October 6, 2008
UCB Tree-Sitters = Racist?
The always entertaining duo Matier & Ross came across the letter that UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau sent to alums, right at the height of the tree-sitter standoff that lasted two years, claiming that the tree-sit protest was steeped in racism. The part of the letter in question, which was sent to former students Janice and Thomas Boyce, says this:
I am surprised by the fact that you advocate for criminal trespassers who use their own feces and urine to harass our staff while, at the same time, ignoring the racism against our underrepresented minority student athletes that underlies much of the opposition to our proposed student high-performance athletic center.
Our Dumpster Muffin, a racist?!?
Anyway, M&R go on to point out that the letter, initially reported in the Daily Cal, "didn't provoke a single letter to the editor or reaction on the school newspaper's Web site." Or even a comment on online version. We're not sure what they're getting at, but...there you go.
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Who's that, Nancy Reagan and Meadowlark Lemon?
Betty Ford.
Its because they can't see the forest for the trees. Those "pampered athletes" generate a lot of income that the school uses to pamper a lot over-privileged students who equate tree sitting with the free speech movement of the 60s.
Charitably discounting absolute idiocy, I'm left to assume that is just flowery rhetoric.
No. Actually. Nevermind. What was I thinkin? It's idiocy.
Oh wait. Perhaps the lawyer is thinkin he's clever so we'll ask the obvious question "what funny money?" Frankly, and quite obviously, I don't think anyone cares. And it was wrapped in an idiotic observation so bad lawyer, no ambulance.
Read that article at The Daily Cal. Birgeneau was, apparently, referring to e-mail messages he had received from tree-sit supporters who implied "some of the athletes who would train at the proposed center were only admitted to UC Berkeley due to their race".
kudos to M&R for making the Chancellor sound like an idiot.
The Chancellor is an obvious retard. However, it's not out of bounds to argue that the self righteousness that motivates the average hippie to spout on incessantly about a variety of hippie topics in a totally patronizing tone while stinking up the universe with their dirty patchouli smell is the direct result of an educational system firmly entrenched in the racist white male power structure. As the hippie chick they're busily reducing to cliche once pointed out (i.e., Julia Butterfly Hill), the animosity that exists between the working classes and environmentalists is entirely due to the sanctimonious way hippies ride into blue collar towns and lecture the peasantry on vegetarianism, Third World cultures, compost toilets, etc. See, the hippie always knows better because they had their consciousness raised or some such other nonsense.
You know, why is it that the two subcultures to escape the 20th century and make a space for themselves in the here and now (hippies and goths) also have to be the two most annoying? Why didn't flappers or tin pan alley songwriters or beatniks survive? Is being annoying some kind of subcultural survival mechanism?
please stop talking about these trustifarian idiots. they don't deserve this much press.
For the love of god purleeeeeese spike this fucking story once and for all.