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The
Perils of Poor David Horowitz
May 9, 2002
By birdman
 The
mean liberals who control the college campuses are treating
David Horowitz rather poorly again. I know, I know. This news
generates the kind of excitement that we usually associate
with the arrival of an AOL introductory disk (500 free hours!)
in the mail. In fact it's less of an announcement than another
installment in one of America's longest running political
soap operas.
It certainly appears that every week David's loyal readers
just can't wait click onto Davids website or pull up Salon
Magazine to see just how badly their hero has been treated
this week by the cabal of elitist liberals who've conspired
to silence him. Like a soap opera the plot always follows
a very predictable line. Poor put-upon David writes something
or gets a speaking engagement. Nasty liberals, like those
really bad ones on the college campuses don't print what David
writes or maybe they object to it. Or maybe they cancel his
speaking engagement or they let him speak and they heckle
him or they let him speak but he can just tell they're not
happy about it.
And then David whines about it in print. In fact Horowitz
constant claims of victimization have brought political whining
to levels never before seen in the U.S.
We all know the Horowitz story, his parents were Communists
and he was a young radical and one the editors of the lefty
Ramparts magazine back in the '60s. After years of
associating with radical groups - in particular the Black
Panther Party - Horowitz became disillusioned with radicalism.
He attributes his transformation to the murder of a friend
by one of the Panthers. Anyway when Horowitz resurfaced politically
in the late 80's it was in his new role as a extreme right-winger
and he was well on his way to becoming America's preeminent
political crybaby. His writings are dedicated to sharing the
difficulties poor David is suffering at the hands of, well,
people like the old David.
In this week's episode (column) poor David, the left's perennial
punching bag, was victimized by Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.
You see, there are people at these universities who don't
like David's message of how the universities are all being
run by a organized gang of leftists who are all trying to
undermine everything good and decent in American society by
poisoning the minds of the next generation. So as a result
he didn't get invited by the university supported speaker
program. He got invited instead by a small campus conservative
group and, of course, poor David's persecution knew no bounds
because of that. Why, to start with, the conservative group
that invited poor David doesn't get any money from the University.
To make matters worse, other groups do and our eternal victim
recites the amounts that black, Asian, Hispanic, lesbian and
Middle Eastern groups get from the University. And, of course
he lets us know that all these groups are decidedly “left-wing.”
How does David know that these ethnic organizations are “left-wing?”
Well he just kind of knows. As he puts it “I know it
as a result of my inquiries at Vanderbilt and by my own broad
range of experience with similar groups on campuses across
the country.”
And to add to poor David's suffering, these poor, impoverished
unsupported conservative groups just don't pay the nice big
honorariums that people like James Carville and Ralph Nader
and Aaron Magruder get and then, to add insult to injury,
the room he was supposed to speak in was needed for a class
(coincidence? oh how naive you are) and his talk had to be
moved at the last minute. He gave his speech (the only part
he shares with us is boiler-plate right-wing Clinton-bashing)
but then one of those cruel professors called him “a foaming
at the mouth rightwing ideologue." Of course it's this kind
of intolerance that has limited poor David to a mere 23 (by
his count) honorariums this Spring.
Now, you would think that all this bothers poor David so
much would just give up making those speeches and trying to
buy ads in campus papers that sometimes don't get published.
After all, he can always put an end to the endless suffering
that those campus lefties are always causing him and console
himself with the Scaife and Olin Foundation money that flows
into his “Center for the Study of Popular Culture.”
But poor David won't do that because whining and victimization
are his gig. It isn't enough to say that some people disagree
with him. Nobody is going to read your column or support your
think tank if you're just involved in an honest disagreement.
Poor David has to be able to portray himself as a victim of
an organized movement that's out to destroy him and those
like him. Political correctness, left wing academia, the more
vaguely you define your persecutor the better. Enemies that
are shadowy and ill-defined are always the most ominous. And
best of all David will never have to go TV to debate the chairman
of the National Association of Political Correctness since
there is no such person.
So poor David's never ending self-imposed persecution will
go on. Tune in next week, as poor David attempts to give another
speech while a leftist anti-war professor with a beard cuts
in front of David's car and takes the last visitor space in
the campus parking lot.
Coincidence? I don't think so.
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