The Try-Works

Via Westword, Max Karson has tried his hand at rap again. It’s bad. Really, really derivatively bad in all the ways that Eminem is really, really derivatively bad: it’s nauseously self-pitying and absolutely fucking idiotic when trying on serious subject matter. (“Keep your dick in your pants and you won’t get diseased.”)

I want to defend Mr. Karson, but this makes it more difficult. Not because the subject matter is offensive, it’s no more offensive than any number of corny super-gangsta rap albums, but because of the limited imaginative scope of the project. My advice to Mr. Karson: read Britton, read Burroughs, read Mirbau, read Bataille, read Krassner, read Genet, read Ballard, read P-Orridge, read Melville, read Thoreau, read Crews, read the Marquis de Sade, fuck, read Eldridge Cleaver, and for Christ’s sake, read Churchill. Not because there’s much you need to take from them, but because you need to know where the edge of the envelope actually is.

I am a dilettantish believer in transgressive literature — and yes, I know, many of those listed don’t fall comfortably in the designation, nor should they — but one must actually transgress. Playing on the now hokey tropes of nineties rap is neither interesting nor challenging. Yeah, it’ll piss off academic middle management suits, but fuck academic middle management suits. One might as well take it upon one’s self to anger chipmunks. Don’t irritate them, soak them in gasoline and burn them in the street.

I love the idea of a school shooting rap from a college student, but I need more than the same shit that’s been rerun on CNN since the Virginia Tech shootings rephrased in the now-cliched terminology of urban hipster understanding. Give me why, to quote Breton, “the simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.” Or, if not that, make me understand why flickering fluorescent lights might demand the same.

Enjoy.

(There are some funny lines. For all my criticism, I’ll take this over Eminem any day.)

The scandal over Max Karson’s obviously satirical essay continues.  And Mr. Karson has responded.

I don’t mind offending people. Sometimes it’s necessary to offend in order to provoke thought about difficult subjects. For example, in my “Asians” piece, I poked fun at Asian stereotypes for the purpose of mocking racist white people who never bother to understand or even consider Asian cultures and race relations at the University of Colorado.

And I can deal with the fact that most people don’t read my writing before condemning it. I can deal with people thinking I’m racist. I can deal with the fact that nearly all of my fellow editors at Campus Press have publicly denounced the decision to publish my piece. I can even deal with the death threats.

Up until Wednesday, I felt good about the conversations taking place. I had set out with the goal of sparking dialogue about racism at CU, and that’s what I did. When I found out there was an anti-racism rally organized by the Facebook group, “Plan for Action in Response to Max Karson’s Hate Speech,” I was thrilled. I’ve been at CU for almost two years now, and rarely do I see people of different colors band together in such large numbers.

Keep reading.

Peter Michelson, one of the few staunch defenders of Ward Churchill at the University of Colorado (and a damn fine professor, which I can attest from personal experience), has taken on the horseshit flap about Max Karson’s obviously satirical piece in CU’s student paper.  A piece which has now gotten Mr. Karson suspended from the paper.

Mr. Michelson’s dead on, of course.  Right down to his take on Boulder village idiot and hack muckraker, Heath Urie, who drummed up this mess.  The following is the full article from the Daily Camera.

To read the Feb. 21 and 22 Camera articles by Heath Urie on Max Karson, an editor and writer for CU’s Campus Press, one must believe that Mr. Karson is a mad-dog racist advocating that Asian students at CU should be “captured and ‘hogtied’” and “rounded up for a ‘reformation’” because “They hate us all … And I say it’s time we started hating them back.” While all these quoted words do appear in Karson’s now infamous op-ed column, Urie’s description of the piece is so “wrong” that it borders on criminal libel.

Still, Karson’s work not only “infuriated some students and past members of the Campus Press staff” but caught the indignant attention of the university chancellor, “Bud” Peterson, who contended that Karson’s column “was a poor attempt at social satire laden with offensive references, stereotypes, and hateful language” and was moreover “not properly labeled as either satire or commentary.”

The chancellor instructed the dean of the School of Journalism to “consider what steps are appropriate to account for what was published.” Given that the chancellor was careful to note that Karson’s “column is unquestionably protected under the First Amendment,” his charge to the dean was at the very least suggestively vague.

But one doesn’t get appointed to deanships by being slow on the uptake. Dean Paul Voakes promptly announced that in his “humble opinion, the student editors on this Asian piece got it wrong.” Imagine that: a humble dean and students’ getting it wrong! I taught at CU for 30 years and don’t recall meeting a humble dean or students ever getting it wrong. So this was some serious business. And the dean addressed it seriously.

First, as pedagogue, he distinguished between freedom of speech, “including freedom of despicable speech,” and material “so gratuitously offensive that its intention … is missed by the readers.” As teachers of literature know, students often go in the guise of readers, and their engagement with the famous “intentional fallacy” is tricky at best. Accordingly, the dean’s admonition was pertinent. As he put it, he and the student editors needed “to have a chat about that.” That being the acquisition of sufficient “sophistication” to “know where (the) line should be” between freedom of speech and, well, its antithesis.

The “chat” had quick results, where the public witnessed how the dean complemented pedagogy with his functions as scourge of poor attempts at social satire (the chancellor’s judgment), editors “getting it wrong” (the dean’s judgment), and mother superior of “diversity” training: Among other reparations The Campus Press editors “will work with” CU’s diversity coordinator and establish a diversity advisory board and take “a series of diversity awareness workshops,” and adopt a policy of standards of “acceptability” for op-ed pieces.

In the context of education these are plausible punishments. But the real lesson here is that free speech at CU — i.e. speech for which one will not be, as the Chinese have it, “re-educated” — is subject to the literary standards of a not particularly literate chancellor, the offensiveness quotient of a Student Diversity Advisory Board and anonymous “professional journalists of color,” and opinion standards of “experienced opinion editors.” If these journalists and editors of opinion were to include personnel from, say, The Washington Times, The National Review, and the Fox network as well as the tasteful local media, to say nothing of the Camera’s Heath Urie and CU’s own PR department, then the standards of vulgarity, mendacity, incompetence and offensiveness should not set the bar beyond the reach of even such a determinedly errant student writer/editor as Max Karson.

But then, how “wrong” was Mr. Karson? If one goes to the Campus Press Web site, one can read his column. Contrary to the chancellor’s characterization, it is clearly indicated as opinion and commentary, and it is conspicuously obvious as satire. Further, its satirical context reveals how the presumably professional Camera reporter’s description “got it wrong.” So why would the dean of the journalism school ignore the evidence before his eyes, precisely what the Campus Press faculty adviser had seen and apparently approved, and take up the chancellor’s righteously wrong-headed cudgel?

The real issue here is not whether Mr. Karson’s satire is poor or sophomoric. Nor is it an issue of “damage,” as the chancellor claimed. Whatever the resolutions of CU’s Student Union Legislative Council or the public “upset” for which Dean Voakes felt obliged to apologize, Karson’s article could not and has not damaged anyone or thing, including the reputation of the university. The real issue is that the chancellor feared or was told it was “offensive.”

Offensiveness is what accounts for how the reporter, the chancellor and the dean took a shot at Kid Karson’s epistle and “got it wrong.” A cult of offensiveness has developed out of a “feel good’ ethos, whereby everybody is supposed to have the right to feel good. Its ideology thrives on college campuses and even extends to the law. Serious legal scholars have proposed that First Amendment rights be measured by the offensiveness quotient of an utterance, that one’s right to speak be moderated by whether it offends Mrs. Grundy or the ACLU or the Moral Majority or the Muslim community or the Asian community or Chancellor “Bud” Peterson.

It will never be law, however, because the Supreme Court, no matter how conservative or liberal it might be, will never approve its manifest capriciousness, both as law and social policy. But it can weasel its way into practice if people who should know better, people such as Chancellor Peterson and Dean Voakes, validate “offensiveness” as the arbiter of free speech in university discourse. That is the kind of thing that really does do damage.

Max Karson, a Try-Works favorite, has struck again, penning an obviously satirical opinion piece about racial tension at CU entitled, “If It’s War The Asians Want . . .” Unless I’m missing something, the gist of the piece seems pretty clear: that peoples who still retain their own non-homogenized cultures will assuredly get them wiped out by exposure to the University of Colorado. The piece plays on stereotypes, but Karson rather unambiguously makes the point that CU will do its damnedest to reduce folks to the stereotypes held by the overwhelmingly white student body; not that said stereotypes represent inherent attributes of the targeted parties.

It ain’t nearly as funny as it should be, but the reaction sure as hell has been. It being CU, the irony-challenged administration and student body have been tsk-tsking like, well, a Boulderite at a William S. Burroughs reading. And even more delicious, the entire staff of the Campus Press has been ordered to undergo diversity training.

So, what started all the fucking fuss about an obviously satirical opinion piece penned in a student newspaper? Well, it turns out it was misreporting of my old pal, Heath Urie. This from the indispensable Michael Roberts:

The ball got rolling with a February 20 piece in the Boulder Daily Camera by staffer Heath Urie. The article had a few flaws: As noted in a subsequent correction, Urie improperly identified the column as an editorial representing the opinion of the Campus Press as a whole and misstated the tenure of past Press editor Stephanie Clary, who remarked negatively about Karson’s attempt at generating yuks. Nonetheless, the report was quickly picked up by other media outlets — among them the Denver Post, Channel 4, the Rocky Mountain News, and even FoxNews.com.

The rest.

Let me repeat that: “Urie improperly identified the column as an editorial representing the opinion of the Campus Press as a whole.”

Let me rephrase that: Heath Urie, a journalist gainfully employed by a respected mid-market newspaper, ACTUALLY THOUGHT AN ARTICLE THAT PROPOSED KIDNAPPING ALL ASIANS AND MAKING THEM EAT BAD SUSHI WAS THE OFFICIAL EDITORIAL STANCE OF CU’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER!

Now, I knew Mr. Urie was a beer or two shy of a six-pack upon meeting him, but after this I’m starting to wonder that he hasn’t accidentally lobotomized himself with his nose-picking finger. One has to wonder how many times the Daily Camera’s gonna let this barely literate little asshole embarrass them.

Can be found here.

Max Karson getting the microphone yanked for his perfectly appropriate question comes at 38:15.

Max Karson, whom I rather like, gave Bruce Benson a little hell last night.

“I’m wondering,” asked CU doctoral candidate Duke Austin, “is it true, as the New York Times reported in 1994, that you told your son you’d like to kill his mother?”

“I used to have an expression - ‘I’m going to kill ‘em.’ ‘I’ll kill ‘em’,” Benson replied. “I’ve said it in board meetings.”

. . .

CU senior Max Karson asked Benson about his alleged two-year extramarital affair and his contribution to the legal defense of U.S. Senator Bob Packwood, who was accused of sexual assault, abuse and harassment.

“It sounds like you have a problem with women,” Karson said. “How do you respond to that?”

Benson replied that he’s worked closely with women - the majority of the Denver Public Schools Foundation staff is women.

“Just because you know some women who you haven’t threatened to kill-” Karson began to reply before security rushed him and UCSU’s chief of staff took the microphone away.

The event moderators interjected, saying the crowd’s questions should apply strictly to Benson’s presidential role.

But after the event, Karson argued that his question is relevant.

“If you were hiring a manager of Wal-Mart and found out he had threatened to kill his wife, you would ask about that,” Karson said.

The rest.

Even better, Mr. Karson has a wonderful long opinion piece about Bruce Benson in today’s Campus Press. He records probably the most memorably hilarious line I’ve ever heard from a politician anywhere. It seems Mr. Benson knows how “‘the minds’ of minorities work.” (Something he larn’t on the plantation, I’ll bet.)

I decided it would be an anti-Benson piece from the get-go, because all I knew about him was that he’s a conservative Republican oil man with no experience in education. I’d even thought of my satirical angle already-since CU is overrun with stupid white business majors, a stupid white oil tycoon would be a perfect president.

A few days later I saw a flyer for an open forum with Benson at the UMC. I decided it would be a good idea to see him in action before I wrote my opinion piece, since it’s pretty lame to just poke around on the Internet for a few hours and then pretend you know what you’re writing about.

But in order to get some background, I did sit down at my computer and read all of the Campus Press stories about Benson. One story reported that during Benson’s first open forum with students, he told them that he supports women’s issues, and if he doesn’t, his wife will keep him in line. This was in response to a female student in the audience pointing out that Benson contributed to Sen. Bob Packwood’s defense fund in a sexual assault case.

That’s when I started to hate Benson. Most male politicians know by now that you can’t answer questions about your insensitivity to rape by saying, “Heh, heh, women!”

Then I heard that he threatened to kill his ex-wife. That story broke when he ran for governor of Colorado in 1994 and his divorce papers were made public. He even admitted to threatening her in an interview with the New York Times.

Now I really hated him. The afternoon before the forum, I frantically copied and pasted little scraps of articles I wanted to use into an empty Word document, the whole time muttering witty little come-backs to the stupid things he’s said. For example, when asked about his two DUI’s, Benson replied, “If you don’t learn from your mistakes, you will never be successful in life.”

So I cleverly muttered to myself, “Learn from your mistakes? Apparently you didn’t learn from your first DUI.”

Then it suddenly occurred to me that instead of matching wits with an imaginary Benson in my empty apartment, maybe I should go to the forum and ask him if he really threatened to kill his wife. Five seconds later, when I realized I was actually going to do it, my stomach rolled over and I started hyperventilating.

I called my friend back in Massachusetts for a pep-talk. He thought the whole thing was hilarious, and I felt better until I got off the phone. Then I panicked again.

I typed up a question to ask Benson. It referenced his support of Bob Packwood in the rape case, Benson’s death threat to his ex-wife, and his comment about his wife making sure he remains an advocate for women. I ended it with, “It seems like you have some problems with women. How do you respond to that?”

I quickly printed it out and half-ran to the UMC. When I got inside, the first person I saw was CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard. I said hi, and he asked me if I had a good question for Benson. I told him I did.

He said, “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

“I’ll try not to disappoint you,” I said, grinning.

Inside the ballroom, Benson kicked off the festivities with a five-minute speech during which he only talked about how much money he will raise for CU. He was utterly oblivious to the fact that not a single person in the audience gave a damn. Then the question and answer session began.

Representatives from UCSU opened up with a few questions about diversity, which Benson answered with long, blundering statements about all of the minorities he has helped during his career. One example he gave was that he worked hard to make Metro State “Hispanic-serving.” He went on to tell us that he accomplished this by figuring out how “the minds” of minorities work.

Several people in the audience winced. Others, myself included, laughed openly.

A UCSU representative pointed out that the word “diversity” includes the GLBTQ community and students with disabilities. Benson responded that he is going to advocate for all students, including “handicaps.”

More winces this time. Less laughter.

Then the tri-executives opened up the forum to the audience.

After Benson butchered several questions about his plans for saving the environment, a girl in the back stood up and asked him what he was going to do to support the gay community at CU.

Benson replied, “Do you know who Tim Gill is? Do you know who he is? He’s a big gay in Colorado.”

The entire room erupted in laughter while Benson tried to explain that he meant to say “gay activist.”

A few questions later, a guy stood up and announced that he’s a PhD student studying racial and gender stratification. Then he said, “I’m wondering, is it true, as the New York Times reported in 1994, that you told your son you’d like to kill his mother?”

I frowned, disappointed that someone else got to say it before me. Then I realized that I could save my question by including the fact that Benson has already admitted to threatening to kill his ex-wife.

Benson’s defense began, “I have this saying-I used to have this saying, ‘I’ll kill him.’ You know? I’d say, ‘Oh, I’ll kill him.’ I don’t say it now because it’s gotten me in trouble before,” he chuckled. “But did I threaten my wife? No, of course not.”

A few minutes later a guy with a microphone came over and told me I was next. I immediately broke a sweat, my testicles shriveled up into little raisins, and my heart started beating so fast it felt like two rabbits were having sex in my ribcage. I took deep breaths and closed my eyes, and I pictured Luke Skywalker watching the two suns set on Tatooine.

Then the microphone guy tapped me on the shoulder.

I took the microphone from his hand and stood up. My fingertips immediately went numb. I realized I only had around two minutes of standing time before I would faint.

“Hi, I’m Max, and I’m a senior in psychology.” My voice boomed through the speakers. I unfolded my piece of paper. “The tri-executives have asked us to consider your biographical information in our evaluation of you as a candidate,” I said. “So here’s some biographical information: In 1992, you contributed money to Sen. Bob Packwood’s defense fund when he was accused of sexual assault and abuse by ten women. In 1994, not only were you accused of threatening to kill your ex-wife, you publicly admitted to doing it. She also filed a motion in court stating that she feared for her safety.”

People gaped at me. Some of them were laughing, but many were glaring at me, as though I had snuck into Benson’s underwear drawer and stolen his diary.

I continued, “You also admitted to having an affair for two years before you asked for a divorce.” The audience interrupted me with a gasp.

The microphone guy put his hand on my shoulder. “Give me the microphone,” he said.

“And here at CU, earlier this month, you said that you’re very proactive for women, but if you’re not, your wife will make sure that you are. It seems like you have some problems with women. How do you respond to that?”

By this time both of my arms were completely numb and my legs were tingling up to my knees. The microphone guy tried to grab the microphone from my hand but I pulled it away.

Benson shook his head. “Don’t try and tell me I’m opposed to women. You know, I hate questions like that. You haven’t done your homework, and you ought to do your homework. I never threatened my wife, and you can ask some of the women I’ve worked with, they’ll all tell you the same thing. I don’t have any problems with women. The Denver Public Schools foundation is all women.”

Amazingly, the audience broke out in applause, happy to see me discredited.

As they clapped, the edges of my vision began to yellow and darken.

“Just because-” I began, and then stopped. They had cut my microphone. “Hey!” I said. “My mic stopped working!”

UCSU’s chief of staff appeared behind me and whispered, “You have to sit down right now.”

I shouted to Benson, “Just because you know some women you haven’t threatened to kill-”

I was cut off by a roar of disapproval from the audience.

One student twisted his face in disgust and said, “Hey, c’mon man! Talk about the qualifications!”

“Well, there are a lot of women here at CU.” I said. “And I think they’re probably going to be concerned about this!”

Benson fired back, but I couldn’t hear him because the UCSU chief of staff leaned close to my ear and said, “If you don’t sit down, I’m going to kick you out.”

“Okay,” I said, still standing. If only he knew that I would have fallen down all by myself if he just waited thirty more seconds.

“Right now,” he said. “I’m going to kick you out right now.”

“Okay,” I said. He didn’t respond. “I’ll sit down once he stops answering my question,” I said. He gave up, nodding.

I don’t remember what happened immediately after that because I was blacking out, but when I sat down several people were staring at me and I was holding a pink piece of paper that said “Warning” at the top. It was list of rules concerning interference with university activity, interference with the freedom of expression of others, harassment, and refusal to leave property when asked to do so by a chief administrative officer.

As far as I could tell, I hadn’t broken any of those rules.

The next couple of students to speak apologized to Benson for the behavior of “some students.” The chairwoman of the College Republicans even pointed at me and announced that she was embarrassed to be a student of the University of Colorado.

The topic of Benson’s death threat to his wife was not raised again.

After the forum ended, I saw CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard talking to a student. Knowing that he was the editor in chief of the Colorado Daily until last year, I thought he would have appreciated my hard-hitting question, and I was curious about what he thought of the angry response I got. I walked over and leaned on a chair near him, and he ignored me. Thinking that he was in the middle of an important conversation, I waited for three minutes.

At last he turned to me and said, “Do you need something from me?”

“I just wanted to say hi,” I said.

“Yeah, you already said hi. Goodbye.”

I almost said, “You know, you don’t work for him yet.” But I didn’t. Instead, I trudged home with my friends, exhausted and in the early stages of a migraine. I plopped down into a chair and thought about what had happened.

An hour later, my irritation at the general forgiveness of Benson’s misogyny had grown to rage.

Are we supposed to only ask Benson nice questions? And when he publicly admits that he threatened to kill his wife, should we pretend we don’t know about it?

And why did someone turn my microphone off? Though the content of my question obviously cast Benson in a bad light, it was a genuine question, and I asked it as respectfully and quickly as I could. Why can’t the sole candidate for the presidency of CU be asked if he hates women?

Can you imagine if President Bush admitted that he threatened to kill his wife? There would be a public outcry. How come there’s no outcry now? Does the average CU student’s desire to appear docile and obedient supersede the outrage provoked by a man so disgusting and stupid that he threatened to kill his own wife?

Well, friends and neighbors, as much as I make you ashamed to be CU students, you make me ashamed to be a human being. How could you sit in your chairs like jellyfish while this monster of a man spewed bigoted, insane nonsense for two hours? And then you get mad at me for not being nice to him.

You know what? A school of idiots deserves to have an idiot for their president.

He’s got my vote.

The rest.

You know, Mr. Karson’s got a point. But I think this school of idiots deserves something else entirely.

Pigasus II.

The ACLU is all in.

“The issue is whether the police overreacted on what was a college-class discussion, or given who Max is, it may have been a bias to begin with,” said Kathryn Hazouri, the executive director of ACLU of Colorado. “I don’t care what he has done or said in the past, that’s certainly protected by the First Amendment, and it shouldn’t supersede in the latest issue which is based on controversy and is what the First Amendment is supposed to protect.”

Keep reading.

And this from a student who was in the class.

One student who’s in the women’s-studies course — who said the class has about 25 women and four men — thinks Karson’s comments were taken out of context.

“Max is honest, and people aren’t always willing to hear what he has to say,” said the student, who didn’t want her name published.

She said Tuesday’s debate started as an effort to understand how someone could go on a killing spree like the Virginia gunman’s.

Karson — who circulates a controversial underground publication called The Yeti on the campus — told his peers that he thinks institutions provoke anger in people, which eventually causes them to “crack,” the student said.

“He said, ‘Anyone who has walked on this campus and hasn’t wanted 30 people dead is lying to themselves,’” she said.

When Karson was asked why institutions make him so mad, the student said Karson used the women’s-studies class to illustrate his point: The room was in a basement and had unfinished walls and fluorescent lights.

According to a police report, Karson said: “The basement room with fluorescent lights and the unfinished wall make him angry enough to kill people.”

“But I didn’t feel threatened,” the student said. “He was just theorizing in an intellectual discussion about why people kill.”

Police said one of the more-serious comments students reported Karson making that day came as an answer to the question, “Are you going to do something Thursday?”

Karson’s reply: “Well, not necessarily this Thursday,” according to police.

But the student said that wasn’t the end of Karson’s statement. She said he added, “Or any other day.”

“Generally, Max makes the class uncomfortable, and they disagree with him often,” the student said. “But I think people were reacting in fear because 30 people had just died, and they don’t want to be one of those people.”

Keep reading.

This from our man, Clint Talbott, of the Boulder Daily Camera, about Mr. Karson:

Karson spent the night in jail and was charged Wednesday with “interference with staff, faculty or students of an educational institution,” and he was ordered to forgo alcohol, drugs, weapons and the CU campus.

Karson’s father bailed him out of jail and said the police over-reacted. “Max was arrested for making intellectual contributions in a class discussion about the tragic shooting in Virginia,” the father said.

Karson clearly made contributions. But it’s hard to call them “intellectual.” The more fitting term is “gratuitous provocations.”

Karson likes to “push the envelope,” to test the boundaries of free speech. Last fall, for instance, he offended women and ethnic minorities with his newsletter, “The Yeti.” What looks and smells like racism and sexism, he calls satire. Of course, satire is an art, and Karson’s art is, well, stunted.

Speech is one of America’s first freedoms, and its importance is signified by its eminence in the Bill of Rights. What Karson uttered this week may well have been — and probably is — protected speech. Karson may find his gratuitous goading gratifying. But he shouldn’t expect people to see the acts of a provocateur as those of an intellectual. And he shouldn’t be surprised to learn that faux threats, implicit or explicit, are sometimes taken seriously.

Keep reading.

To be honest, I don’t even know what the hell that last paragraph means. “Speech is one of America’s first freedoms, and its importance is signified by its eminence in the Bill of Rights?” No, it’s a right, idiot, because it’s in the bill of rights. It’s a legal right. If Mr. Karson’s speech “may well have been — and probably is — protected speech” then why the fuck are you attacking Mr. Karson? Seems your place might be to protect the first amendment right, don’t you think? Instead, as usual, you’re equivocating like Bill Clinton with a half dozen interns and a cigar in each hand.

I don’t care about Max Karson. I don’t care if he’s a jerk, has poor timing, is wholly immature, or is just, er, “cryptic.” He had a right to say what he said. A constitutional right. The only thing scarier than watching state and institutional power come down on him like a ton of bricks, is watching the media justify it. The media should be in the business of checking government, of defending our rights. You’re not a watchdog, Mr. Talbott, you’re a lapdog.

Oh, and since I’m on the subject, how’s about this from the Colorado Daily:

We’ve got some bad news for you CU: you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Following the arrest of CU student Max Karson on Wednesday after a heated classroom discussion with other students about the dreadful killings at Virginia Tech, it seems like university administration and students are trying to stuff their fat faces with high-minded social libertarianism and stay on a strict diet of political correctness all at the same time.

Sorry folks, but you can’t defend Ward Churchill’s right to call dead New Yorkers “Little Eichmanns” out of one side of your mouth and condemn Max Karson for saying he can identify with a mass murderer out the other.

Keep reading.

I hate to beat a dead two-bit hack editorial page editor here, but I rather have to inject the following: CU hasn’t defended Churchill’s rights. Horseshit lip service aside, they’ve caved on every point. They’re in the business of railroading the professor as we speak, and their passion for free speech is just about equal to mine for, well, Clint Talbott.

That distinction belongs to the First Amendment:

A University of Colorado student was formally charged Wednesday — and warned by a judge not to “press the limits of certain envelopes” — one day after being arrested on suspicion of threatening his classmates by saying he’s angry enough to kill.

Max Karson’s father paid a $1,000 bond to set his son free from jail on the eve of the student’s 22nd birthday.

Max Karson wouldn’t talk about the incident after leaving the jail. But his father said officers “overreacted” to reports that his son — during a class discussion about the Virginia Tech shootings — said he “could relate to the killer” and “was angry enough to kill his classmates.”

“Max was arrested for making intellectual contributions in a class discussion about the tragic shooting in Virginia,” Michael Karson said, just before getting to hug his son and take him to dinner.

“We’re going to go try to remind ourselves that this is a great country,” he said.

Michael Karson, a professor at the University of Denver, said he expected his son’s charges to be dropped when he appeared before Boulder County Judge Noel E. Blum. Instead, he was officially charged Wednesday with “interference with staff, faculty or students of an educational institution” and ordered to stay away from alcohol, drugs, weapons and the CU campus — unless he’s meeting with officials for a judicial-affairs review of his case.

Blum warned Max Karson that now is not the time to push the envelope.

“You don’t want to test me on that,” Blum said.

Max Karson has a history of pushing the envelope: The newsletter he circulates on CU’s campus called “The Yeti” spurred controversy in the fall over what he said were satirical comments about women and minorities.

Keep reading.

I didn’t pay much attention to the first Max Karson brouhaha, but this one’s a joke. Unless Mr. Karson directly threatened his classmates with imminent physical harm, he has every right to push whatever envelope he likes. Sounds like Judge Noel E. Blum could use a refresher course on the Constitution. Here’s hoping Mr. Karson has the wherewithal to make a hell of a row over this horseshit arrest. Not to mention the — and don’t dislocate your jaw in shock here — cowardice and absolute contempt for free speech evidenced by CU.

This is the shit that scares me whenever one of these school shooting erupts. The onslaught on the Constitution begins immediately, from both sides. Cheap analysts slick around the networks, gibbering on about rap music, violent movies, videogames, etc, and the Michael Moores of the world begin their gun control crusade. I even heard a CNN anchor opine about the need to weed “strange people” out of universities.

I’ve been resisting the leftist urge to compare the Virginia Tech shooting to the Iraq war, because it’s so obviously nonsense. Of course the Iraq war’s the greater atrocity, and of course, the American population could give a shit about dead Iraqis. They’ve been proving that for twenty years. So what? And the analogies coming from the right are equally stupid. I’ve heard the shooter compared to suicide bombers and the 9/11 highjackers, for instance. That’s inane. As everyone from Pat Buchanan to old you-know-who has pointed out, the 9/11 highjackers had a political goal, as do suicide bombers. This kid didn’t. He was a lunatic, rather precluding much in the way of goals at all.

I don’t know why schools get shot up, but I know more will be. It seems like a facet of modern life we’re gonna have to learn to live with. We’re a nation of 300 million. There are more lunatics out there. We ain’t gonna figure out why they shoot people, because their actions ain’t gonna make sense. Rather self evidently, that’s what it means to be a lunatic. No amount of analysis is gonna get at the problem.

I submit that ain’t the point of the talking heads, anyway. Coming from the left or the right, they have an agenda and see an opportunity to exploit. They’re hoping you’re dumb enough not to notice what they’re saying is nonsense until it’s too late, until they’ve found some way to strip yet another freedom from you. For the record, I ain’t willing to give up even one freedom, even if I thought doing so had any prayer in hell of succeeding in stopping these shootings.

Anyway, if nothing else, all the jaw-wagging has given me a goal for the weekend. I’m gonna gorge myself with guns and violence. I’m up to the mountains for some target practice with my Glock 19, then down to the multiplex to see Grindhouse, then home to play Grand Theft Auto. Listening to Ludakris, all the while.

Update: Okay, so I don’t have a videogame system. And I’m not much of one for multiplexes. And though I do have a Ludakris album I got from the library after hearing he told off O’Reilly and Oprah, I’ve never actually listened to it all the way through.

But I will go shooting.

Unless a long-awaited package from Amazon is at the front door. In that case, I’ll probably do some reading.

But I’ll turn the pages violently.

Update II: Speaking of asinine analogies, Jim Paine and John Martin are now comparing me to the shooter. Because his plays are laced with profanity and violence, and, y’know, I’m profane and use violent metaphors, now and then. Mr. Paine being the dramatically smarter of the two seems to be joking. Mr. Martin, possessing the critical faculties of a woodpile, ain’t joking at all.

I just went through this, so I won’t do it again, but if Mr. Martin ever took it upon himself to crack a book, he might notice profanity and violence being kinda rather prevalent in the last millennium or so of Western Literature. If that’s his sole criteria, he might as well compare the shooter to Shakespeare, Chaucer or Hemingway.

Idiot.

Update III: Yes, I know I call Mr. Martin an idiot in every post, but good God, I can’t help it.

Update IV: This from Caplis and Silverman. Max Karson’s statements weren’t direct and they sure as hell didn’t pose any imminent danger. The word that keeps popping up is “cryptic.”

Of course, Caplis and Silverman are for expelling Mr. Karson. (Although, maybe not arresting him. Maybe.) The argument they keep posing about Mr. Karson is the same argument often made about Ward Churchill, and the same one posed by Judge Blum: that it’s his timing that’s the problem.

That dog won’t hunt. Constitutional rights are rights. They ain’t situational and they ain’t subject to temporary revocation. As I said above, here’s hoping the kid sues CU back into the stoneage.

Update V: After Ward Churchill sues CU back into the stoneage, of course.