THE THEATER OF WHITE GUILT: At Ricochet, Nathan Harden writes:
Let me tell you a little story: Some years ago, a professor at Claremont McKenna college in Southern California who identified as Jewish (although she hadn’t officially converted) reported that someone had vandalized her car with a bunch of anti-semitic slurs, swastikas, and the like. Students, understandably, were alarmed, scared, and galvanized. There was a huge campus protest — a great show of solidarity — where students gathered by the hundreds, holding hands on the campus quad, and “intolerance” was condemned.
About a week later, this lady was proved to be a fraud. She had faked the hate crime and vandalized her own car. But the worst part of the story was that was revealed that college administrators already knew she was under investigation for lying to police about the incident. In other words, they already knew that, in all likelihood, she had faked her own hate crime. Yet those administrators went along with the anti-intolerance rally, helping to organize it and standing by silently while throngs of tearful students unknowingly battled the fake racism in their midst. Those administrators were happy to set up a theater of white guilt.
And that, my friends, is what Tim Wolfe, apparently was not willing or shrewd enough to do. He apparently didn’t take seriously the idea that the University of Missouri was plagued with institutional racism. He didn’t realize that one or two anecdotes might be enough to cost him his job if he did not act out his part in the play.
Or, as John Podhoretz posited yesterday, “I’m telling you, these resignations at Mizzou are really these guys saying ‘get me the hell out of this madhouse.’”
Related: Rich Lowry explores “The Mizzou Meltdown,” noting, “To read the association’s indictment, you’d think that the University of Missouri exists in a small enclave of Klan-dominated, Reconstruction-era Mississippi.”
Wait, I thought that “small enclave” was located in Berkeley – the Klan is everywhere these days, I guess.