I'm not going to get into the rude behavior of the folks who protested Ann Coulter last night in Austin. I'm not going to point out that fart noises, gestures of mastubation, nise-makers, and obscene questions are beyond the bounds of civility in a polite society. I won't even argue that such folks deserve to be removed from the university community for antics which disgraced the school, showing them unfit for higher education.

No, I want to focus on the bias of The Daily Texan in reporting on the speech and the opponents of freedom who disrupted it.

First, there was the news story.

Incessant heckling and shouting culminated in an arrest Tuesday night during a speech by Ann Coulter, an extreme right-wing pundit, at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum.

Shouts became so pervasive during the question-and-answer session that Coulter informed the organizers she would no longer take questions if the hecklers were not silenced. For a time, the shouts were considerably lessened, until the issue of gay marriage was broached.

Coulter said she supported the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman on the basis that a good woman civilizes and inspires a man to strive for something better, leading to a question that was met with a stunned silence

Then there was the opinion column.

To be honest, I was surprised there weren't more protesters.

When the auditorium filled up to see Ann Coulter last night, I only saw about 15 people in the back with signs. They looked like the usual protest crowd. Earth tones, shaggy hair, somber faces, folks who have their own wipe-board signs to adapt for every situation.

I guess for a conventional extremist like Ann Coulter there is no good rallying point for the local upstarts. She does not particularly irritate any specific campus community.

She just generally rubs all liberals the wrong way. Yet, one can always rely on that most reliable of protest groups, the one-size-fits all International Socialist Organization.

Who gets labeled in politically unflattering terms? Is it the folks who engage in low-grade terrorism to prevent free speech in a public place? Or is it their victim?

It is, of course, An Coulter, not the folks who deserve to be labeled as totalitarians-in-training for their attempt at speech suppression.

Maybe this is an issue that needs to be examined by the UT administration -- the failure of the journalism department to teach proper journalistic standards like fairness and balance, and the failure of the school paper to implement them.

UPDATE: For another overwrought view of AnnCoulter, visit here.

Posted by: Greg at 09:48 AM | Comments (48) | Add Comment
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