When (if) future historians look back to early 21st century America, they should examine two cultural controversies of May 2011 for a quick read on Establishment sensibilities. One involves the bestowal, revocation and rebestowal of an honorary degree on playwright Tony Kushner by City University of New York, and one involves the invitation to Common, a rapper, to perform at a White House poetry reading.
In the Kushner case, the controversy centered on the objections of CUNY trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld to bestowing an honorary degree on Kushner because of the playwright’s very public, very vocal opposition to Israel and support for the Palestinian Authority.
For about five minutes, Wiesenfeld actually persuaded fellow trustees to withdraw the Kushner honor (Kushner’s 16th honorary degree). But soon after, Wiesenfeld, a son of Holocaust survivors, found himself pilloried in the media, called on to resign from the CUNY board, all for having argued the Establishment-incorrect case — a case, remember, that was then put to two board votes (the second to get the “correct” outcome). With everything “set right,” why the vengeful rage at Wiesenfeld?
In rejecting Kushner for honors, Wiesenfeld was also rejecting the Left’s increasingly accepted case for moral equivalence between Israel and the PA for honors as well.
Had Wiesenfeld prevailed, CUNY would have symbolically rejected this same moral equivalence from mainstream, taxpayer-supported academia. By 2011, future historians will note, the Left had long made way for Palestinian Arabs to suicide-bomb their way into that mainstream, and no blunt-speaking trustee was going to force their cause to the margins again if they could help it.
And, future historians will also note, they could help it. Against an initially effective blast from the pro-Israel past, the academic Establishment held. Radical chic ruled. And not only did it hold and rule, it also committed assault and battery against its lone critic. That’ll show ’em. No armor chinks here.
The controversy over the White House invitation to rapper Common was a little different. Opposition was diffuse from the start, derided more than hammered for being both uncool and unschooled as all-knowing critics asserted Commons was “mild” next to other foul-mouthed rappers.
Why, he was a pitchman for Lincoln Navigator, Gap and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals! This was supposed to be a veritable Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. But such a seal means nothing when the “mild” rapper’s oeuvre includes a shameful paeon to real-life cop-killer Joanne Chesimard, aka Assata Shakur (and aunt of slain rapper Tupac Shakur).
After the New Jersey State Police came out against Common’s White House performance, the opposition took on a gravity I don’t think will disappear any time soon.
Dave Jones, a 33-year veteran and president of the New Jersey State Troopers Fraternal Association, laid our some of the atrocious facts about Chesimard, Common’s muse, to ABC’s Jake Tapper.
In 1973, Chesimard, glorified in “A Song for Assata” by Common, “executed Trooper Werner Foerster with his own gun after he was already shot and didn’t represent a threat to anyone,” Jones said.
“And after she shot him she kicked him in the head to the point that hours later after she was picked up his brain was still part of the remnants on her shoe.”
Note to GOP presidential candidates: This is a big deal. Even after the White House spoke with Jones, the invitation held, and without apology. Spokesman Jay Carney rationalized, lamely: “This president’s record of support for law enforcement is extremely strong. …”
Not if he invites someone who glorifies a cop-killer into the White House. Dictatorial academia may be able to silence dissenters, but the political Establishment still has to answer to us, eventually. Assuming we care and don’t forget.
Examiner Columnist Diana West is syndicated nationally by United Media and is the author of “The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization.”
