Back in September, Prof. Jacobson asked How long before Bill Maher is banned on campus?
It turns out the answer is… about a month.
Greg Piper of the College Fix reported yesterday:
UC-Berkeley students try to derail Bill Maher from speaking at graduation
Comedian, pundit and HBO host Bill Maher is scheduled to speak at the University of California-Berkeley’s December graduation, and students are already lining up to get him disinvited, citing his controversial remarks on Islam, the Daily Californian reports:
The Change.org petition was authored by ASUC Senator Marium Navid, who is backed by the Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian Coalition, or MEMSA, and Khwaja Ahmed, an active MEMSA member. The petition, which urges students to boycott the decision and asks the campus to stop him from speaking, has already gathered more than 1,400 signatures as of Sunday. …
“It’s not an issue of freedom of speech, it’s a matter of campus climate,” Navid said. “The First Amendment gives him the right to speak his mind, but it doesn’t give him the right to speak at such an elevated platform as the commencement. That’s a privilege his racist and bigoted remarks don’t give him.” …
“(Jon) Stewart and (Stephen) Colbert are critical of religion, too, but Bill Maher has, on several occasions, said to rise up against religious people and religious institutions and take action,” Ahmed said.
Here’s an example of what’s gotten Maher into trouble with Berkeley students.
(language warning – NSFW)
If you watched the video, you may have noticed that Maher mentioned Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
We covered the controversy over her Yale speech at College Insurrection and I’m gratified to hear Maher speak of her.
Back in May, liberal columnist Kirsten Powers wrote something prophetic for USA Today:
Liberals’ Dark Ages
Welcome to the Dark Ages, Part II. We have slipped into an age of un-enlightenment where you fall in line behind the mob or face the consequences.
How ironic that the persecutors this time around are the so-called intellectuals. They claim to be liberal while behaving as anything but. The touchstone of liberalism is tolerance of differing ideas. Yet this mob exists to enforce conformity of thought and to delegitimize any dissent from its sanctioned worldview. Intolerance is its calling card…
Don’t bother trying to make sense of what beliefs are permitted and which ones will get you strung up in the town square. Our ideological overlords have created a minefield of inconsistency. While criticizing Islam is intolerant, insulting Christianity is sport. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is persona non grata at Brandeis University for attacking the prophet Mohammed. But Richard Dawkins describes the Old Testament God as “a misogynistic … sadomasochistic … malevolent bully” and the mob yawns. Bill Maher calls the same God a “psychotic mass murderer” and there are no boycott demands of the high-profile liberals who traffic his HBO show.
That may be changing now, Kirsten.
Won’t it be ironic if it is conservatives who stand up for Bill Maher?
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Comments
Meh.
“I may (do) think you are an execrable carbuncle on the ass of evil for what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.
On the other hand, this is more of that dragon eating itself, which is at least one of my top ten spectator sports.
I’m no fan of Maher, and it’s kind of amusing seeing him treated as a pariah by his homeboys in the lefty hood. That said, it’s more than obvious that the Left is so all in with every manner of terrorist, murderer, rapist, pedophile and just the scum of the earth in general that we can no longer be surprised by any of this. Dementia’s got nothin’ on these people.
It’s sad, and not just a little frightening, that Bill Maher may be the only person on the Left who is congruent in both his beliefs and actions. This is what an “honest liberal” looks like.
Western culture is better.
That’s another no-no in lib-speak.
UC-Berkeley and Bill Maher deserve one another.
Two road apples from the same horse’s ass.
Speech codes are about the only red line the left is willing to enforce.
That it is happening to the oh-so politically correct host of Politically Incorrect is icing on the ironycake.
Maybe someone should ask Maher: If they don’t want to hear your voice just how much do you think they even hear people in the center, much less those on the right?
What will really be funny is how Maher will blame the conservatives for this action when it reality a great many conservatives will be arguing for Maher and against what amounts to censorship. Perhaps Maher will realize the toxic nature of liberal thought now that he is the victim, but likely not. He will claim the resistance comes from conservatives because. in Maher’s world, everyone who is bad must be a conservative even when they are avowed liberals.
Maybe he’ll realize that a great many people who call themselves “liberal” are actually leftist totalitarians — and that’s why they have sympathy with Islam.
Bill Maher has always been vehemently anti-Christian. That has never bothered any of these self-righteous pr**ks before. To state that this is not a matter of freedom of speech, but of campus climate – well, just what exactly does Senator Navid think that free speech is?
Slept through his entire civics education, he did.
What does Navid think free speech is? Anti-Islamic, that’s what. Any kind of freedom is anti-Islamic.
Yo, pass the popcorn.
henry you friggin liberal,
its YOUR turn to provide the popcorn this time.
now….pass the popcorn.
🙂
Henry don’t use no corn for poppin’ up to Possum Hollar.
THAT all goes into squeezins’.
Which, tell the truth, beats popcorn all to hell…!!!
Hollar???
Where you from boy, California?
It’s spelled holler.
Every proper hillbilly knows that.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/holler
Seriously…???
Correcting hillbilly spelling?
You are a PiedmontWilliam, not a hillbilly.
I bet you have your pinkie extended on the mason jar! And that you never spit on the porch…
Heh!
I recall some conservatives standing up for Maher years ago when he was punished for a statement about the U.S. military employing a cowardly strategy of dropping bombs from a safe distance in the air.
The principled conservative view was: Maybe it was a dumb, offensive statement, but people shouldn’t lose their microphones or their right to speak publicly because of a dumb or offensive statement. We have the choice of not listening to Maher. Trying to prevent others from hearing him is wrong.
By the same token, the students at UC Berkeley have a right to boycott Maher if they don’t want to hear what he has to say. But on the other hand, they do not have a right to prevent him from speaking before those students who may wish to hear him speak. There’s a world of difference between a “boycott,” in which individuals are permitted to make their own choices, and a “ban,” in which the choice of some (often a minority) is imposed upon others.
“Nothing to kill or die for. And no religion, too.”
And no irony, too.
Imagine.
If the Left has no problem with the death penalty for apostasy from Islam how long before they embrace the death penalty for apostasy from the Left, from the Democratic Party?
I say ban recognition of any artificial entity or group (including religious organizations) that – quite neutrally – embrace the tenet that one of its members can be killed for leaving the group. It is a penalty that is enforced, either officially or unofficially, anywhere Muslims have a majority, and sometimes even when they don’t.
I’d simply like to walk up to him and say: “Welcome to the party, Pal.” Then walk off laughing like a horse.
I want to be there when the last liberal eats the next-to-last liberal and then eats himself.
I disagree strongly with Maher on many things, and agreee with him just as strongly on others. The “offended” students really need to learn what free speech is all about. They deserve to suffer a bit of offense.
College students sure do spend a great deal of time stopping people from speaking.
And they call Puritans repressed!