University of Missouri - St. Louis reactionary firings

There is a scandal a-brewin down in St. Louis. Basically, hyper-conservative "blogger" and regressive zealot Andrew Breitbart took some video footage of labor history lectures from an instructor there and his collaborator, an instructor at the University of Missouri - Kansas City, edited the crap out of it, and came up with some finished products that profess to show the lecturers gleefully advocating violence to their students. Shouldn't be a big deal, cause the guy is a lunatic, but instead, the guy at St. Louis, (a registered Communist, I guess it's the 1950s) has been fired. The chancellor of the school forced him to resign. I wrote the chancellor (chancellor@umsl.edu) an email, imploring him to reconsider his utter failure to support academic freedom:

Dear Chancellor George,

   I am quite saddened and a bit scared by the fact that you are allowing a piece of shit like Andrew Breitbart to influence who is permitted to be on the faculty of your school. He has "exposed" nothing. This man is a nihilist whose mission is the destruction of all things "liberal." He is already facing one libel suit for getting a woman fired through his favorite tactic, selective video editing. I'm sure you realize that if you have enough words from someone's mouth, you can edit them to say just about whatever you like. He despises difference and demands that all heel to his ultraconservative line or else. Just look at the comments on his website in reaction to these videos - it is a bunch of people calling for the violent deaths of liberals and communists, attacking Muslims for no discernible reason and calling Obama a "National Socialist" and a "Fascist." In short, his followers are extremists. They are far, far right-wing radicals who fear everything they don't know. And they don't know much. They don't want to. He panders to these people, and to great success. When you bow to people like them, you give them strength and power. They are enemies of democracy, progress and freedom. They will come for us all one day, unless people in power demonstrate real leadership and courage and stand up to them. They need to be stopped in the interest of free speech and the exchange of ideas. They would dismantle higher education altogether if given the choice. Please do the right thing.

I doubt it will do much. He's already on the run, for no apparent reason. I guess a couple of governors going after unions and teachers (Google Scott Walker) have got him scared. Pretty unfortunate. To put things in perspective, Inside Higher Ed reports that

"Late Thursday afternoon, Gail Hackett, provost of the Kansas City campus, issued a statement that backed the instructors' description of the class, based on administrators' review so far of the 18 hours of available video (of which Breitbart's two excerpts are together under 15 minutes). "From the review completed to date, it is clear that edited videos posted on the Internet depict statements from the instructors in an inaccurate and distorted manner by taking their statements out of context and reordering the sequence in which those statements were actually made so as to change their meaning," Hackett said. "Such selective editing is disturbing and the release of students’ images without their permission is a violation of their privacy rights." (University officials assume that a student either gave Breitbart a copy of the video of the class or provided access.)"

Ms. Hackett seems to be much more reasonable than her counterpart at St. Louis, having actually reviewed the lectures in question and all. She wanted people on campus to examine what was going on, trying to determine the veracity of Breitbart's accusations, which should have been quite dubious from the start.

This guy Breitbart embraces the most base forms of hatred and anti-intellectualism, herding them up for his own power. The fools who follow him are just getting used and are totally oblivious. Reading the first page of the comments section on just the first video he posted is astonishing. It's all a bunch of people talking about guns, killing liberals, stocking up on ammunition, having gun avatars, hating Arabs/Muslims and one person who calls President Obama a "National Socialist." Insane. The internet is rife with them though, given its ability to empower anyone to display their breathtaking thoughtlessness for all to see. The problem here is that the Chancellor of the school is doing what they want. He is empowering them. I don't know if he thinks he will shut them up, or if he really cares. I guess he just wants it to go away. Now that they have one instructor's blood, they are hungry for more. I know this.