I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).
This week: A coalition of community groups, labor unions and conservationists is trying to protect funding for Los Angeles city parks, which have been hit hard by budget cuts. Here are some alternatives.
Obama Snubs Hard-Working College Students
Shortly after becoming president, Barack Obama said that he strongly supports continuing education. “If we want to come out of this recession stronger than before, we need to make sure that our workforce is better prepared than ever before,” he said in 2009. “Right now, someone who doesn’t have a college degree is more than twice as likely to be unemployed as someone who does. And so many of the Americans who have lost their jobs can’t find new ones because they simply don’t have the skills and the training they need for the jobs they want.”
Things change.
Now it’s an election year. The president’s reelection team is making a play for the youth vote that was key to winning his first term. He’s visiting colleges and universities, trying to attract support from the 18-to-21 demographic by accusing Republicans of wanting to double the Stafford student loan interest rate from 3.4 to 6.8 percent. (Not really true.)
As Obama brings his rock-the-youth-vote campaign to the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York City, he wants to be photographed in a sea of adoring youthful faces. And yet, through incompetence or cynical calculus, he’s throwing some of the most inspiring, hard-working students in America under the bus.
Maybe the president still likes the idea of adults going back to school. But apparently he doesn’t want to speak to students over age 21—or be seen with them.
On May 14th Obama will deliver the commencement address at Barnard College, a women’s-only institution across the street from Columbia University in upper Manhattan. Unfortunately no one noticed—or didn’t care—that the elaborate security checks for the president’s visit would bork the long-scheduled Class Day for Columbia’s School of General Studies.
Columbia has four undergraduate colleges: Columbia College, for young (18-to-21) liberal arts students; the School of Engineering and Applied Science, also for traditional students; Barnard College (ditto on ages); and the School of General Studies, which mostly serves older students who are either beginning or completing their bachelor degrees. There’s a big Columbia commencement ceremony where the entire university gathers to receive their diplomas; in addition, each school has a separate event called Class Day.
If President Obama is looking for an example of continuing education that works, he need look no further than Columbia General Studies. It’s a special place, representing the pinnacle of continuing education in the United States. GS offers adult students from age 19 to 79 the chance to study at and graduate not just from college, but from an Ivy League school. Notable GS alumni include Isaac Asimov, Sandy Koufax, Hunter S. Thompson, Ira Gershwin, and Amelia Earhart.
Most importantly, GS has heart. It takes chances on people whom lesser institutions wouldn’t consider. Six years after I was expelled from Columbia’s engineering program, GS let me in.
Like most GS students, I held several jobs at the same time I attended classes, studied, and wrote papers. Also like most GSers, I paid my own way. GSers don’t get much financial aid. Given my history, however, I was grateful for the second chance.
After I graduated—with honors—I got a job in the GS admissions office. One applicant, originally from China, said that she had no college transcripts. She couldn’t even prove that she had attended high school. The records, she said, had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. “Let’s bring her in,” the dean of admissions said. “Let’s hear her story.” To my astonishment, they admitted her. GS’s bet paid off. She worked hard and graduated near the top of her class.
If she were graduating this year, however, she and her parents might not be able to attend her Class Day.
Dean Peter J. Awn wrote in an e-mail to General Studies students: “We were informed last Friday that, if we were to continue with our original plan to have Class Day at 9 a.m. on Monday, May 14, your families would have to arrive at least three hours before the event (5:30 a.m.) to undergo a lengthy security check to attend a ceremony that is not associated with the President’s visit. In fact, neither you nor your families would be able to remain on campus to hear President Obama speak.”
Despite featuring tough admission and graduation requirements, General Studies students are accustomed to being treated like the ugly stepsister of the Columbia bureaucracy. Even so, the Obama snub was over the top. If the initial insult wasn’t bad enough, the president’s inconsideration would have subjected GS graduates and their families to Guantánamo Lite conditions, detained for hours. “We would also be confined to the Butler lawn with no ability to roam around the campus. Frankly, I find that unacceptable,” wrote Dean Awn.
Unwanted, uninvited and evicted from their own space, GS has been forced to move its Class Day to Sunday, May 13th. Which happens to be Mother’s Day. “I realize that, by this point, your families have made their plans and that, not only will this be an inconvenience, but that it also will force you and your families to incur additional expenses,” said Dean Awn.
Jennifer Wisdom, a GS junior, told the Columbia Daily Spectator, “I can’t help but question…if this was happening to Columbia College or the School of Engineering, would it be allowed to occur?”
“It’s the president of the f—-ing United States,” said Reina deBeer, a senior. “The Obama security would have had to know about the measures. It just seems odd.”
They wouldn’t have had to look far. Patrick Gaspard, Obama’s political director from 2009 to 2011, now executive director of the Democratic National Committee, is a General Studies graduate.
The GS Class of 2012 is learning an important lesson: Courtesy and respect are for the little people. One percenters like Obama do whatever the hell they feel like. And if you get in their way, they’ll squash you like a bug.
(Ted Rall’s next book is “The Book of Obama: How We Went From Hope and Change to the Age of Revolt,” out May 22. His website is tedrall.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2012 TED RALL
My Kickstarter campaign for a comix journalism project gaming out revolution here in the United States is at a crossroads. As of now 104 backers have put up $6,291.00, which is amazing, but obviously way short of the $40,000 I need.
This happened last time when I used Kickstarter for Afghanistan—pledges sort of stalled halfway into the campaign. Then as the deadline approached, pledges picked up and the project was successful. I certainly think the results–a daily cartoon blog, unembedded, from some of the most remote places in Afghanistan, proved to be worthwhile. And the book is going to be awesome.
Anyway, we’re now at that point where either people will start pledging in greater numbers or it won’t happen at all. So if you’ve been on the fence, please consider kicking in!
I did this cartoon for The Sacramento Bee. It’s about an attempt by big tobacco companies to block passage of Proposition 29, which would impose an additional $1/pack cigarette tax.
No Context, But Propaganda Is Amusing
Try as they may to make the news as boring as possible, U.S. media outlets keep churning out hilarious “news” stories. Hardly a day passes without the release of some piece whose content is so ridiculous, its tone so absurdly credulous, that it makes us feel as if we live in a bizarre reincarnation of the propaganda-soaked Soviet Union.
Remember “Baghdad Bob”? Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, Iraq’s information minister during the 2003 U.S. invasion, kept denying reality, insisting that Saddam’s regime was winning even as attacking tanks appeared in the background of his camera shots. I had a Baghdad Bob flashback moment earlier this week while listening to NPR’s afternoon news program “All Things Considered.”
“President Obama toured the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington today joined by Holocaust survivor, author and Nobel Laureate, Elie Wiesel. Mr. Obama said the U.S. must never again allow such atrocities to take place,” said Melissa Block.
Whaaaaa…?
The implication is that Obama cares about protecting innocent people from state-run mass murder. That the U.S. has moral standing. But…but…
The U.S. is currently the world’s leading perpetrator of atrocities!
American wars against Afghanistan and Iraq have slaughtered at least two million people and injured many millions more. The U.S. maintains a network of “black site” secret prisons and concentration camps around the world. President Obama claims the right to assassinate anyone, including U.S. citizens, anywhere in the world, without having to explain himself to a court. We’re the #1 arms dealer on the planet. And, as a British newspaper has learned, the military maintains dozens of secret drone bases here inside the U.S., obviously for future use against the enemies of our increasingly oppressive police state.
The Obama Administration isn’t killing as many people as were killed during the Holocaust—but that’s not saying much. Does NPR think we’ve forgotten that the hands of our political leaders are dripping with blood? Or is NPR trying to compete with Comedy Central?
The report included an Obama sound bite: “And when innocents suffer, it tears at our conscience. Elie alluded to what we feel as we see the Syrian people subjected to unspeakable violence simply for demanding their universal rights. We have to do everything we can.”
When innocents suffer. Well, not all innocents, right, Mr. President? Like, we’re not supposed to lose sleep over the thousands of detainees—including children—in U.S. concentration camps at Guantánamo, Bagram, Diego Garcia, Thailand, and Bulgaria. All of who are, under U.S. law, innocent of any crime (because they’ve never been charged, much less convicted, in court).
Anyway, it’s not like the U.S. is doing “everything we can” for the Syrian resistance. Not that we should. But coverage like this—it really does hearken back to the glory days of Pravda and Izvestia.
It’s bad enough to be fed propaganda. But at least make an effort when you lie. This crap is insulting.
In the same report, Don Gonyea let loose this howler: “Mr. Obama announced new sanctions against nations that commit grave human rights abuses through technology that includes cell phone tracking and monitoring citizens on the Internet.”
What a kidder! Such awesomely dry delivery!
As the San Francisco Chronicle reported: “The President took aim at Syria and Iran, whose leaders have tapped compliant phone companies and Internet services to hunt down dissenters.”
Listening to and reading that, you could almost forget that Obama voted for FISA, which retroactively legalized Bush’s illegal domestic wiretapping program, which was carried out by the National Security Agency and—ahem—compliant phone companies such as AT&T. FISA also radically expanded the federal government’s right to listen to your phone calls and intercept your email without a warrant.
Obama’s own commission of “grave human rights abuses through technology that includes cell phone tracking and monitoring citizens on the Internet” is context worth mentioning in a story about Obama imposing sanctions on other countries that do the same things. Maybe something like this: “Mr. Obama, whose Administration vigorously asserts its right to track Americans’ cell phones and track them on the Internet, announced sanctions against other countries that do the same thing.”
They wouldn’t be telling us anything we didn’t already know. But here’s the thing—as ignorant and stupid as the American public is, the media thinks we’re even stupider and more ignorant!
If nothing else, our neo-Soviet media sure is funny.
(Ted Rall’s next book is “The Book of Obama: How We Went From Hope and Change to the Age of Revolt,” out May 22. His website is tedrall.com.)
I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).
This week: A science teacher at an intermediate school in Oxnard, California was fired after students claimed to have seen her in a porn movie. No one asked why children were watching porn movies, which is illegal. (Acting in porn, on the other hand, is legal.)
Hitting Reset on the Red, White and Blue
Roll Call
by Warren Rojas
April 24, 2012
Pledges to my Kickstarter campaign could be more numerous. Maybe a new piece by Roll Call newspaper will help.
