The title should really be
"Hack Publisher of a Hack Paper Funded by Everyone's Favorite Hack Journalism School Publishes Hack Editorial to Take Down Real Sociology Professor." But it wouldn't fit...
There's a lot of quoted text, here, but bear with me, it's worth the read. I found out about it via an email proudly announcing the hack job:
Subject: Liberal Professor Suspended After Conservative Campus Newspaper Expose
From: Morton Blackwell
The University of Louisville suspended Dr. John McTighe after a campus conservative newspaper quoted the sociology professor saying people should buy guns and shoot "religious zealots" who support President Bush.
Louisville Patriot publisher Brian Yates quoted McTighe saying, "It was the religious zealots who say they were voting on morals. I think we should all buy AK47's and shoot them all."
It gets better. More after the flip ...
"We're encouraged by this victory for academic balance and freedom," said Yates. "One reason we started the Patriot was to fight left-wing bias in our classrooms. The University cannot allow professors to turn their lecterns into soapboxes."
The Louisville Patriot started with a Balance in Media Grant from the Leadership Institute's Campus Leadership Program (CLP). [emphasis added] CLP helps students start and maintain independent campus conservative groups and publications.
"Why did Professor McTighe feel comfortable fantasizing about shooting Christian voters in front of his class? Perhaps because the University of Louisville is a one-party campus," said Daniel Flynn, Director of the Campus Leadership Program. "Federal Election Commission reports show University of Louisville employees gave nearly $7,000 to John Kerry's campaign but nothing to George W. Bush's reelection efforts."
"Despite 'diversity' and 'tolerance' becoming campus mantras, schools like Louisville can be dens of political conformity and intolerance," said Flynn.
Back in 1967, when I was personally organizing college students all across Kentucky for the gubernatorial campaign of Louie B. Nunn, the then president of the University of Louisville showed his hostility to conservative students active there by threatening some with expulsion. Perhaps the fate of Professor McTighe is an early sign of good sense dawning on American college campuses.
Last fall, Leadership Institute staff started more than 200 new campus organizations and newspapers like the Louisville Patriot. [emphasis added] Any student who wants to fight biased professors, administrators, and guest speakers can contact CLP online at [deleted. Neo-con readers - you can do your own legwork].
And here's an excerpt from the response in the Louisville Cardinal - by a student who is clearly more of a journalist than the young man who took it upon himself to trash the career of another man based on hearsay from one student in the class:
Provided that Yates' account of the events is accurate, it should be willingly conceded that the university's course of action is fair according to its policy on such matters. But this article was published not as a cool-headed editorial, but for the sole purpose of polemic exaggeration and venomous mockery. If Mr. Yates wants to write in the fashion of a tabloid journalist, it's a slimy, although acceptable, thing to do. But having offered his commentary as an accurate portrayal of the events, if any of that information is elaborated, overstated, or even completely false, its being instrumental in a man's professional censure is bad form - so egregious as to approach libel.
Yates' article is dubious and irresponsible for a number of reasons. He is also the publisher of the newspaper in which the column appeared. How rigorous can the editorial process be when the columnist is his own boss? Mr. Yates had no first-hand knowledge of McTighe's remarks. Yet somehow he posits one single source's account of the events as fact. Mr. Yates directly quotes Dr. McTighe a total of five times. Given that he did not attend the class, these quotes are essentially hearsay. Second-hand quotes are not a journalism taboo, but are unquestionably flimsy evidence for publicly defaming people. There were 24 students in Dr. McTighe's class, and the fact that Mr. Yates spoke to only one of them intimates his limited level of interest in verifying what was said and assessing how seriously the rest of the class took it.
So, what does
Yates have to say for himself?
McTighe said his comments were taken out of context and that Yates misquoted him. But Yates, a junior accounting major who pens a column for the monthly newsmagazine, says he confirmed the account in an interview with Katherine McCrocklin Martin, a student in the class who says she voted for Bush in the November election.
"It was one of those stories you hear and your jaw drops," Yates said. "I looked into the whole issue, and then I contacted the university to see what their position might be. I was informed by (university provost) Shirley Willihnganz that he made the comments, but that he said he was just being sarcastic. [emphasis added] At that point, I really wasn't sure the university was taking the issue seriously. So I wrote the column about the incident, and it just took on a life of its own."
I guess Yates doesn't "get" sarcasm, the witty language used to convey insults or scorn. So apparently scorning the idea of killing people with AK47s isn't good enough? Perhaps Yates thought the professor should have advocated the idea?
What we have here is a situation in which a teacher makes a sarcastic remark, which one student in the class reports to another student out of context. The other student decides that it deserves to be reported without so much as a call to the professor. The radical regressive wing of the blogosphere runs with the story.
As a result, the student's poor excuse for reporting causes the professor to lose his job, damaging his reputation, perhaps permanently.
Enter the Leadership Institute ... promoting the values of the schoolyard bully, they not only celebrate this hack job, they use it as a fundraising tool.
Get ready, because there are more of them out there, hatchets at the ready.