of poorly educated white people. No one would have rushed to apologize for the theme and whatever offense may have taken place.
I personally think the party was in poor taste, but I stand by the participants right to host the party and their right to express their opinion. I am saddened at the double standard that exists when people hear things they don't agree with. This was not news and it didn't need a press release from the university. The least we should expect is some consistency from the news media and the race baiters: Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
Email Austin
Follow Austin on Twitter!
Art:
I am not aware that anyone in the news media or the administration at University of California/San Diego has called for censorship or punishment of these bozos. The media have been doing what they love to do, with is report the gory details of a tempest in a teapot. The university’s administration (not wishing to offend a tiny minority of its student body or a larger group of liberal-minded alumni, and hoping to avoid a national firestorm that would make the school look bad), issued a disclaimer from the office of chancellor Marye Anne Fox that said, on the one hand, “We were distressed” to learn of an “offensively themed student party” and “strongly condemn” it, but on the other, the party was not a student organization-sponsored event, so the school will take no action other than holding a “teach-in” to “discuss the importance of mutual respect and civility on our campus.”
The only official call for punishment came from the president of Pi Kappa Alpha, a fraternity implicated because some of its members were organizers of the party. Garron Engstrom promised “appropriate disciplinary actions” would be taken for this “violation of Pike’s code of conduct,” which the fraternity is within its rights to do.
Do I think the dopes who thought they were being funny by designing the “Compton Cookout” should be punished? Not particularly. If everyone who has responded with outrage could learn to laugh at these displays of ignorance and stupidity, that would cure the participants of it much faster. Jesse Jackson, not one of my favorite fellows, actually had a good excuse for his absence: he’s up here in Portland this week, calling for a Justice Department investigation of a police officer who shot an unarmed black man, Aaron Campbell, in the back and was cleared by a grand jury. I happen to agree with him on that one, since too many recent deaths of unarmed folks, blacks and whites, have occurred at the hands of Portland Police in recent years.
True, some black people in San Diego probably do behave in the irritating ways described in the party invitation -- I’ve seen them up here, too. But to mimic them instead of devising a more imaginative party theme was as contemptuous as when Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France in the 1780s, and her attendants dressed up as shepherdesses and milkmaids and hung out at “Hameau de la Reine,” a fake farmhouse, dairy, and mill on the royal grounds at Versailles. If the “Ghetto Party” participants had studied history with as much gusto as they party, they’d know what happened to the Queen partly because of behavior like this: the commoners cut off her head.
Email Art
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment