A great article from Powerline.com, one of the Internet's best Blogs.

Mark Steyn's dream

In need of a laugh, I sought out Mark Steyn's column this morning. Instead of a laugh I find Steyn's dream in the Imus Affair:

Needless to say, [CBS President Les] Moonves fired Imus after first meeting with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton. I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where a white guy can be fired for racist remarks without his employers having to prostrate themselves before clapped-out professional grievance mongers and shakedown artists. But dream on. Two men who slandered the Duke lacrosse players not just as racists but as rapists (by the way, has the Rev. Jackson come through on his promise to pay for the "victim" to go to college?) are the go-to guys when it comes to judging rhetorical excess in respect to varsity sports teams. Surely even a network president isn't such a craven squish he can go through a meeting like that with a straight face?
Mark's unfunny conclusion brought me up short:
As a female correspondent to the Powerline Web site commented: "Here are these tough women on top of the world, and they are so fragile that a remark knocks them down. Hey, why wouldn't they have said 'F--- you? Who the heck is this fool Imus? We are queens of national basketball, and there is no stopping us now. We can be and do anything we choose to be or do. … We don't need Al Sharpton to protect us.' But no, they look devastated and say they are damaged irreparably."

Only in America: a team of champions who think they're victims, an old white fool who talks like a gangsta rapper, and multi-millionaires grown rich on race-baiting who promote themselves as guardians of civility. Good thing there are no real problems to worry about.


PAUL adds: I got my laugh for the day from the title of Steyn's piece as it appears on Steyn Online -- "Hello, Imus Be Going."

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Race, gender still rule school accreditations, but "many Michigans" are aborning says Alabama Op-Ed

Published Sunday, April 15, 2007
DAVID K. PERRY AND CHARLES W. NUCKOLLS: Race, gender still rule school accreditations


As the era of legally sanctioned racial and gender preferences in public higher education likely winds down, the chains of intellectual tyranny (i.e., political correctness) in some ways seem to be tightening. Perhaps this represents desperation, a Battle-of-the-Bulge effort, among those who wish to forestall or delay race- and gender-neutral admission and hiring policies. Possibly, it merely illustrates a law of political thermodynamics that every action begets a reaction.

The landslide passage of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative last November is the most-recent indication that the U.S. public is completely exhausted by the durability of “temporary" preferences. Among other things, the MCRI prohibits discriminatory or preferential hiring and admissions by public universities in that state. It followed similar votes years earlier in California and Washington.

It passed despite seemingly overwhelming opposition among the Michigan political establishment. Opponents included business and labor groups, many Democratic and Republican politicians, and the Michigan Catholic Conference, not to mention the president of the University of Michigan and a majority of its faculty. In its wake, plans exist for similar proposals to appear on the ballot in as many as nine states next year. It is more than likely that voters will pass, and do so overwhelmingly, measures like the one Michigan approved.





The MCRI was created following mixed U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 2003 about challenges to admission policies at the University of Michigan. In one case, the court ruled 6-3 against a racial point system for potential undergraduates. Yet, the court also voted 5-4 to uphold race as a factor in law school selections. Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who cast a critical vote with the majority in the latter decision, recently expressed doubts about the life expectancy of such preferences. She was quoted as telling a National Press Club symposium in Washington that the “future of affirmative action in higher education today is certainly muddy" due to such things as the MCRI.

One potential tool of reaction involves professional accreditation agencies, such as The Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications. This organization certifies media programs at about 100 universities. Hundreds more remain unaccredited. Some significant programs, including those at Ohio State and Wisconsin-Madison, have pulled out. Among the complaints are that larger schools face more-stringent standards than do smaller ones and that such accreditation limits a program’s curricular options. The journalism department at The University of Alabama is among the accredited, although no faculty vote has occurred in several decades about the matter.

For about 20 years, ACEJMC has evaluated academic media units in part according to their so-called “diversity." The stringency of the standard and its application at times has waxed and waned. In recent years, things have gotten noticeably tougher. According to the ACEJMC Web site, an academic unit now is expected to demonstrate “effective efforts to recruit women and minority faculty and professional staff" and to provide “an environment that supports their retention, progress and success." Also, a unit is supposed to demonstrate “effective efforts to help recruit and retain a student population reflecting the diversity of the population eligible to enroll in institutions of higher education in the region or population it serves, with special attention to recruiting under-represented groups."

We can hardly imagine a more obvious, if formally unstated, call for quotas. Units evidently must not only cast a wide net among prospective faculty and students but also catch certain numbers or percentages of various types of fish. Yet, ACEJMC also requires accreditation teams to apply these “in compliance with applicable federal and state laws and regulations." What happens if state laws, such as that/screated by the MCRI, forbid racial or gender preferences and the widest practicable net continually yields too many tuna and not enough salmon? Perhaps such agencies will have no choice but to overlook transgression in states such as Michigan.

Yet, a fallback position may exist. According to newspaper columnist Walter Williams, the diversity movement on campus basically represents a reaction to court limitations on affirmative action. ACEJMC criteria also require that the journalism and mass communication curricula foster “understanding of issues and perspectives that are inclusive in terms of gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation." At worst, this could amount to a demand that a sort of diversity training, as well as discussion about legitimate topics such as news and stereotypes, be included in courses. Perhaps some even believe that journalism students, having experienced a curricular interest-group feeding frenzy, will incorporate diversity training in the news, leading to public opposition to future MCRIs. We seriously doubt that any such plan would have the intended consequences, however.

Ultimately, the effect of these accreditation policies is best summarized by partly appropriating a phrase from a 20th century Argentinean revolutionary. By steeling the determination of those who believe that attending to color does not cause color-blindness, such tactics may even help create two, three, many Michigans.

David K. Perry (perry @jn.ua.edu) is an associate professor of journalism and Charles W. Nuckolls (charlesnuckolls @sprynet.com) is a professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama.

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