Washington U: A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham

By Kathy G.

The Washington University scandal  -- said scandal being the fact that they're planning to award an honorary doctorate to arch-antifeminist, arch-wingnut, arch-anti-intellectual conspiracy freak Phyllis Schlafly -- just keeps getting better and better.

Know who they've chosen as commencement speaker this year?

C'mon, just guess. I'll give you a hint. Try to think of the one person in America who, more than any other, has been driving the left blogosphere in general, and the feminist blogosphere in particular, out of our everlovin' collective mind of late.

Have you got a guess? Good. Answer after the jump.

Ding ding ding ding ding! You are correct, sir!

Yes, it's Chris Matthews! Tweety himself! Who at this point may be the only person in America feminists loathe more than we do Phyllis Schlafly.

Oh. My. Lord. Has the Washington U. administration screwed the pooch this time, or what? To quote Woody Allen in Bananas, this is a travesty. It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham. More than that -- it's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham!

And even that description does not do it justice.

We must act together to put a stop to this. I think it's possible to get Washington U. to change their minds. As commenter Donald A. Coffin pointed out in the thread concerning my earlier post, Northwestern recently decided to renege on its plan to give Jeremiah Wright an honorary degree. So it's not unprecedented for a major university to back down about this sort of thing.

Here are some things you can do to pressure Washington University to change its mind about an honorary doctorate for Phyllis Schlafly:

1. Join the Facebook group, No honorary doctorate for anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly, and ask others to join as well.

2. Contact and try to organize alumni. An emailer familiar with the situation has written that this is likely to be the most effective route, because money talks. The university does not want to alienate the one donor base they rely on most heavily.

3. Contact Chancellor Wrighton, Wrighton@wustl.edu.

4. Contact, Jane Stone, coordinator of the Board of Trustees: jane_stone@wustl.edu

I'll update this list with more actions you can take as soon as I become aware of them.

Comments

[mikefromtexas]

Didn't see that coming.

[tired_democrat]

Rats! I thought it was gonna be Keith Obermann--I've learned to hate that guy. Hating Chris Matthews was just a given...

[Batocchio]

Depressing. But extra style points for the Woody Allen reference!

Fielding Mellish: I object, your honor! This trial is a travesty. It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.

[Batocchio]

Hmm... BTW, your commenting setup apparently strips embedded links and basic formatting (italics, etc.)

[rockwell]

Schafly can be a nut, but not always. A few years ago, when people went to the Supreme Court to fight the so called 'Sonny Bono Copyright Extrension Act,' which allowed big companies like Disney to keep renewing their age-old copyrights, Schafly and her organization also fought it tooth and nail.

Wierdly, she was on the side of the angels on this one, and took an extreme-left position against corporate power. Her group filed a number of expensive friend-of-the-court briefs to help convince SCOTUS to throw out this new law. Ultimately they lost, but she still was on the correct side of the issue.