Higher Education

Rosie O’Donnell, who once said it is "physically impossible" for fire to melt steel, shockingly revealed she did not make it through college. Promoting her new book "Crafty U" on the April 8 edition of "Martha," Rosie admitted she was not able to get through a real university. Rosie also recounted bitter memories from "The View."

Fawning over Martha Stewart’s intellect, Rosie implied she does not match up as she confessed to dropping out of Boston University with a 1.62 grade point average. She claimed she was too busy working at the local comedy club to focus on her classes. [Audio available here.]

Later in the same segment, Rosie discussed her experience on "The View" noting "it’s hard for me when I’m not the boss." This is stating the obvious for the viewers that witness her bully another co-host and nearly mistakenly referred to "The View" as "The Rosie O’Donnell Show." Rosie added "there was a little Republican who scared me," referring to Elisabeth Hasselbeck who stood up to Rosie in the end.

On the flimsy pretext of this being the season when HS seniors get their college acceptances, a New York Times column has set about asking current college students about their plans for future sexual conquests.

Stephen Dubner handed his 'Freakonomics' column over to his assistant, Nicole Tourtelot, this week. She asked five collegians five questions. Three of them were innocuous: who's paying for your education, how do you view cigarette smoking, what's your dream job?

But then came:

• How many more people do you think you’ll sleep with before you get married?
• How many would you like to?

There's a new entry next to Mika Brzezinski's name in the annals of MSM elitism. The Morning Joe panelist today lamented blue-collar whites who "can't hear" the message Barack Obama propounded. Poor benighted souls. Joe Scarborough called Mika on it.

Brzezinski's comment came in response to Scarborough's exposition of why he didn't think Obama's speech would work with many blue-collar whites.

View video here.

In another example of a shameful editorial by a student "journalist" at an American University newspaper, we find the University of Las Vegas publishing -- not once, but twice -- an editorial that makes the claim that Palestinian suicide bombings of Israeli civilians is justified because "'Israelis indiscriminately kill civilians." Excusing terror campaigns by Palestinians isn't the only outrage in this piece as Israelis are also likened to Nazis, and Palestinians are ridiculously called a "race of people" by student writer Sharief Ali.

On March 13th, in the UNLV's paper The Rebel Yell, Ali published a piece titled "Attack shocks, doesn't surprise," that was so outrageous a member of Congress even wrote in scolding the University for publishing such trash.

Writer Ali began by saying that attack on a Jewish seminary in West Jerusalem by a Palestinian gunman on March 6th was "hardly a surprise" and can be blamed on Israel, not the so-called Palestinians. The Israelis seem to deserve the terror campaigns by Hamas and Fatah, according to Ali, because the "Israelis indiscriminately kill civilians" in their attempt to kill "terrorists"... and he did put terrorists in quotes letting us all know he doesn't believe there are any terrorists in Palestinian territories.

"NBC Nightly News" has found yet another hardship story caused by the credit crunch - prospective college students seeking student loans.

The March 6 "Nightly News" aired a segment about how a lack of funding for student lenders will cause some students not to be able to attend their first choice of college.

"More than a dozen lenders have pulled out of the federal student loan program, unable to raise enough money to make loans," NBC correspondent Tom Costello said. "Now - Pennsylvania, Missouri, Michigan, New Hampshire and Iowa have suspended parts or all of their student loan programs - unprecedented."

Rush Limbaugh fans have often heard the conservative talk radio host suggest that people who consider themselves politically moderate just can't make up their minds on important issues of the day.

A recent study about ideological differences which drive more liberals to seek Ph.D.'s than conservatives might offer some answers as to why that is.

Published by the American Enterprise Institute, "Left Pipeline: Why Conservatives Don't Get Doctorates" presented some pretty compelling ideas about what's causing the liberal bias problem at America's colleges and universities (emphasis added throughout):

The dean of journalism at Northwestern University seems to have gotten himself in a bit of a sticky wicket, as it were. Apparently, John Lavine, the dean of the Medill School of Journalism, has been indulging in the use of unattributed and unnamed sources in his columns for the Medill alumni magazine and 16 NU journo instructors aren't very happy about it. Not only are they not happy about it, but according to the Chicago Tribune they are demanding that the dean prove that he didn't make his quotes up out of whole cloth.

You know the journalist's favorite source, don't you? It's the "unnamed source," the "anonymous quote" and the famed "deep throat" sources that journalists make out to be "protecting" from discovery. This sort of source has a long history in the kind of journalism of whistleblowers or muckrakers that have been increasingly popular since Watergate. But, everyone knows that you cannot base a factual story solely on the anonymous source. There must be other things, other sources, other proofs backing up these unnamed sources or the fact in question becomes an allegation instead of a proven truth. Naturally, employing unnamed sources too often damages the veracity of any story -- as well it should.

On Sunday’s "60 Minutes," anchor Morley Safer did a segment on Demark being ranked the happiest country in world consistently for the past three decades and wondered: "What makes a Dane so happy? And why isn't he wallowing in misery and self doubt like so many of the rest of us?" Later in the segment, Safer discovered that low expectations of the Danish people was the key to their happiness and he concluded that:

Wanting it all is a bacterium that stays with us from youth to old age -- wanting a bigger house, fancier car, more stuff. And when we get more, there's always someone with even more stuff who's just as unhappy. Some suggest that the unhappiest zip codes in the country are the wealthiest, like the Upper East Side of New York.

It’s interesting that many liberal media figures reside in New York’s Upper East Side.

Not that we need any more proof that our colleges and universities have degraded to near foolishness, but the Daily Collegian, a paper that bills itself as "New England's largest college daily," gives us one more reason to assume it is true. The paper, published at the University of Massachusetts, gives us an uninformed screed against Ronald Reagan that is a mere exercise in name calling as opposed to a cogent review of Reagan's presidency. And, most ridiculous of all, the headline to the piece spells Reagan's name "Regan." Apparently this "school" doesn't have an encyclopedia handy to find out about this "Regan" guy?

Like many college journalist wannabes they assume that petulance and bombast is the road to "journalism" and this fellow, Ted Rogers, is no different. He begins by smearing Reagan admirers as sexual perverts:

The New York Times wants you to know that legislators in Arizona are mean to illegal immigrants trying to go to the state's schools on the cheap. The Times wants you to imagine that Arizona's new anti-illegal laws are oppressing those poor, illegal immigrant students that come into Arizona expecting to get all sorts of loans and financial breaks just because... well, just because they happen to draw a breath. The Times wants us all to tsk tsk the state of Arizona because it had the guts to finally do something about the billions of dollars lost to this flood of criminal aliens. Somehow, I don't feel so bad, though.

With the sensational headline, "Arizona Law Takes a Toll on Nonresident Students," the Times gives us the tale of woe of students that want to steal from Arizona's educational system. They begin their tale with the experience of Marco Carrillo who was asked by his college counselor if he was a legal resident or not. The Times acts as if even asking this question is somehow mean-spirited or shocking.

Wednesday night's CNN/YouTube presidential debate for the Republican candidates largely lived up to its promise to be a debate fitting for Republican voters as the vast majority of the questions used were asked from a conservative point of view. But the GOP debate's slant toward conservative questions was less than the July 23 CNN/YouTube Democratic debate's slant toward liberal questions. On Wednesday, out of a total of 34 video questions presented, conservative questions outnumbered liberal questions by 14 to 8, with the remaining questions ideologically ambiguous or neutral. During the Democratic debate, out of a total of 38 video questions, the slant toward liberal questions came in at 17 liberal to 6 conservative, with the remainder ambiguous or neutral.

Is the maker of “Indoctrinate U“ being sued by “a major taxpayer-funded university?” A November 12 message at filmmaker Evan Coyne Maloney's personal site Brain-Terminal.com states just that:

Due to a threatened lawsuit from a major taxpayer-funded university, the Indoctrinate U homepage has been taken down temporarily. On The Fence Films LLC is deciding how best to proceed, and we will not be commenting on anything until after our final response has been executed.

Don’t worry, though, this will not derail the film.

On Monday, NewsBusters reported the ironic occurrence of a Missouri newspaper firing a former journalism professor for plagiarism.

At the time, I wrote, "I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry."

Well, new information suggests the latter, as the piece which started the brouhaha, a November 3 column by professor emeritus John Merrill, was critical of a new department for women's and gender studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia (emphasis added):

Thanks to changes being implemented by the newspaper industry's Audit Board of Circulations (ABC), it may be, as I suspected in a previous post (NewsBusters; BizzyBlog) that the 30-month analysis of newspaper print circulation drops I did last week (NewsBusters; BizzyBlog) is the last "clean" one I'll be able to do.

The ABC announcement is here. Editor and Publisher's Jennifer Saba describes the changes that appear likely to prevent meaningful comparisons of new circulation figures to those in prior reports (bolds are mine; HT to Recovering Journalist, whose post on the topic is hysterical, though I always thought that CPAs were the ones who answered "What do you want it to be?" when asked "What is 2 + 2?" :-->):

Americans have fallen behind in science in math and can't compete globally, right? Well, not according to Vivek Wadhwa's October 26 BusinessWeek article, which the media have conveniently ignored.

For years, the media warned about US students' deficient science and math skills, but a report from the Urban Institute disputed those claims (all bold mine):

...math, science, and reading test scores at the primary and secondary level have increased over the past two decades, and U.S. students are now close to the top of international rankings. Perhaps just as surprising, the report finds that our education system actually produces more science and engineering graduates than the market demands.

In schools and colleges across America, teachers and professors recall the "Free Speech Movement" of the hard left at Berkeley in the 1960s. But today's left often shreds that idea in its own intolerant behavior. At Michigan State University, British Nationalist Nick Griffin was shouted down from a speech on the danger of radical Islam. The Lansing State Journal reported: "Hurling obscenities and using chants to interrupt his address, rambunctious student organizations forced Griffin to abandon his speech and allow an informal question and answer session." This liberal quote is a classic:

"We have all come from different backgrounds," said Authra Khreis, 17, a pre-med student and a protester. "We should accept one another. I don't think he should be allowed to speak. You can use free speech until you hurt another person."

Today I'm pleased to announce a new feature: The NewsBusters Interview. These will be a series of lengthy, candid conversations we'll be conducting with prominent individuals in the media and political worlds.

Recently I had the privilege of attending the premier of the "Indoctrinate U," a documentary that exposes the widespread suppression of conservative and libertarian opinions on America's college campuses. Turns out, the same 60s and 70s radicals who marched for free speech back then aren't so interested in the concept now that they're running academia.

This is a great film and a very necessary one as well. I was so impressed by it that I wanted to interview its creator, Evan Coyne Maloney. We had an in-depth and candid discussion about a variety of things including how he got interested in film, getting funding for it, the background behind campus speech codes, how the media covers academic censorship and much more.

The most interesting aspect of the interview was his discussion of why there are so few conservatives and libertarians in the entertainment media. Read past the fold for excerpts and the full transcript.

Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama is demanding that John Tanner, head of the Justice Department's voting rights division, be fired for racially insensitive remarks:

John Tanner's remarks came during an Oct. 5 panel discussion on minority voters before the National Latino Congreso in Los Angeles. Tanner addressed state laws that require photo identification for voting, saying that elderly voters disproportionately don't have the proper IDs.

"That's a shame, you know, creating problems for elderly persons just is not good under any circumstance," Tanner said, according to video posted on YouTube. "Of course, that also ties into the racial aspect because our society is such that minorities don't become elderly the way white people do. They die first."

"There are inequities in health care. There are a variety of inequities in this country, and so anything that disproportionately impacts the elderly has the opposite impact on minorities. Just the math is such as that."

Perhaps one of the most distorted stories in recent mainstream media history, the Valerie Plame CIA leak controversy, has become even more so with Plame’s upcoming "60 Minutes" interview with CBS Anchor, Katie Couric. On Friday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Harry Smith talked with Couric about the interview and began by describing Plame as "...beautiful, smart, a covert agent."

Smith then went on to summarize the media-manufactured scandal that ensued after Plame’s name was mentioned in Bob Novak's syndicated column:

Speculation was rampant that the leaking of her name, which is a crime, came from inside the Bush Administration, in retaliation for her husband's column. The leak grew into a scandal that embroiled the political elite in Washington....When it was all over, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was charged and convicted of lying to investigators and obstruction of justice. President Bush later commuted sentence, no one was ever charged with knowingly leaking Valerie Plame's name.

The problem with this little summary is that it completely leaves out the fact that person responsible for giving Plame’s name to Novak was former Undersecretary of State, Richard Armitage, who mentioned her name in an interview with Novak and was never charged with any crime. Also missing was any indication of her husband, Joe Wilson, being a Kerry Campaign advisor in 2004.

With politicians and newspapers like they have in California, it's no wonder the state has become a magnet for millions of illegal immigrants. The latest lunacy? The legislature has enacted a bill giving illegals scholarships to state universities. And the Los Angeles Times predictably wants Gov. Schwarzenegger to sign it into law.

The so-called "California Dream Act" was cooked up by state Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles). In its editorial of today, "Make the Dream Reality," The Times plays lip service to the problem the law would create: "We understand the objections that arise when a society extends benefits to illegal immigrants that once were reserved solely for legal residents. The easier life becomes for those who crossed our borders illegally, the more incentive there is for others to follow."

Exactamundo. But wth its next breath the newspaper brushes off the very problem it identified:

Conveniently, the American media is largely ignoring a significant statement from a UK High Court judge who said Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” promotes “partisan political views” and the schools should treat it as such.

As a result the British government was forced to rewrite their website and their “guidance” and will need to issue a warning before showing the film.

As NewsBusters reported, truck driver, part-time school official and father of two Stewart Dimmock brought a High Court action to ban the film from UK schools, claiming it is “unfit for schools” because it contains scientific inaccuracies, “sentimental mush” and is politically biased.

The movie was distributed to more than 3500 schools for children aged 11 to 14-year-olds in “Climate Change Packs.”

With a huge assist from the New York Times' Patricia Cohen, feminist author Susan Faludi revealed apparently incapable of connecting to the 9-11 tragedy in human terms in Thursday's Arts section story "Towers Fell, and Attitudes Were Rebuilt," in which Faludi cast heroic acts after 9-11 as an anti-woman lurch back to "prefeminist thinking."

"The terrifying and wrenching photographs from September 2001 on display at the New-York Historical Society are suspended from clips in neat rows like laundry hanging on a line. Among them is a black-and-white picture of a life-size cardboard cutout of John Wayne in his prime, with a placard hanging from his neck that reads: 'This is no time for cowboys.'

"'That could be the cover of my book,' Susan Faludi said. She was visiting the Historical Society's exhibition of photographs and artifacts from the World Trade Center attacks and talking about her work 'The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America,' out next week from Metropolitan Books."

Did Chris Matthews, on his September 24th edition of "Hardball," really hear Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "allow" that there was a Holocaust? This is what he insisted to New York City Councilman David Weprin:

MATTHEWS: OK, let‘s talk about that very point. The hottest issue of the last century, of course, and the worst case of inhumanity to man, of course, is the Holocaust. I listened carefully to him. And I know you did, sir. Didn‘t you hear him allow the fact that there was, in fact, a Holocaust?

WEPRIN: Well, he—his statement today was different than his statement in the past.

MATTHEWS: Right.

WEPRIN: In the past, he‘s clearly said that the Holocaust was a hoax, it never existed. Now he‘s talking about doing more research. There‘s no question...

Carter Wood of Shopfloor.org is not buying what Columbia Journalism Review is selling. Not after its smug, self-important pitch letter whining about supposed attacks on freedom of speech and press in America. Not after said sales pitch falls so close to Columbia welcoming dictator and enemy of press freedom Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

Columbia Journalism Review picked an inauspicious time to be sending out subscription pitches to Journalism School alumni, coinciding with the debacle that was Ahmadinejad's appearance at the university.

Reading through the pitch letter (.pdf copy here) signed by CJR Editor Mike Hoyt, we were struck by the unremitting hostility it emits toward U.S. institutions, primarily the government but also business and religion. In CJR's world view, a journalist's responsibility is apparently to attack, attack, attack -- because the institutions being reported on are corrupt and a threat to our freedoms.

And the come-on leads with a preposterous assertion:

Does it get much lower than this?

After first extolling the "F--- Bush" headline, MSNBC's David Shuster, substituting for Tucker Carlson today, later engaged in a grotesque game of "gotcha," exploiting an Amercan soldier killed in Iraq to make his partisan point.

Chatting with Newsweek's Richard Wolffe and MSNBC analyst Craig Crawford, talk turned to the controversy surrounding the editorial in the Colorado State student newspaper headlined "Taser This: F--- Bush" [f-word spelled out in headline].

Wolffe went first, and was patently delighted by the incident. With a hearty grin, he observed . . .

While ABC’s Chris Cuomo played softball with Columbia University president Lee Bollinger on the upcoming speech of Iranian president Ahmadinejad, CNN’s John Roberts directed tough questions to John Coatsworth, dean for Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Roberts opened the interview with a question which summarized Ahmadinejad’s record. "Here's a leader who's advocated the destruction of Israel, denied the Holocaust, and is accused by our government, the United States government, of supplying both fighters and equipment to insurgents in Iraq, to kill U.S. troops. Why would you ever want him on your campus?"

Here we go again with a so-called freedom of speech claim of a bunch of low-class, petulant children playing at being real "journalists" in one of our state funded Universities. This time it's the little fellas at The Rocky Mountain Collegian, the school paper of Colorado State University, who are hiding behind a real right and using it as cover to realize their 15 minutes of fame. These anti-intellectual, collegians are, of course, pretending to be shocked that anyone would question their "right" to print an expletive in bold headlines in their paper and are claiming that they didn't mean to "upset" anyone. I have another four-letter word that describes this absurd claim: LIES.

Update: Please also see College Newspaper Blames Bush for Florida Taser Incident.

Proving that our schools seem to be more interested in creating controversy, teaching anti-American ideas, and indulging in childish behavior, this supposed student newspaper staff seemed to imagine that journalism should reflect some trash mouthed, morning disc jockey's schtick instead of serious, reasoned debate. Sadly, it is obvious that these kiddies were left to their own devices in writing and preparing their paper. It seems woefully clear that there was no faculty supervision of these anarchist wannabes. So, not only are we left wondering why our college kids so anti-intellectual but we have to wonder why no one is supervising their misguided attempts at writing. Do these school administrators get a salary to TEACH or do they not?

Most folks by now are certainly aware of the infamous taser incident that happened Monday at the University of Florida.

In a somewhat stunning aftershock (pun intended!), the editorial board of Colorado State University's student-run paper has offered possibly the finest example of Bush Derangement Syndrome to date by actually blaming this incident on - wait for it! - the current President of the United States.

Isn't that special?

Yet, even better was the simplicity of their statement, and the vulgarity included which will follow after the break so that only those who choose to be offended will be (h/t NBer wiwf):