E.L. Doctorow booed at Hofstra commencement during anti-Bush speech

[Cocoa]

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-lidoc0524,0,7188397.story?coll=ny-topstories-headlines

E.L. Doctorow, one of the most celebrated writers in America, was nearly booed off the stage at Hofstra University Sunday when he gave a commencement address lambasting President George W. Bush and effectively calling him a liar.

Booing that came mainly from the crowd in the stands became so intense that Doctorow stopped speaking at one point, showing no emotion as he stood silently and listened to the jeers. Hofstra President Stuart Rabinowitz intervened, and called on the audience to allow him to finish. He did, although some booing persisted.

Doctorow, who spent virtually all of his 20-minute address in Hempstead criticizing Bush, told the crowd that like himself the president is a storyteller. But "sadly they are not good stories this president tells," he said. "They are not good stories because they are not true." That line provoked the first boos, along with scattered cheers.

"One story he told was that the country of Iraq had nuclear and biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction and was intending shortly to use them on us," he said. "That was an exciting story all right, it was designed to send shivers up our spines. But it was not true.

more...

[Jacobin]

1. Long Island, NY?

WTF?

[Alerter_]

14. rich college kids and their parents, what did you expect?

They all dream of owning "private contractors" to make some bank in Iraq. Not many of them will wind up on the front line of course.

[saigon68]

47. THEY WILL ALL DODGE THE DRAFT-and let the black man get drafted

And die in their Place. They do not want to be upset in their career path to obtaining unfettered power, money and influence.

[americanstranger]

15. Hey, I live here...

Take it from me, there's an awful lot of suburban rednecks out this way.

When we invaded Iraq, a tire store around the corner from my house put up these little gems:



The day after it went up, I stopped by and told the guy he lost my business. He told me to 'move to fuckin' Iraq.'

Go figure.

-as

[leesa]

22. Those are some mighty ignorant and nasty people out that way!

Don't even know their support of these treasonous bastards is selling the country they pretend to love down the river. Stupid fools!

[union_maid]

23. I live here too

Not a proud moment. I don't think we have suburban rednecks as much as we have assholes. One of the reasons that I could never stand Howard Stern was that he just seemed like another one of the local assholes to me. We've also got nails. I really didn't think that Long Islanders could get really excited about anything but nails. Are you sure these folks weren't from out of the area?

[bluestateguy]

25. Both Long Island counties voted Clinton-Gore in 1996 and 2000

Nassau

1996
Clinton 55.7% 303,587
Dole 36.1% 196,820
Perot 6.6% 36,122
Other 1.5% 8,135

2000
Gore 57.9% 341,610
Bush 38.5% 226,954
Nader 2.5% 14,780
Other 1.1% 6,363

Suffolk

1996
Clinton 51.8% 261,828
Dole 36.1% 182,510
Perot 10.3% 52,209
Other 1.7% 8,666

2000
Gore 53.4% 306,306
Bush 42.0% 240,992
Nader 3.2% 18,130
Other 1.5% 8,438

Source: http://www.uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

30. I live here too, one of the most reactionary right wing places

I have ever been. And I lived in Kansas, too!

I still see anti-Hillary signs all over the place.

[liberalhistorian]

37. I would have gone back and presented

him with enlistment papers and told him to enlist and go to fucking Iraq if he was so goddamn gung-ho about sending other people's kids to die, and if the thought of blood and gore and guts and killing others excited him so much. Then, if he had a son who was of age, I would have presented him with enlistment papers for the son, also.

[KansDem]

52. Hmmmm...let me take a stab at this....

Tire store guy is vehemently pro-Bush...
Tire store guy supports Bush's invasion into Iraq...
Cost of oil surges...
Cost of gasoline surges...
Drivers drive less...
Automobile tires wear/blow-out less...
Tire store guy's business drops off...
Tire store guy goes out of business...
and then,
Tire store guy blames Democrats, unions, government, Japan and Germany...

Sound about right???

(the above scenario is not limited only to tire store guys...)

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

63. Wow. How'd you guess? And there is an even weirder sub-

species here on LI.... the Union Republicans.

those amaze the crap out of me. Drink more cool aid, boys, as long as the stocks are up, you have jobs!

[aquart]

40. Nassau County? Used to be D'Amato country.

An endlessly corrupt political machine.

[americanstranger]

59. I live in Suffolk...

...about 3 blocks away from the 'Alphonse D'Amato Country Courthouse.'

Ugly-ass building, lemme tell ya.

-as

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

64. Yeah, D'Amato's last errection

is quite ugly.

[deportivoI]

55. Long Island

is 97% Repukes

[Dookus]

2. Good for Doctorow...

one of my favorite contemporary writers.

[Judi Lynn]

8. That's right, good for Doctorow. He's got conviction & he's correct. n/t

[boobooday]

3. "to ruin my daughter's graduation with politics"

Who ruined it? Doctorow, or the people who booed him like Un-American jackasses?

I have worked in Universities for 15 years, and no matter what a speaker talks about, somebody always gets offended. They don't want the boring old "you are the future" speech, but somehow they want it to be bland and generic too.

What world are these students entering? When is it okay to speak the truth? They are not children.

But no, no! It's a UNIVERSITY GRADUATION! How dare you make us think!



http://www.wgoeshome.com

[Minstrel Boy]

9. And would that have been said if the commencement

had been delivered by, oh, let's say Cheney?

[jdj]

18. We need to start giving out merit badges.

"I was booed by neo-cons" could be a patch or medal put on a sash like in the boy scouts. We could have patches for protesting Operation Iraqi Fiefdom, for the March for Women's Lives, for My Vote was stolen, too...stuff like that.

We could have our own uniforms and walk around with all our patches and medals like a golldurned reglar librul army!

Per ruining princess' life with politics, wait 'til she gets drafted. That'll really cramp her style.

[pfitz59]

4. What's up with Hofstra?

[demgrrrll]

6. Norm Coleman graduated from Hofstra/ JD. Looks like they have

more than a few Republican ties but they may have Democratic
ties too On edit, Nassau County is a GOP stronghold. The Democratic commitee chair was likened to being head of Catholic Life at
Bob Jones. He is a brave soul for making that speech. I will
say this an honest journalist would have mentioned that Nassau County is a GOP stronghold.

[MajorFlaw]

12. That's somewhat unfair. Our Count Executive

is a real good Dem, Tom Suozzi.

[DavidFL]

36. Hofstra is my undergraduate alma mater and yes...

Nassau is a GOP stronghold. The changeover to a Democratic majority in the county legislature and the county executive seat happened after people finally starting waking up to the messes Nassau Republicans had made of the county's finances; lots of cronyism, special interest agendas, mismanagement, wasteful spending, etc., are hallmarks of decades of Republican domination of the county's government. In other words, it's a Northern version of a good ol' boy network like we have all over Florida.

Property taxes in Nassau County are obscene, resulting in many people having to rent out portions of their homes to tenants in order to make ends meet. The County also has a sales tax -- with an incredible tax base in Roosevelt Field (the largest shopping mall in the Northeast) and the surrounding commercial districts in Garden City and Westbury -- cell phone tax, etc., yet it is still in the hole year after year as a legacy of massive mismanagement by the County government. At one time, I believe, the county was dangerously close to bankruptcy. What's scary is the exact same thing is happening down here where I live now in Pasco County, FL. Like Nassau, special interests and self-interested politicians dominate county policy and as a result, new developments are thrown down all over the place, environmentally sensitive areas are encroached upon by the new development, and the county's infrastructure and schools are going, and have gone in some cases, to hell because of Pasco County's failure to plan accordingly for population growth.

What surprises me about this article is that people had any reaction at all: most of Hofstra's students were so damned apathetic to everything while I was a student there. A few of us tried to start a multicultural organization that promoted diversity and diversity awareness and sensitivy on campus and in the community my freshman year and three people out of a student body of 18,000 showed up. And that's the way it remained throughout the course of the semester, despite our recruitment efforts, until our organziation was disbanded by the Student Government Association because we didn't have enough members for the SGA to keep funding it. Same thing happened with other campus activism groups I belonged to.

Hempstead is one of the poorest towns in Nassau County and mainly goes Democratic. But as a private school, and a pricey one at that, Hofstra has a lot of students that come from moneyed towns of Nassau and conservative Republican parents. It wasn't unusual to see brand new Beemers, Benzs and Lexuses in the student parking lots. A lot of my courses had very little discussion and consisted mostly of the professor lecturing the full hour. The prevailing attitude of the students there, especially the business majors, was that the purpose of college was something to make sure they got a good paying job when they graduated, or something their parents made them do, and nothing more. By saying that, I don't mean it to reflect badly on the faculty; many of my professors were excellent and helped me expand my critical thinking skills and love of learning, which is something that wasn't emphasized when I was high school. My philosophy professor inspired me to continue reading works by Nietzsche, Sartre, Plato and the like and my English Lit professor gave me a love of the works of the British Romantic authors I still have to this day.

I don't know if this helps explain things a little to anyone here, but this article doesn't come as much of a surprise to me. I'm just embarassed that this happened at my alma mater.

[THUNDER HANDS]

39. I'm a former Hofstra student

I agree with you. The most shocking thing is that there was any reaction at all.

Hofstra students are neither liberal nor conservative. Actually, they're kinda both.

They're liberal with their drinking and conservative with their fashion sense. If that makes any sense (probably just to other Long Islanders).

[Wolfetone]

49. Bob Jones - Catholic Life?

Bob Jones is not a Catholic university and as a matter of fact the people at Bob Jones don't seem to like Catholics at all.

[berry]

13. I suspect the booing was planned in advance by pro-* fanatics.

The parents who objected were probably just as upset by the booing as by the words (assuming that they are sheeple).

The other example of this, last year at Rockford College, was definitely started by outside agitators. With maybe a few friends on the inside. I remember people being shocked partly because it was in the usually polite (by habit, culture or repression) midwest.

Doctorow's views on Bush are well known. I suppose there are a lot of people who even now cannot bear to admit what the US has become, but everyone who speaks the truth is serving us well. Bravo for him!!

[Cocoa]

19. wasn't the Rockford College thing started by a radio host?

like a wacky morning DJ or something, that was a freeper as well.

[madrchsod]

21. basically it was the same thing

very conservative bots got upset because someone dared them to think rationally and respond as the intelligent students Rockford college claims it graduates..i think the dj was later,but it was awhile ago..just to much info to store....

[0007]

53. I'll make a note to myself and in my next life I'll bypass Hofstra.

[Journeyman]

5. For those who understand it. . .

E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime is one of the finest anti-war novels produced by an American in the past century. Good to see Mr. E still has his passion.



(All his close friends call him by his first initial.)

[Cush]

7. Hofstra is Conservative

My 11th grade American History/English teacher (he taught both classes) went there, he oftened joked about he was one of the only 3 or 4 liberal democrats on campus (he would have been there in the late 80's/early 90's)

[Renew Deal]

57. I'm not sure about that.

Most of the students gave him a standing ovation. Also their other speakers were Schumer, Lou Dobbs, and Spitzer.

[bluestateguy]

10. Seems like the parents were the ones causing the problems

I think they are the ones who need to grow up. Yes, I think one can carry politics at a Commencement speech to far, such as imploring people to vote a particular way, but that rarely happens.

Real life is not about only hearing the messages you want to hear. A democratic society simply cannot function that way. Free speech is not meant to always be polite, genteel and mainstream. It often does, and must, offend many people. Just as the eighteenth century American Patriots offended people with their talk of independence and war, the anti-slavery abolitionists, the civil rights activists and anti-Vietnam War activists. I shudder to think of what would have happened in history if these people had just settled for being polite and only speaking in the "approprtiate forums".

I have had to listen to an imbecile neo-fascist president for four years and I would never call upon him to be censored. I also have right wing students in the classes I teach who often make offensive remarks that I hate, but I would never call upon them to be silenced.

[indepat]

11. Just goes to show what an enormous bunch of very sick puppies

we have running around in this country. Warped too!

[mountainvue]

16. Small pocket

of Lieberman supporters?:shrug:

[AussieInCA]

17. "I only wish their parents had provided them a better role model."

stupid ass freeper parents were the ones carrying on like a pack of little brown shirts. At list the grads knew better, maybe some of those freeper parents need to go back to school and learn a thing or two.

[snippy]

20. Brown Shirts for Bush. n/t

[Raenelle]

24. Tit for tat-now we don't need to feel ill-mannered when we boo pro-Bushies

[LesTalkMoreDo]

26. A graduation speech is hardly the place for partisan politics

With a diverse student body that is supposed to be inspired by the speaker he should have saved the political speech for another venue.

[Cocoa]

28. what about international film festivals?

are you troubled by the troubling events at Cannes this year as well? :-)

[LesTalkMoreDo]

29. What events? Did they hold school graduation ceremonies there?

I can't afford to fly to France for such things and I can't get the time off work even if I could afford it. It would also be quite a stretch to compare such an event to a school graduation where the diversity of the student body should be respected by the speakers.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

60. Respect diversity? How about supporting the Bill of Rights,

support the Geneva Convention, support all the US Constitution, support rule of law.

Graduates should be inspired and motivated to know what the hell is going on in the world so they aren't told to hold the leash when they are drafted next year.

I just worked as an audio technician for 12 commencements in California and heard that so-called inspiring "spread your wings and fly, you are the future" cliche so many times it was meaningless formulaic drivel.

The student's most enthusiastic responses came from hearing the few speakers who pointed out the high crimes being committed by 'our' gov't. that need to be prosecuted.

When you're country is occupied by corporate Nazis, the task at hand is to indict and convict them. Not just "fly."

Those (know-next-to-nothing) kids are our damn future. My mother is a college history professor and she and her teacher friends are all horrified that students come to them every year less and less able to do coherent thinking, have no idea what is going on in the world or how anything works or what has preceded our own lives. Zero perspective aggravated by vulgar propaganda and consumerism.

TV Nation's children are losing their ability to reason. Just as intended by the power structure that needs mindless consumers and soldiers.

All our survival is dependent on the next generation putting out the fires consuming any hopes for justice in our brittle world. They need more than soothing Hallmark graduation card sentiments to give them a clue on what they is coming at them very quickly.

[thebigidea]

32. yeah, Bush and Cheney should stop giving 'em.

I'm so tired of Bush and Cheney being so PARTISAN with graduation ceremonies, why - they're just PLAYING POLITICS.

[LesTalkMoreDo]

33. You bet

They get no pass from me. A graduation speech should be uplifting and full of hope for the kids headed out the door. It's not the place for politics of any stripe.

[Bridget Burke]

48. They aren't "kids". They are young adults.

"Kids" younger than they are in Iraq & Afghanistan, hoping to earn enough money to attend college. Any college. Hoping, by this point, just to make it home with their bodies & minds relatively unscathed.

E L Doctorow is a famous writer (& teachcer) whose topics include history & politics. This was known when he was hired to speak at the graduation.

I'm sure many the boo-ers would have preferred the aural equivalent of the works of Thomas Kinkade. Tough.

[LesTalkMoreDo]

61. They are kids in my book of life :-)

When I went to Nam it was not for school money it was because I wanted to carry a gun and fight communism.

[RandomKoolzip]

58. Ah, bullshit.

You can bet the farm that had he substituted "Carter" or "Clinton" for "Bush," it woulda been A-OK for lots of these trust-fundies.

[LesTalkMoreDo]

62. Maybe so but then there is the other half that would have went boo!

You help make my point that politics has no place in this venue.

[Merlin]

38. I disagree. These are times that call for outspoken dissent.

If not now, when? These are not ordinary times. People need to know that what is going on now seriously jeapordizes our nation and those with the courage to speak out against it must do so.

I lived through a time like this before, and what was true then is true now.

Thank you, Mr. Doctorow!

[LesTalkMoreDo]

42. The times are right but the venue was wrong

A kids graduation is not the place for partisan politics of either stripe.

[snippy]

43. Doctorow probably should have talked about the future.

A future filled with lies from a madman about the need for perpetual war. A future filled with descriptions of perpetual fear and perpetual hatred to justify the perpetual war. A future in which Brown Shirts for Bush limit what may be said at public gatherings. A future in which American citizens are sorted into "good citizens" and "bad citizens" based on whether they pay sufficient homage and obedience to a lying, war mongering government led by a lying, war mongering madman who claims to hear voices from his God ordering death and destruction.

[AP]

46. He's a historian, so he could have based his vision of the furutre on what

we know about the past.

Oh, wait. That's exactly what he did do.

[Name removed]

45. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Free_Thinker]

27. SICK

Booing somebody of Doctorow's caliber shows zero class and on top of it all he was just telling the truth.

Some sick stuff going on in this nation when freaking LONG ISLAND acts like this.

[SpiralHawk]

31. "You can't handle the truth"

But that's perfectly fine, because George aWol Bush and his oily gang can't tell the truth.

[PeaceProgProsp]

34. The Book of Daniel is a great book. Honor Doctorow by buying a copy.

[PeaceProgProsp]

35. If they didn't want brilliant cultural criticism, why'd they ask E.L.D.?

One Hofstra official said Sunday that while Doctorow had the right to say what he did, he violated the unwritten code that college commencement speeches should inspire and unite a student body.

Then they should have invited Bill Cosby to speak. No, make that Dennis Miller. Well, OK. How about Carol Burnett?

Provost Dr. Herman Berliner said he has been to numerous graduation ceremonies during the past 30 years and "I cannot remember a commencement speech that was as divisive as this commencement speech was." The university did not know the content of the address. It is not Hofstra's policy to screen commencement speeches, officials said.

Berliner said it was relatively common during the Vietnam War, but "extraordinarily uncommon" in recent times for a speaker to have to stop speaking.


I think Berliner solved his own conundrum there. Idiot.

[NightTrain]

41. Three words....

Pearls before swine.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

44. Sarah Lawerence commencement address by Grace Paley was cheered

by everyone present through out her entire speech even though it was anti-war, anti-bushco*... it was BEAUTIFUL!......5 secert service agents were there(thats how many i saw)...i guess some big muck-muck was there to see their child graduate

http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/paley.html



Grace Paley, the first recipient of the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit, was born in the Bronx in 1922. She is the author of three highly acclaimed collections of short fiction--The Little Disturbances of Man (1959), Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1974), and Later the Same Day (1985)--as well as three collections of poetry, including Leaning Forward, also published in 1985. Ms. Paley has taught at Columbia and Syracuse Universities, and currently teaches at both City College of New York, where she is writer-in-residence, and Sarah Lawrence College, where she has taught creative writing and literature for 18 years. She received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1961, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1966, and an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1970. She is a member of the Executive Board of P.E.N.

Actively involved in anti-war, feminist and anti-nuclear movements, Ms. Paley has been a member of the War Resisters' League, Resist, and Women's Pentagon Action, and was one of the founders of the Greenwich Village Peace Center in 1961; she regards herself as a "somewhat combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist." Ms. Paley has two children and one grandchild, and divides her time between New York City and Thetford Hill, Vermont.

[AP]

50. It's amazing that Ted Koppel DIDN'T get booed at Berkeley. Check this out:

And before I go any further, I don't want there to be any misunderstanding between us. I know that many of you here today oppose the war in Iraq. I do not. I have many questions and reservations about how that war is being conducted but I do not oppose it. We may have some other occasion, perhaps to debate the issue; but that is not my purpose here this afternoon.

There is a national debate building in this country over the legitimacy of this war and whether U.S. forces should have been sent to Iraq in the first place and whether, ultimately, the war is even winnable. It's terribly late. That's a debate we should have had more than 18 months ago. Still, here it is; and my concern is over how it will be conducted: Whether your generation will have the patience and the courtesy to listen thoughtfully to the opinions of those with whom you disagree.



Whether my generation will have the humility to admit, not just that mistakes were made … but that we have made them.




We have become so embroiled in the distaste we have for one another's ideologies that we're in danger of losing sight of the real peril that confronts us. Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11; and invoking the war against terrorism as a justification for the U.S. invasion of Iraq invites skepticism. Still, terrorism is not a figment of this administration's imagination. It doesn't matter what you believe the United States is doing or may have done to earn the enmity of so many people around the world, someone has to be thinking about the consequences of that hatred, even as we consider what can reasonably be done to address it.
...
The time for that national debate is now. As important as it may be to argue over the rights of Iraqi prisoners of war, those horrific photographs have largely obscured the context in which the abuses took place. The perceived need to obtain more and better intelligence in the face of a mounting Iraqi insurgency late last fall, created the environment in which those human rights abuses took place. It is quite extraordinary that so much attention is still being focused on the culpability of a bunch of young military police, when they, in fact, were clearly operating under guidelines that had been set much, much further up the command chain. It is the legitimacy of those guidelines that require public discussion.


...

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/05/14_koppel_transcript.shtml

[Cocoa]

51. Koppel had the chance to listen to Kucinich

agree or disagree, Kucinich had some important things to say about the war, but Koppel was more interested in
stupid polls.

And now Koppel is lamenting how our attention is being diverted.

And yet, what have we been debating for the past few months? The
nature of George W. Bush's service in the Air National Guard, more than 30
years ago, while he was working on a senatorial campaign in Alabama. The
value of John Kerry's military service in Viet Nam once he'd appeared at the
same anti-war rally as Jane Fonda. What madness! Do we really believe
that we can rise to the great challenges that confront us by endlessly
questioning one another's motives and patriotism?

[Emillereid]

54. I am not surprised that he was not booed -- in fact, I'd be amazed if the

students reacted at all. My daughter goes to Berkeley and she reports that most of the students are wildly apathetic. The vast majority of the students are just into their own lives and future careers and parties and fashion and hip-hop and other such important things. It is certainly not the Berkeley of free-speech movement days at all. My daughter reports that well over 50% are ethnically Asian which may or may be relevant to the change in activism on the campus. The surrounding community still seems more liberal with all sorts of old anti-war hippies still very visible -- but the campus itself might as well be Any University, USA. I was just up their bringing my daughter home for the summer -- and I felt very sad that Berkeley no longer was the vibrant, energetic place I'd visited in the sixties. Maybe the kids will get anti-Bush, anti-war religion if they reinstitute the draft.

[saigon68]

65. They are there to get their ticket punched

And move on to amass large wads of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[Renew Deal]

56. I was there.

My sister was graduating. The riech wingers couldn't handle the truth. They started booing. The crowd was mixed, but the anti-war people weren't ready to make a statement, especially infront of some nasty people. I chimed into a couple of these wingers, but i kept it civil. I yelled out in one direction: "I guess you don't appreciate the first amendment." That shut someone up temporarily. The guy behind me said something. I told him: "The truth hurts huh?" I really tried not to get into it. Some winger was yelling go to Iraq. I wanted to tell him that all these kids are going when they get drafted next year, but I didn't want to start.

[Algorem]

66. he did 1-hr. interview w/calls&e-mails on NPR yesterday 11am,haven't

heard it yet can hear it hear: http://www.wamu.org/dr/

[keithyboy]

67. He was magnificant!! Do listen to the show. Diane is great!

Her show is one of the most thoughful, enlightening show on the air. She is a wonderful interviewer, giving her guests ample time to express their views without interruption...no matter what side of the political spectrum they come from. I listen everyday.