Report on the Horowitz Visit

As promised, my thoughts on the David Horowitz visit last night...

I went with a right-leaning friend of mine who was curious what Horowitz had to say. I mainly went just to say I was there, and because I had a hunch there would be a circus. As we walked into Olscamp, we came upon a clown brigade of communists chanting that Horowitz was a "Christian Fascist", handing out information about the writings of "Chairman" Bob Avakian. I brushed off their presence, since they ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow, but it was a taste of things to come.

Once inside Olscamp 101, I sat behind a group of people who seemed to be from the Ethnic Studies department. Daniel Boudreau, of all people was sitting in front of me amongst a group of what I assumed were activist types.

Strictly speaking, Horowitz's speech, taken by itself, was pretty poor. He clearly wasn't prepared, did not know the actual name an affiliation of the University (he thought we were a campus of Ohio State), and on one occasion totally lost his train of thought. In terms of the lecturn banging, fire and brimstone kind of material one expects from a firebrand like Horowitz, it was pretty dissapointing. Only on a few occasions (such as when he proclaimed that "100% of the problems of the inner city are the fault of the Democrats" and when he discussed Howard Zinn) did he really get fired up. Just going by the content of his speech, his case for his "Academic Bill of Rights" was pretty thin.

But what made it all worthwhile for the College Republicans was the stupid heckling from the liberal portion of the crowd, many of whom just showed up just to make noise. I sympathize with these people, really I do. Horowitz, as I have said is undoubtedly a douchebag. We all know this. It's been documented.

But think about it. Horowitz is claiming that there is a liberal bias on campuses and so to try to fight him you show up to his speech and heckle him? Doesn't that support his point? Here is a man that has made a career out of half-truths and apocryphal stories and make his myths come to life for him? Gee, just hand him a story, that'll make things better...Ugh.

The Q&A session at the end was especially bad. While some questioners attempted to keep a bit of respectability up, four or five people lined up to ask a question simply to scream at Horowitz. I think, and I may be wrong here, that the gentleman that got into a shouting match with Horowitz over Howard Zinn, was Denis Mueller, a filmmaker and doctoral student. He appeared to be shaking with anger and appeared to have some words with the campus police officer that was there. That row, and another involving an older woman near the end of the evening, I think was demonstrative of the level of anger, angst, and hate in that room. The vileness on both sides was pretty shocking.

And let's not absolve the College Republicans here. Their "Republican Week" occured during the same week as "Rainbow Dayz". That can't be a coincidence. That, in itself was pretty immature. Even more immature was the "People Eating Tasty Animals" table in the Union handing out jerky. That's beyond lame. it's not remotely funny and only adds to the level of bullshit that whole day saw laid upon it. And heck, maybe if they had more than a handful of their own people at Horowitz's speech it wouldn't have been quite the madhouse it became. Seriously, there were only three rows full of freeper-wannabees and over a dozen rows left for everyone else. If you're going to invite someone to speak, at least have an audience here for him to speak to.