I'm more worried about stuff like the OTHER fiasco the Bush family gave us, the S&L Crisis.

Yeah, hyperbole is my tragic flaw, esp. when I'm worried.
Meriadoc, Bush's formal tenure at CIA isn't the point so much as his mindset. This is the guy who gave us Iran-Contra. His son may be in his pocket. They are the spiritual descendents of the Watergate conspirators . The mindset is; 'we'll tell you what's good for you' and 'the constitution is a grand document, but one should not be a slave to it.'

Wow, I wouldn't have thought I'd defend the Bushies for _anything_, but ... wow.

Insinuations that the Bushies are to be blamed, even though the story is false, because it's _easily believable_ ... wow. Look, it was "easily believable" to a lot of people that Clinton was incapable of keeping his pants zipped.

Ooh, Elder Bush was an evil spook, director of the CIA for "quite some time." About a year, actually. And he was hardly a CIA creature, but a career bureaucrat who was parachuted in. Closer to what Scott Adams calls a "bungee boss" than a real CIA man.

Is heckling free speech? In the ordinary sense, yes. But using heckling to _shout down_ invited speakers is NOT free speech. It is depriving them of THEIR free speech. If you want to issue a rebuttal, shut up and listen and THEN go outside and make your response.

Spent part of morning trying to visualize feet rammed down throat turning up Enron chunks on coattails. Guess if feet rammed far enough....hmmm not a mixed metaphor after all.

Awww, that's over-the-toppish, Pat. We're not talking fascism, but a sort of craven "don't criticize the pres during this time of crisis" PC. Which will become increasingly hard a pretense to support as Bush, Ashcroft, and flunkies continue to ram their feet down their throats. And find chunks of Enron sticking to their coat tails.

(Did you hear about Ari Fleischer's (sp?) clarification of Bush's claim that he had 'read the bureaucrat's report' on Global Warming? Paraphrasing: "He was briefed. If the President says he read something, it means he was briefed on it." How wonderfully candid!)

So now let's ask ourselves why this story was so very easy to believe. What are Bush/Chaney and their backers doing that makes people worry about jackboots and a loss of due process.

I've been trying to update the fucking post all afternoon and Blogger's publish engine steadfastly refuses to update the goddamned page.

 > Oh
> well. Another day in the weblog journalism revolution.

Where mistakes get corrected, it must be said, orders of magnitude faster than in conventional journalism.

Eliminate the gatekeepers and you get more mistakes, yes. But you also get almost instant self-correction.

(I know this is all way obvious. . .)

Great link, Brian. Thanks!

I'm really glad that everyone checked their facts before everyone got indignant and started linking to this story. Somehow I doubt the rebuttal will make mefi, blogdex, et al. Oh well. Another day in the weblog journalism revolution.

Spinsanity also has a debunking of this story. The Morons.Org version reaches conclusions that aren't even warranted by the original erroneous AP story, however (such as that students were threatened with arrest if they held even a silent protest.)

Edited by author 06-18-2002 10:59 AM
I'm a staff member (former student) at Ohio State and this is simply untrue. I work with a woman who graduated this quarter and she (the group of graduating seniors attending commencement, rather) was told by school officials during rehearsal that if someone heckled the president they would be removed from the stadium and expelled (and not graduating). You could silently protest (there were a number of hand-written Turn Your Back on Bush flyers posted on campus in the week before commencement, http://www.turnyourbackonbush.com/) and as long as you weren't obstructing another's view of the event, you were fine. According to my co-worker, this is what a number of people did. Neither were these people approached by the police nor were they hassled by other students.

So, I think the school administration did do a pretty shady job of strong-arming students into behaving, but they absolutely DID NOT threaten students that they would be removed if they engaged in silent protest.

I don't remember Clinton's speech being 'disrupted' in any significant way (reading the transcript, there is one incident), but you may recall the 'town hall meeting' in which Madeleine Albright and several Clinton staff members were essentially shouted down throughout the course of the event. http://www.pub.umich.edu/daily/1998/feb/02-19-98/news/news1.html
This was, of course, quite an embarassment to the university.

I'm sure activists will disagree with me, but I would venture that a commencement address is not the time or place to heckle someone. Again, students were NOT removed from the stadium for non-obstructing silent protest, ONLY if they disrupted the ceremony. Commencement is a huge deal at OSU, and tens of thousands of friends and family members of the graduates routinely attend. They've come to see their child graduate from college, not to hear someone's political grievances.

That this level of disinformation has sprung from ONE post on a leftist message board, filled with factual errors (the original author mentions '4 years and 80,000 dollars' -- in-state osu students pay around $2000 per quarter for tuition, there are three quarters in a year so that would be $24,000 for four years) by a person who doesn't even sound to be a student, is a little disheartening.

For an stunningly lame and thoroughly insulting view of the event, check out the 'paper of record' (free subscription might be required):

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/15/politics/15BUSH.html

Edited by author 06-18-2002 02:09 AM
What Stefan said, except his Chaney comments although I wish it were so.

I'm really worried that it goes deeper than Chaney. The elder Bush was the director of the CIA for quite a while. Nobody seems to remembers that. I wonder how many creepy friends he made and how many favors are being cashed in now.

(edit: correction of deap to deep)

"he was heckled and jeered and simply toughed it out like a grownup."

Yeah, but we're at WAR now. Those snotty, ungrateful kids should be at the mall, supporting the economy by racking up some debt on their new student VISA cards.

Pat: If it weren't for 9/11, Bush would be in serious, deep trouble, and so would Pres. Cheney.

I was about to write, a private institution can set its own rules, but then noticed that it was Ohio STATE. I'm sorry to the folks who love to wave the flag about security, but loving our country means loving that there first amendment. The state (whether Ohio State University in the form of the State of Ohio, or the feds) can't decide what speech is appropriate or not unless there's an actual demonstrated security risk.

Ever since that guy and his minions stole the election I've been worried sick. This fits right in with what I was expecting. They would have had a tighter rein on if it hadn't been for 9-11.

Watch, there will be virtually no protests of what happened at Ohio State. Why must the U.S. constantly slew between obeying our constitution and ignoring it?