UMass President Jack M. Wilson has condemned the Pat Tillman hating Rene Gonzalez, issuing a statement that says, among other things, "The comments of Rene Gonzalez in the April 28 Daily Collegian are a disgusting, arrogant and intellectually immature attack on a human being who died in service to his country. We are fortunate that so many people like Pat Tillman have made the sacrifices necessary to protect the free speech rights of Mr. Gonzalez, myself and our fellow citizens."
Gonzalez has been removed from the databases available online at Amherst. Some google snippets to broken links suggest that he might have been a African-American Music and Jazz Studies major before pursuing a graduate degree in political science. If so, this qualifies him to pretty much shut the hell up.
Other information available suggests that Gonzalez really is that crazy. As blogger Ricky has painstakingly documented, this was not just a brief lapse of judgment. He really does think this way. For example, in addition to thinking that the Bush Administration is barely distinguishable from the Third Reich, he claims that "the Jews left the Nazis only to become the modern Nazis of the world."
And he thinks you and I are the ones with our heads up our arses. "In the gaze of history, the blame won't remain on [President Bush], a complete buffoon at the service of radical neoconservative ideologues. It will be on the American people, who refused to take their heads out of the sand (if not a worse, darker nether region), while a radical President waged this colonial war."
The Daily Collegian stands by its decision to run the piece, claiming that the First Amendment made them do it. "Rene Gonzalez is a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts who occasionally submits columns to The Collegian. While his views in no way reflect the opinion of our editorial board or staff, we base our decisions not on whether we agree with the opinion of students submitting opinion pieces, but on the backbone of journalism: The First Amendment." They wrote. "As a news organization, The Collegian lists the First Amendment as its most important value and asset. We do not hold back from printing news stories, columns or editorials that may upset our readership - instead, we seek to both inform and stir debate through our publication. Our decision to publish Gonzalez's column - an opinion piece written by a member of our campus community - is the only way for us to live up to this ideal. ... We cannot ... compromise the mission of our publication for the sake of ensuring the constant happiness of our readership."
This is the same publication, mind you, that refused to accept advertisements from David Horowitz when he wanted to denounce claims for reparations for African-Americans, proving that the First Amendment doesn't have anything to do with this. The truth is that the editorial staff saw this as a great way to provide a forum for a message they wanted to convey. This truth would be quickly exposed if some graduate student proposed a column which said that Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. got what they had coming to them. The First Amendment would not compel anyone to run such garbage, and they damn well know it.
Warped thinking like this is why I chose not to use my communications degree to go work in the news and editorial field, as was my original ambition. I can't imagine the unbearable torment of spending 40+ hours a week listening to such people.
As usual the LIITLE MINDERS of the left continues thier little war of blasting the people in the world that do something about the evils that do exist.While the so called First Amanedment Liberals like Mr. Gonzalez hide behind the internet and a college newspaper and real men sacrifice themselves for his right to write this BULLSHIT!
If they teach anything in our AMERICAN colleges to people like Mr Gonzales, it should be for these individuals to realize that they probably reeceived thier government grant from a social program that supports jerks like him, gave him the opportunity to be where he is in the first place and have the right to practice freedom of speech that when taken advantage of, does offend and learn to be a little grateful for what they recieve from the taxpayers of America generosity and sacrifice.
How soon some people forget where they originated from and how they have benefited from being in America, hopefully having the opportunty to become a citizen here!
Posted by: Joe Tomei | May 05, 2004 at 08:30
As usual the LIITLE MINDERS of the left continues thier little war of blasting the people in the world that do something about the evils that do exist.While the so called First Amanedment Liberals like Mr. Gonzalez hide behind the internet and a college newspaper and real men sacrifice themselves for his right to write this BULLSHIT!
If they teach anything in our AMERICAN colleges to people like Mr Gonzales, it should be for these individuals to realize that they probably reeceived thier government grant from a social program that supports jerks like him, gave him the opportunity to be where he is in the first place and have the right to practice freedom of speech that when taken advantage of, does offend and learn to be a little grateful for what they recieve from the taxpayers of America generosity and sacrifice.
How soon some people forget where they originated from and how they have benefited from being in America, hopefully having the opportunty to become a citizen here!
Posted by: Joe Tomei | May 05, 2004 at 08:30