"The Painfully Ridiculous End to the NYU Revolution":
Gawker has the scoop. My favorite part about the video is that when someone does something the protesters don't like, the protesters insist that the scene must pause for the "democratic process" and for "consensus." It turns out that this just means that the protesters want to meet in private to debate amongst themselves how to respond. Ah, good times. More from Michael Dorf here.
clever.
Still, this was pure comedy gold. "Consensus!" "Who wants to be a facilitator?" "iMac, iPod, no corporate water.... iMac accessories..."
The rolling eyes from the cops were the icing on the cake.
Anyone who watches this and doesn't laugh is beyond help.
When you have to invent a response in order to make the people who have the imaginary response seem silly, your shtick falls a bit flat.
"When we failed it was only because we underestimated the lengths NYU will go to in order to deter any real criticism of its policies."
I agree that the "corporate water" line was precious. It was so clearly for the cameras, and thus for the watching and rewatching on YouTube. Hilarious.
Or in an even shorter version, "Much ado about nothing."
2. I still wish this had happened when I was a student there, so I could at least have enjoyed the topless undergrads.
And, just think, Apple didn't even have to pay for all the advertising.
Did he really have to explain to his compatriot that ID stands for identification? The legal profession is in deep trouble.
I usually don't like name-calling, etc. but the cameraman is a tool. That sums it up.
"This is student free space"?????? What the heck does that mean?
"We're trying to act on consensus."
Kerr's point was that Sarcastro's sarcasm was invented and nonresponsive because no one had come anywhere near saying what Sarcastro derided.
Everyone else can now stop running for Douchebag of the Century.
And then, he couldn't even get any of them to listen to him.
I don't know what he meant, but someone should tell him that in general English usage it would mean an absence of students or no students allowed as in, This Is a Gun Free Zone.
I am so glad I know a number of young US Marines, Sailors, Airmen and Army or I would weep for the future of this country.
I'll bet they learned from the Profs that brainwashed all the students in the 1960s!
0 for 2.
LOL...
Perfect!
When you have to invent a response in order to make the people who have the imaginary response seem silly,your shtick falls a bit flat.0 for 2.
LOL...
____________________
You disappoint me DangerMouse, abandoning your principle that liberals are to blame for everything merely because to state it here would have confirmed Sarcastro's point, and, furthermore, doing so in favor of applauding a cheap shot at Sarcastro. I didn't know it was so easy to buy you off.
I think he was saying, "There's cameras here, so please -- give me some brutality. Please! There's a camera! Brutality! Just, like, 10 seconds would be fine! [Aside] This is bad for our consensus-building, Ben. They've been trained not to do any brutality in front of a camera ... I think it's part of the power structure encoded in the corporate water they drink. But we won't get anything good. [To campus official] You've given me ten minutes to decide whether or not to listen to what you say. So I'm going to mill around shouting, 'hey, everybody! We've got ten minutes to decide if we listen to them or not! Why 10? Oh, because that's all they gave us!' [Aside] I think this is going really well, Ben. Wait, I've got 'scripture' in my messenger bag, I think I'll read from it, because if free citizens practicing the democratic process also quote scripture, it'll conflict with their hierarchy-driven understanding of protesters. While they're stunned by how we demonstrate our openness to different ideas by quoting a Bible verse at them, we can sneak out the back. Guys. [To cops] Hey, give me back my iMac! Give it back! Brutality! Ben, don't call him a fascist c*cks*cker. He's just dominated by the corporate control panopticon. Hey, give me my iMac and -- that's the Greenest computer on the market today, sir, that you're handling like that. I don't know if you know what the environment is, but owning an iMac helps me protect it. You corporate shill. [To Ben] Uh, the consesus is, I want to go blog about this experience while it's fresh in my mind, so let's show them our IDs. [To cops] Can you take us to prison please, sir. For about a week? And could I bring my iMac with a wifi hookup?"
And cut.
clever.
Perhaps not so clever. In those days, the students might well have seized on that as reason to burn the bank down, and there was no reason they would have discriminated in favor of post offices.
Today (it's still Monday here in Los Angeles) marked the 39th anniversary of the burning down of the Bank of America in Isla Vista, the student communicty next door to the U.C., Santa Barbara campus, during anti-war protests.
Over the next couple of days I, as a young lawyer, returned to my alma mater to assist the more than 100 students who had been arrested following the protests and numerous battles with the local police, who arrested many students merely because they were students, beat quite a few of them, and illegally entered and searched student apartments all over Isla Vista. I'll never forget seeing National Guard tanks rolling down the Storke Road entrance to Isla Vista to do battle with the students.
That said from the perspective of a school administrator- by preemptively taking the decision out of your own hands you don't have to negotiate with the students and you won't get in trouble for not doing so. "They picked the wrong building, now it's a federal issue and it's out of our hands."
Considering that these situations are no-win for college administrators at the end of the day, avoiding them in the first place is a good idea. Granted the outcome could be overly idealistic young people doing federal time.... which is not good either. Then again, they did make sure everyone knew that occupying a campus building would have dire consequences So perhaps the placement was entirely prophylactic.
Those "cowardly little bums"--as Governor Reagan so aptly described them--were indeed a violent bunch.
For a picture scroll down about 4/5ths of the way down the page
http://www.thetick.ws/tvheroes.html
It wasn't all that important except to the locals, and it was eclipsed a month later by Kent State (which made a better sound bite). There's an interesting (though grossly biased) account of it here.
I am astonished that anyone still defends those unwashed hoodlums of the "anti-everything" movement, though I suppose I shouldn't be. Don't these people ever grow up?
They're not prosecuted for idealism.
if he feels the need to invent stuff in order to react to it, what can we do?
Use this.
To current and future NYU Law students, note that the law school is (for the most part) much more sane than this, and has little to do with moron undergrads and arts &sciences grad students. Most of us ignored the equally pathetic grad student strike while I was there. Well, except for the students trying to do public interest group who had to deal with liberal groups refusing to cross a picket line to hold their career fair.
Just wondering
You think conservatives would have sounded this feckless?
The point, it shouldn't be necessary to say, was not the cause of the protest but the wussiness and completely ineffectual students. Iced by the students' seriousness.
Too funny.
these idiots don't understand the difference between "democracy", "consensus" and "collective" decision-making. To them, these are all just interchangeable buzzwords for being politically correct.
Conservative students don't have the time to do that. The Man won't give them the time off.
The level of derision would have been about the same (high, and well deserved), but the video would have shown up on major news outlets and the "narrator" would have stood a good chance to make Olberman's "Worst..." list..
Dave N beat me to the entirely on-point Monty Python reference :-)
Myself, I don't think I'll spend much time waiting for that.
"Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"
Because someone has to pay taxes to support this nonsense, and our friends on the Left always seem to forget to pay their fair share.
So far, the only people claiming these kids are liberal (rather than just pathetic idiots) and thus acted this way are: Sarcastro, Visitor Again, Eric, and Realist Liberal.
The brats really do believe that "democracy" actually means "if people vote against us, that means we get to vandalize their property and steal their belongings."
rmswan: About those double standards (free speech for me but not for thee): Repressive tolerance in action.
steve2: Good point. Talk about defining 'oppression' down. Try pulling this stunt at Xinhua or Beijing Normal university, where you'd get to go toe-to-toe with the sharp end of a real police state, and 'disciplinary action' is a lao gai vacation.
They haven't a clue.
snotsbabies.Great advertising!
Too bad the University didn't provide some 'brutality' to intersect with their 'consensus and democratic process'.
What a bunch of weenies. This video had everything ... including the Palestinian scarf. The only thing it was missing was a guest appearance by actual terrorist Bill Ayers ... who, you know, actually blew up some buildings instead of occupying their food courts.
This is entirely consistent with the hip image Apple has so painstakingly created. The whiny, narcissistic, spoiled, infantile attitudes of these precious idiots is entirely consistent with the Apple image. Think of the iMac, the iPod, the MacBook, the iPhone--all expensive, over-engineered toys that pretend to be nonconformist but in fact are tightly controlled by Apple and "daddy" Steve Jobs (just try to download a non-Apple approved application to an iPhone).
But I was still embarrassed by the guitars and Palestinian scarves. And I knew that my fellow grad students were wimps when they called to have pizzas delivered. I get so razzed when people mess with my money that I wasn't even thinking of food. But then, unlike most of the hard-core leftists who do these things for sport, I don't have a trust fund.
link
Before anyone gets smug about the fact that these dolts are leftists, I found it quite common in college that students who were searching for a self-image were quick to go whole-hog nutso for whatever ideology had an initial surface attraction. Some kids that liked the individual rights aspect of libertarianism quickly became raving anarchists. Those that liked Tucker Carlson's bow-tie quickly became conservative clones. The leftists tend to stick out more because protests are part of their history, but there are weak-minded wackadoos in all parts of the spectrum. And again, it's what happens when immature kids are looking for an identity and there are no real consequences to acting like a fool.
Also, who are the bigger philosophers behind these infantile ideas of "consensus" and "democratic process"? Is this Rawls or Habermas?
During Vietnam, America really didn't have a benchmark for what true terrorism was, so the SDS/Weatherman/Black Panther types of the day could be far more challenging and violent and still have a certain segment of the population behind them. Try being a student activist today and blow up a campus ROTC building or take a dining hall or administration building at gunpoint, and see how un-serious law enforcement now takes the issue. And while there would still be a certain segment of the population sympathizing with the activists, they'd now face the intellectual requirement to justify violent acts in a post-9/11 world.
Even if this group of spoiled protesters were a little more competent (and remember, most of the major players of the 60s protests also were spoiled upper class or upper middle class types), the specter of Sept. 11 is just not a place they're willing to go yet (and my guess is if Bill Ayers was 40 years younger, he would have been too gutless to cross the line under the current conditions, either).
My conservative protests were all solo - I'd buy a burger and fries and sit and watch the lefties/commies on their hunger strikes.
2) I don't exaggerate when I say that this actually lowers my opinion of NYU somewhat: I realize these idiots are not the best the campus has to offer but I thought that you needed to be a little smarter than this to gain admission to what I considered one of the country's best colleges.
Thre are no conservative Women's Studies or English majors.
The video is sad and pathetic
+1 on pathetic.
It reminded me of the live action role players that play D&D and vampire games, trying to play a game where they are cool protesters getting ready to impress girls.
Ref the search for identity:
Among other things, it would be interesting to know why some of these kids suffering through extended adolescence need to have some external entity or activity to validate their identity, and some don't.
I recall from the Sixties that the liberal profs--nowhere near as obnoxious as now--subtly invited us to be among the enlightened, instead of those rednecks "out there". It worked so well on some kids that I figure it ought to be illegal.
Or perhaps we just hunt down their parents and flog them for inadequate parenting.
I especially liked the guy in the suit with a video camera of his own...recording their stupidity for all time.
Look at the protests at Diablo Canyon were they expected thousands of students to attend like in the 60s. Instead they learned that students then in college were not in avoiding the draft but trying to get a degree before they ran out of money. Thus, the students didn't have the time or money to waste at a primative protest camp in the California hills. And when the few anti-nuclear environmental protesters finally gave up and left, they left a huge garbage pile to clean up. And all because they were trying to mimic the 60s and the protests in Germany against our missiles (protests that just happen to occur during the week of Octoberfest).
Unfortunately, people will continue to try and resurrect the 60s. Why do you think so many people keep describing President Obama as the second JFK. And as usual, reality will finally win out over the fantasy leaving another group of highly discouraged young people.
Also, who are the bigger philosophers behind these infantile ideas of "consensus" and "democratic process"? Is this Rawls or Habermas?
Laughing at these silly children is mildly amusing for about 60 seconds. The real task is to identify the professors who fed this mush into their heads.
Plenty of protesters are tougher than these kids, even post 9/11.
I saw the tanks rolling down Storke Road to Isla Vista with my own eyes. There were also armored vehicles. They were part of a long column, perhaps half a mile long. You either believe me or you don't. But what is plain is that the authorities wanted to make a show of overwhelming force in view of the failure of the police to bring order, and tanks and armored vehicles would have served that end. Fortunately, the Guardsmen and the students never joined in combat.
On the web I was only able to find references to Ronald Reagan calling out the Guard--500 troops with another 2,500 on stand-by alert--and the Guardsmen occupying Isla Vista for three days. The students, who had driven away 300 police officers on two successive nights before the Guard was called in, said they had no quarrel with the Guard and did not do battle with Guardsmen. Discretion may have been the better part of valor.
That's a figment of your imagination, at least as to me. I said they were silly, and I don't think all liberals are silly. Actually I think these are young people who have little sense of the real world, who are carried away by their own sense of righteousness and who have made a ludicros spectacle of themselves.
In brief, "Yes."
The longer answer is that once you demythologize the events of the 60's, what you discover is that unifying ideology behind all of the protests was nothing more than the desire to shirk personal responcibility for anything. In other words, all the political hubub was nothing more than intellectual cover for the fact that these people didn't want to grow up and have to act like adults. Currently, we've still allowed the hippies to largely define the narrative about the hippie movement and the late 60's and early 70's in general. When the baby boomers finally lose the ability to control the narrative and we can look at their works dispassionately, it will all look like a sissy temper tantrum by a bunch of high spoiled brats.
Then allow me to claim that they are liberal pathetic idiots. If that's not a redundancy.
As for "Sarcasto", his one trick was mildly amusing for the first five or six comments he made on signing up here. At this point he's a tick on this sites .. umm .. derriere.
I think part of the problem one might be having believing you is that you are describing arguably one of the more significant events of American history in the 20th century, and even by your account there is no documentation of it other than your recollection of the event.
This is I hope you understand pretty hard to swallow. Your saying that an armored column - tanks and everything - was called out against a student protest in the United States, but that there is no record of the event at all? How could this have not entered into the mythology of the '60s?
So far the only documentation of the event you describe I can find on the net is you. Even the left wing sites don't mention what you describe, and the only mention of it is your discription of it in the comments.
Are you sure you say what you think you say, because you are the only one who apparantly say it?
Given that your "students", so-called, were engaged in a criminal conspiracy, I'll take issue with your characterization of events.
And now I've read all their comments, I can safely say you're flatly wrong as to all of us. Sarcastro, Realist Liberal and I all said they were silly. Eric said nothing about them being liberals. I rather think these students look down on liberals and probably regard them as sell-outs.
Of course you do. If they were serious by your lights they'd have burned down a bank.
Sarcasto, take note.
"Are you sure you saw what you think you saw, because you are the only one who apparantly saw it?"
Priceless.
When and how was that proven? Many of the arrested students were released without any charges and many of those charged were acquitted. Many had been nowhere near the Bank of America when it burned down. Others were mere spectators. It was plain the police had picked up many students willy-nilly all over Isla Vista without any evidence of law-breaking. They entered student apartments without warrant to search and to drag some students away. And what does your reference to "students" mean? They were students, regularly enrolled.
Where on earth do you get that from? From the facts that I gave legal advice to some students, most of whom were innocent of any criminal conduct, and that I objected to some of the police treatment of those students, you derive that I'm in favor of burning down banks?
You're a silly, silly man or woman, as the case may be, sillier than the NYU students because, after many threads on the VC on this subject, including one that's active now, you ought to know better than to draw conclusions as to a lawyer's beliefs from who he or she represents.
There are only two things that could have possibly made this video even more amusing:
1. The cops taking back the building in wheelchairs.
Now -that- is contemptuousness
2. Turning off the electricity the night before so all the kids would be complaining about their ipod batteries being dead.
Sorta, but just barely. They become Liberal Arts University professors, get tenure, live in the Ivory Tower and teach this garbage to another generation and thus avoid ever coming to terms with reality.
Absolutely it was a real event. I went to UC Santa Barbara in the late 90's, and the locals were still talking about it 30 years later. It happened on Wednesday night, February 25, 1970 - if you go back and look at the newspaper archives from that time in California, you'll find all kinds of articles about it. The Oakland Tribune, Santa Barbara News-Press, Los Angeles Times, and many other papers filed reports and were still writing articles about it weeks and months later. If your local public library subscribes to the Access Newspapers database, just search for Santa Barbara National Guard and Bank of America in the year 1970, and you'll get lots of stuff. It's also referenced in the book "Governor Reagan" by Lou Cannon on pages 293-294. And yes, Reagan did call out the National Guard, after the fact. And took some criticism from Democrats, in fact, who said he should have done it sooner. Those were the old days, eh?
If you don't have access to Access Newspapers, or the Los Angeles Times archives from that far back, and can't get your hands on "Governor Reagan" here are a few web links. Don't take my word for it, see for yourself.
A look back, published by the student newspaper in 2005
Another look back, with some photos
An otherwise unrelated New York Times article from 1991 that mentions the incident in passing
Unfortunately, they did succeed in one thing: They got attention, even if it's all negative. Which will fuel their belief that they're actually important, and therefore, that they're somehow entitled to something.
A light rinse would do the trick.
trad - the UCLA protests of the early '90s (including the several-day occupation of the administration building) led to the formation of the Chicano Studies Research Center (it was a compromise on their demand for a Chicano Studies department).
Nick
DangerMouse wrote:
0 for 2.
LOL...
____________________
You disappoint me DangerMouse, abandoning your principle that liberals are to blame for everything merely because to state it here would have confirmed Sarcastro's point, and, furthermore, doing so in favor of applauding a cheap shot at Sarcastro. I didn't know it was so easy to buy you off.
Sarcastro's point is that DangerMouse thinks liberals are to blame for everything? That's it? That's why Sarcastro does what he does?
Maybe we can all agree DangerMouse thinks liberals are to blame for everything, and Sarcastro can find a new hobby.
New Orleans, through today, the national guard is acting as a second police force. The federal government complained that the guard was failing to abide by federal arming orders for civil operations. Rather than order the guardsmen to unload the chambers of their pistols, the state purchased and issued state owned glocks as sidearms.
(A smart move, I think. A good officer never issues an order he knows his troops will refuse to obey)
(This needs to be interleaved with the Monty Python and the Holy Grail "I'm being oppressed" scene.)
Without making reference to any commenter in the neighborhood, it was my experience in the Sixties that protestors liked to ramp up the picture.
There was one riot on my campus in the spring of 68. I was out there watching and the attempts to provoke the cops were obvious.
The next day, passing through the area, a couple of girls accosted me. I mean they wanted me to take a leaflet about how the cops had been busting heads. They were too raggeldy to carry off accosting in the traditional sense. I said I'd been there and no cops had been busting heads.
Worst language I ever heard from women until I started reading femblogs.
Ideas Have Consequences. The much more important issue to discuss and that is: Where did the students get all these infantile ideas? Clearly they're just parroting what they've been reading and learning in the classroom.
So, again:
Is it possible to identify by name which NYU professors have been giving these students intellectual sustenance (such as it is)?
Also, who are the bigger philosophers behind these infantile ideas of "consensus" and "democratic process"? Is this Rawls, Habermas or someone else?
Laughing at these silly children is mildly amusing for about 60 seconds. The real task is to identify the professors who fed this mush into their empty heads.
I beg leave to differ.
The real task is to identify the reasons the heads were empty.
When my kids were that age, I knew them, and I knew their friends, both high school and some in college. None of them were so lacking in intellectual, emotional, and personal baggage that a professor, no matter how pinko, could have convinced them of this sort of nonsense. The tabula was rasa for a reason, and that is not good for kids at the ages of the protestors. It is not normal. It should not have to be said that for most of history the bulk of the world's work was being done by youngsters this age and just a bit older. It would have been impossible if such stupidity and self-delusion were normal.
Even at today's NYU, "such stupidity and self-delusion" is far from "normal." Most NYU students decided to stay out of that room.
The issue you raise is not unimportant but a tad beside the point. First, there are hundreds, nay, thousands of young people (similar to your kids) who go through classes at NYU unaffected by this drivel. Second, the issue you raise is virtually unanswerable, certainly not on this thread.
Let's start with what we can know. These students are parroting the drivel that they're reading and hearing in their classes. I would like to know which professors (by name) are standing behind the curtain pulling the levers, and I would like to know which books have influenced the students' thinking.
If we can answer these two questions, then I would be willing to address the issues you raise.
Almost a good point. But the problem is exemplified by the phrase "corporate water". How can one be so stupid as to accept the input from those professors and books yet to be named?
The kids have bottled water which has a corporate logo on it. The cops, like any betas, drink city water which is not corporate.
And yet, the kids think they're drinking...what? And the betas are drinking...Halliburton water? [Quick. Forget I said that. I never said it. Don't suggest it to these morons.]
It is one thing for a professor to try figure out a way to fool these morons. But why does it work?
I, too, would like to know the sources of this nonsense, but the problem is that when one source is closed off, the empty head is vulnerable to some other nonsense.
Primary issue is what keeps the heads empty.
I work with kids at a church youth program. Talked to a couple of bright sixth-graders. That week they had studied Columbus who proved the world was not flat. Nope, says I. We went into a room with a huge Mercator on the wall and talked about ships and supplies and distances and Eratosthenes and what not. "Should we tell Miss *?" said the girl. "No," said the boy, "you know how mad she gets when somebody corrects her."
These kids were already okay. Wouldn't have put up with the professors' crap nohow.
The problem is, I submit, more involved, our mutual curiosity about the profs in this situation acknowledged, than exactly who is using the rasas provided to him. They show up like this. Otherwise, it wouldn't work.
How does it happen?
So, we're back to square one and my original questions.
Probably gives the teachers a sense of false confidence when their students don't correct them.
However, Toscanelli stuck Asia out about 2500 miles further east than it actually goes, misreading Marco Polo's travels. Columbus, working off Toscanelli, added another 2500 miles. He then decided that the world was not exactly round, but possibly pear-shaped making a degree of longitude shorter at the latitude he planned to sail, thus reducing the distance he used to sell the enterprise to about 2500 miles. And the distance to his most likely landfalls was...2500 miles. All educated men knew it was about 10,000-11,000 miles to Asia and no ship could sail that far without refreshment. If Columbus didn't know that the New World was in the way, he had three howlers of mistakes, any one of which could have killed him, all lined up in his favor. Or against him, depending on how you look at it.
Strange, for a qualified pilot and blue-water sailor.
Hell, his crew almost didn't let him get 2500 miles. Imagine trying to get them to go four times that, even not withstanding the water and food issues.
Some noise that, when governor of one of the further Azores, he encountered a ship which had returned from an accidental trip to the New World.
Before Columbus sailed, quoth Morison, the city of Bristol was sending out a fleet every few years looking for Huy Brasil in the North Atlantic. If they hadn't already found the Grand Banks, they would have shortly.
Whassisname, the Portagee, swinging southwest to get a good slant for the Cape of Good Hope, went a bit wide and noticed Brazil.
If Columbus hadn't done it, somebody else would have found the Americas, possibly did, before much longer.
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