Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Morris Dees

Steve Sailer has a blogpost about Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) that reminds me of an anecdote about my own experience at Colby College (related to Dees, although I didn't ever talk to him personally).

Back in 2001 when I was an undergraduate at Colby College, we had Dinesh D'Souza to speak around late April early May, and the leftists were up in arms, using the all-campus mailing function to email everyone with letter after letter berating him and implying if not outright stating that people like D'Souza should not be invited to campus, and asking why we spent $3000 to invite him.
Finally, I got fed up and posted my own email, which asked why we had spent $3000 to invtie Morris Dees to campus earlier that year (January, maybe early February); while I didn't mention D'Souza or this brouhaha at all, I paralleled my letter to the anit-D'Souza ones, including Alexander Cockburn's take on him (I had been introduced to Mr. Cockburn through antiwar.com - I am one of the people who got interested in - and even donated to - the website back when the Balkans were the big issue they dealt with).
I would have used Danny Glover as my example instead (we had invited him for $30,000, and more recently), as he cost ten times as much as Dees or D'Souza, but a quick internet search brought me to the conclusion that he was a well-meaning nice guy (if often incorrect), so I saw no reason to attack him.

That is all.

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