Remember this maxim: when a liberal says something outrageous,
it’s a courageous embrace of First Amendment freedoms, intended to
catalyze discussion; when a conservative does the same, it is hate
speech. This is the lesson liberals at the University of
Connecticut (UConn) were attempting to teach students until last
Wednesday, when they went too far by repeatedly interrupting Ann
Coulter’s remarks. Now, students are rebuking their liberal
counter-parts.
“I wasn’t irritated in the least, inasmuch as this happens at
every campus,” Coulter told TAS, adding, “except the
prestigious ones in the northeast and campuses in the south,
interestingly.” She wasn’t long into her speech before UConn’s
sound system interrupted her, belching out the lyrics to cartoon
show South Park’s song, “Kyle’s Mom is a Big Fat *****,” as well as
the theme song to the classic Nintendo game, “Super Mario
Brothers.” Coulter’s biting humor has elicited heckles before, most
notably at University of Arizona, where assailants with terrible
aim
attacked her with a pie.
In one letter to UConn’s Daily Campus, student Douglas
Hamel described his disappointment in the way liberal
students conducted themselves:
It isn’t often that they get the opportunity to ask
pressing questions of some whom they so strongly oppose. I can
guarantee you that the conservatives on campus would have taken
advantage of such an opportunity if we were able to see Michael
Moore or Al Franken give a speech and answer
questions.
In fact, they did take advantage of their opportunity only a few
days earlier, at a university-sponsored speech by Cindy Sheehan.
Several conservative students protested outside the speech and then
quietly joined the audience. Of those protesters, Benjamin Woodard
noted that “as much as they were against her,
they knew how to respect her.” If anything, the College Republicans
benefited from the poor behavior of their liberal cohorts,
eliciting not only frustration and outrage by moderates on campus,
but also prompting interviews with conservative students on The
O’Reilly Factor and mentions by Neil Cavuto on Fox News.
Meanwhile, liberal agitators got national press for being incapable
of listening to an alternative viewpoint, and proffering a
reactionary view.
This should come as a disappointment to those who protested her
appearance at UConn, claiming Coulter’s jocular and satirical
tendencies represented “hate speech.” Once news hit that Coulter
would be coming to campus, a group called “Students Against Hate”
was immediately formed by Eric Knudson, a sophomore journalism and
social welfare major, who said of her previous comments, “we
encourage diverse opinion at UConn, but this is blatant hate
speech.”
How Knudson could substantiate that was uncertain —
particularly since he didn’t attend the speech to hear for himself.
Tom Gaffey, editor-in-chief of the Daily Campus student newspaper
agreed that she promoted vile ideas. “It’s not that she’s a
Republican. It’s her reputation as a hate promoter,” Gaffey said.
“If Michael Moore or a crazy, radical liberal who would bring just
as poor of a reputation to campus came here, we would be against
that too. Can’t we bring a more intelligent speaker to campus?
Can’t we spend our money more wisely?” Gaffey raised no complaint,
however, of Cindy Sheehan’s appearance.
Though the University of Connecticut does not have a policy
specifically defining “hate speech,” the Foundation for Individual
Rights in Education (FIRE) is skeptical about the university’s embrace of free
speech. For example, the university’s student handbook has a loose
definition of harassment, consisting of:
…abusive behavior directed toward an individual or
group because of race, color, ethnicity, religion, age, sex,
martial status [sic], national origin, ancestry, sexual
orientation, genetic information, physical or mental disabilities
(including learning disabilities, mental retardation, and
past/present history of a mental disorder), prior conviction of a
crime (or similar characteristic). The University…forbids
harassment that has the effect of interfering with an individual’s
performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive
environment.
Ann Coulter may be guilty as charged for offending politically
correct sensibilities, but whether the students who claimed to feel
threatened by her “hate speech” had a right to prosecute, or
rather, to persecute her as bizarrely as they did during her speech
is clearly in question. Showing that the complaining students
weren’t the only ones without a sense of humor, an AP report
claimed that she “reversed” a previous position, when stating
that denying women the right to vote was a joke. “Liberals cried
and cursed and stomped their feet and we had a lot of laughs at
their expense,” smirked Coulter.
Emily Salisbury of the College Republicans who initially had the
idea of bringing “the #1 Conservative Woman” to campus told
TAS, “Part of what we were trying to achieve was to bring
out a larger audience who wouldn’t normally attend a conservative
lecture. We got 2,500 people. Next time we have a speaker planned,
hopefully we’ll draw a larger crowd.” Salisbury also indicated that
the high turnout negated the initial criticism of bringing Coulter
to campus, which was directed at the “self-serving” nature of
bringing a high-priced speaker who only represented one political
viewpoint. Not only did the misplaced complaints and protests look
bad and earn nationwide attention, they also helped the College
Republicans advertise their speaker and justify the event.
THOSE ELEMENTS that have helped Coulter remain in the spotlight,
her dry, cutting wit and her theatrics were only proven effective
by the outrage. “Reagan used theatricality. What’s wrong with
theatricality? Any good speaker has to be theatrical,” she
observed. “I don’t know why people always emphasize it with me.”
Perhaps because college students aren’t used to a speaker who takes
such jabs at her own audience. When asked what her thoughts were on
pre-marital sex, she replied, “That’s got to be the worst pick-up
line I’ve ever heard.” When asked what she would say were she to
find out her child was gay, Coulter suggested, “Did I ever tell you
that you were adopted?” When made aware that she would not be able
to complete her comments, she skipped the rest of her speech to go
into Q&A, explaining, “I enjoy engaging in repartee with people
stupider than I.”
It was Coulter’s coolness which earned her the respect of the
audience — as soon as they understood she was engaging in pointed
satire, they saw the rabblerousers, who were calling out throughout
the Q&A, as being the most hateful. One student remarked, “You
know, by calling Ann Coulter’s remarks ‘hate speech’ they’re
showing how little they have to offer by way of ideas. The speaker
was making her point through humor, while the humorless just didn’t
have a point.”
