The issue is college students today are over-sensitive little bitches who try to violently shut out views and opinions that invade their "safe space." The same thing is happening at Yale. South Park got it right. I'm only 32 but I can't believe how pussified college kids are only a decade after I was one.

The issue is these kids are over-sensitive little bitches who try to violently shut out views and opinions that invade their "safe space." South Park got it right. I'm only 32 but I can't believe how pussified college students have become only a decade after I was one.

Jesus. The only thing I remember from college 10 years ago is a lot of beer pong and scheduling classes for after noon.

I guess my safe space was a given being that I'm white and my parents paid ~80% of my tuition.

What happened here and what happened at Yale are two entirely different things. Good article.

What was the ESPN reporter being held back from photographing? I haven't clicked every link, but what's the object/subject here? Sorry, I'm fatigued. I've had a long slog of a day.

"the tactics of the young people who are changing the world"

They are changing the world all right. Specifically, they are changing the world into one in which we mob, intimidate, and assault journalists and political opponents. See:

People being spat on at the recent Yale Halloween protests.
Feminists pulling fire alarms to stop talks about men's issues.
Bomb threats called into Gamergate gatherings.
Men's writers being tracked down on the street, surrounded by mobs, and assaulted.
Vandalism at the UVA frat where 'Haven Monahan' supposedly raped Jackie.

There's a belief system out there--call it Social Justice Warriorism or the regressive left--that is so damn sure they have the one true way that they are willing to destroy the very democracy, tolerance, and freedom they claim to fight for.

The problem with the Yale narrative (I will assume we are referring to the Halloween costume restrictions and following email and subsequent reactions) is that it assumes everything is “ok” at Yale just because it is Yale.

So, the critique goes, simply being there means you have privilege just like anyone else at Yale. And, if you find something disagreeable, or offensive, you simply must state your case and a reasonable outcome will ensue. We are all Yale.

I find this line of thinking wishful at best and would equate to Chief Justice Robert’s banal pronouncement that the “…"way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race…”

This of course barely above conflating “All Lives Matter” with “Black Lives Matter”.

And, to be sure, there is nothing reasonable about America when it comes to Race. In fact, it is mostly a felonious history composed of brutal incarcerations and outright genocide; all this backed by the law. And, in the case of the former, only ended by one of the bloodiest wars of the modern era. So, yah, just talk it out…

To ignore the historical context of Race in America is to simply bury your head in the sand. And to suggest that using the tools of authority - in the case of the Yale administration deeming what should not be adorned on Halloween - is somehow censoring dissenting views is to live in an abstraction.

And, yes, not being allowed to adorn black face or parade around in a head dress on Halloween may very well be a restriction on free speech, but only with total disregard for the context of our collective history and, by definition, our collective present.

Academia is an easy target in general, any era of student even more so. But to suggest that the pendulum has swung so far from where it has historically always been in that the marginalized are now the oppressors, or soon oppressors-to-be, beggars belief.

(b) Shoving a journalist in a public place isn't okay. Usually it's the cops who do this. That "mass media professor" Melissa Click, seen at the end of the video calling for some "muscle" to move Tai away? She should be fired or sent to remedial school. What a fraud. (And good that she just apologized.)

Amen. She's what struck me most in the video: the white woman (ab)using an authoritative position as faculty to gain power/status in a social movement that’s not about her, ordering around media and protesters alike, drunk on her own power and self-righteousness.

Why are you sticking up for the protesters getting violent with a student journalist?
It's the dumbest thing they could do. The media is there for the story, and the story is the issue that the protesters are trying to bring to national attention; without the media, the protest goes nowhere. But when they attack the journalist, the story becomes about how they're violent and unreasonable and don't understand or respect the freedoms we hold dear in this country. It hurts the movement as a whole when they do this, and it's just another example of SJWs going nuts and biting the heads off of people who are on their side because they'd rather BE RIGHT than ACCOMPLISH THINGS.

The fact that the cause is an important one doesn't mean that we should make excuses for the idiot protesters disgracing it. Rather, we should disavow their imbecilic tactics all the more strongly, as the cause must be protected against the misbehavior of a few claiming to advance it.

You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Dude should have brought some pizza.

I like this term "social justice warriorism" that #6 used. It strikes me as appropriately applied to those who believe so strongly in their own convictions that they wear absolute blinders. Sociologists used to call them "true believers." Both the Mizzou protesters who pushed back the photographer and the BLM protestors who shut down Bernie Sanders at Westlake suffer from the same myopia: Both did a tremendous disservice to their causes by acting as if their rights were superior to everyone elses.

It's sad to see students - at a public university - who don't understand the law. The photographer had a legal right to be there.

Next, they certainly could appeal to his "humanity" but it did not appear he was trying to take shots of anyone but them.

Also, why did they go after him when there was a sound guy and another photographer directly behind him?

Acting like children makes people discount your cause.

Actually there were two photojournalists that the crowd threatened with physical violence. Freedom of the press is an absolute in importance and this crowd has absolutely no right to infringe upon it.

@SeanKinney.

Your overall point about flies & honey is good but he was photographer. He wasn't trying to persuade and change the story. He wanted to see the story. And he did.

Bad news for the students that their story came out (since they looked very stupid.)

It seems that they have had second thoughts and apologized?

Correcting #15: the KKK sightings are unconfirmed. Police are thankfully (?) showing up and taking the threats seriously.

@15 and @16.

Some context for the rumored "KKK" sightings: There have been more black people killed by other black people, in just one city (Chicago), in just the past 8 years than have been killed by the KKK nationwide in 86 Years. Enough with the sideshows.

Ansel,
Um, this is bad, very bad. @9 nailed it. What happened at Mizzou was horrible. It's a protest movement gone awry. Their tactics are insane.

Most unfortunate.
Sigh.

I love all the 30-somethings online getting all butt-hurt over this. If they're not blathering from their crotchety old-man chair about how awful student protesters are, they're complaining that the "youth of today" are so complacent and obsessed with their ipads.

Oh, they're also complete absolutists as well. Basically what so many people on this thread and elsewhere are saying is: "All extremists should die."

Yeah. Got it.

I want to thank Ansel for not falling into the absolutists' trap, and writing a very even-handed thoughtful article. Yeah, the "profession" of journalism is a complete and utter joke. That was laid bare in 2002-3, during the run-up to the Great American Disaster (aka the Iraq Invasion). The structures of journalism that sold us that piece of crap are still in place. I don't have any sympathy for any fuckwad that wants to continue the great propaganda machine.

I've heard from people of color recently that, basically, the need to 'have a conversation' about race and racism is over. Some black friends of mine are done talking to whites, either directly or through the media. Whites need to talk to each other. We need to be clear that we aren't taking it though. There is nothing to talk about except the need for change. Too often the media brings it's favorite to of false equivalency to beat and finds some racist or 'not racist' twat to argue that 'this isn't about skin color.' If I were black, I'd be quite done with the 'conversation' as well.

@17, wtf is that context? One group of assholes (criminals with similar skin color) preys upon the community a lot, therefore some other groups of assholes (criminals in white sheets) that preys upon the community possibly to a lesser degree don't need to be addressed? So if Catholic priests rape more carbolic school children then Scout leaders do, Catholic parents really have no right to call the law on pedo scout leaders?

This is exactly why some people of color are done talking about racism.

This is why we need to bring back big hats with an over-sized "Press" sign tucked into them.

Anyway, the people complaining about "SJWs" and "butthurt" up above me? Fuck off. You're eve bigger babies than you're claiming they are if you get riled up over it over them doing nothing but being rude.

Morons.

@23 Mobbing and intimidating journalists is not "being rude."

@15 Yes, attacking the foundation of democracy--attacking the very thing that let the protesters be there protesting in the first place--is pretty fucking important.

If you want people to trust the media, give them reason to.

Right after 9/11, the news media fell on it's knees to suck W's cock. Even Dan Savage called for the invasion of Iraq. The State Department manufactured propaganda which the media played unedited and without questioning the content. After Jeff Gannon was exposed as a fraud, he took a job as a columnist at... the Washington Blade. That's right, The Blade. Not the Washington Times or Breitbart, the Blade. His columns mostly consisted of attacking HRC for endorsing Marriage Equality.

You know, when you see shit like that, it dawns on me that it isn't one professor at some hayseed college in Missouri who caused the entire US population to distrust journalists. It's journalists who caused the US population to distrust journalists.

This piece puzzles me in different ways.

Journalists establishing trust with their subjects before reporting or photographing them- is this realistic? Take this case. How well did anybody know the reporter in question and all the involved players whose actions are being reported? With 24/7 news coming off the wire and net, how well vetted are stories before being published ? It's absolutely important to know something about a situation and check its accuracy, because that provides context.

Most journalists covering the news know things can get out of hand at any situation, but that doesn't make it ok to harm them. These days, if you look at how many journalists who have been killed, injured, tortured, arrested, or have gone missing, they are a hunted profession.

There are legal protections if you commit violence to protect yourself. It's not ok for police to shove or hit journalists in tense, emotional situations. Police are allowed greater power than civilians and are supposed to be held to a higher standard when exercising that power. And when the police aren't, does this make it ok for regular joes and janes to uncheck themselves too? To do onto others what others have done to you?

So if we have enough justifications, can we act without impunity? What check our high emotion from becoming violent action in situations like these?

Journalism is dying. The rise of the internet has allowed ordinary individuals without press credentials or the monetary backing of media corporations to record and upload news as it happens. That cop who threw that girl to the ground in SC? There weren't any reporters in that room when that happened. The video we've all seen came from a teenager's cellphone, not your television camera.

When I look at what the news media has become, I cerebrate it's slow and gradual death. Let's have a frank discussion about the responsibility journalists had after 9/11. Let's talk about how media have allowed themselves to degenerate into party organs for politicians.

Ansel, do you know why we don't respect you? If you think it's one crappy professor down south whom I've never heard of before reading this, you're mistaken.

When is the "social justice" riot scheduled?

FYI for @9, 11, et al:

using the term "SJW" ("Social Justice Warrior") is internet slang for "I'm a racist misogynist pre-adult. Please disregard everything I say."

The Constitution of the United States is systemic racism. The first amendment, in the context of a systemically racist political structure is racist. Asking oppressed minorities to color within the lines of a system that is systemically racist is simply racist.

Who would deny that the african americans have the moral right to go to war against the United States based on the treatment they have received under the so-called protections of the United States Constitution? Hell...we initiated the Revolutionary war for acts much less significant than black people endure in this country every day.

To then concern yourself with the rights of journalists under the first amendment in the context of sustained and systemic racism is to simply display your lack of knowledge on the topic and to revel in your privilege.

All I could think of after watching the clip,

https://youtu.be/mOy2vnrWYXY?t=52s
Lisa: Bart, just get out of here.
Bart Simpson: Hey, you get out out. It's a free country.
Lisa: That doesn't make any sense.
Bart Simpson: I know you are, but what am I?
Lisa: Get out, get out!
Bart Simpson: All right. But on my way, I'm going to be doing this...
[windmills his arms]
Bart Simpson: If you get hit, it's your own fault.
Lisa: Okay, then I'm going to start kicking air, like this...
[kicks up her foot]
Lisa: And if any part of you should fill that air...
[kicks up her other foot]
Lisa: It's *your* own fault.

@30
Hey Timothy: WTF are you saying? Are you saying minorities shouldn't have to respect the rights of journalists? That their rights to safe spaces trump the First Amendment on an open university field? Are you saying minorities get to make up their own rules? Are you making an argument for segregation? Do you want a race war between people of color and people w/out color? WTF?
More to the point, if you had an iota of knowledge about civil rights history, you might be able to appreciate that the movement had many, many friends in journalism. In fact, many crusading reporters, photographers and editors took great personal risks to bring civil rights struggles to national attention. It's a shame that so many have fallen for the old Nixonian saw that 'the media' is the enemy.

I think, there should be no handwaiving aloud.

One of the bigger problems in modern politics is that today's liberals believe themselves to be morally and ethically superior to conservatives. They'll never be constructive politics under such circumstances.

@29 says you. Recent events show that SJWism is not only a real thing, but exists not just the depths of Tumblr but in the real world.

At Yale--Yale--hundreds of students have joined in protests in which they have spat on people; in which professors who very civilly and mildly disagreed with them were screeched and cursed at and called 'disgusting'. You can bury your head in the sand and pretend that only racists think there is such a thing as an intolerant, regressive movement on the left. But if this goes on you are going to get pretty lonely.

Rather than using the term SJW being a marker for racism, misogyny, and immaturity, I think denying that SJWism is a thing is becoming a marker for SJWism.

@22 If you're interested in social change – and I mean REAL social change, not just boondoggle programs that appear to address change, why would you spend precious political and social capital on what is (relatively) a NON ISSUE?

So ALLEGEDLY, some rednecks in robes yelled something. That allegation is of the "I heard that she said, that his uncle's boss' sister heard that..." variety.

So should the Noble Justice Warriors spend all their time scrounging around for perceived slights and indignities from a seasonal yee-hah redneck? Or should they take just one minute to look up and even ATTEMPT to address the grinding social issues which TONIGHT will cause over a hundred young black kids to be taken to the emergency room with holes they blasted in each other.

"Black Lives" feigning outrage over poop swastikas in Missouri should take a serious fucking backseat to the rage of black parents whose kid got popped, and the neighbors won't cooperate with police, and the politicos who would rather keep them starved and so electorally motivated, instead of providing real opportunity.

Its cheap and easy to classify someone as a redneck or racist when they don't cling without question to the convenient lefty narrative of oppression. But a half-century into the New Deal, and things even shittier for the dependents you've created, might we just suggest that it's the Democrats who have some serious fucking explaining for the mess they've help create in the black family.

Well, this slid into a shitstorm pretty quickly.

So was the point of the protest to be heard? Why not invite the media? Some of the national media was actually invited to the campus by the same women that kicked them out. The protest was poorly organized, and poorly planned. This is unfortunate because it seams like there is enough on campus to warrant attention to the demands, or at least prove an effort to improve on the demands.

Then again I am getting tired of the meet our demands or else mentality. We have got to find a middle ground as a society. We all need to recognize the issue, but the poorly planned protests are not always helping the cause.

@29: Excuse me, I can be in favor of actual social justice while still opposing the dumbshit tactics of SJWs. What's an SJW? Someone who's more interested in picking a fight over some perceived slight than actually resolving society's problems. You know, people like those trans kids who flipped out at Dan when he spoke at my alma mater, or people who loudly proclaim that racism = prejudice + power and attack anyone who says that black people are capable of being racist just like anyone else, or people who get upset about being referred to as "queer" rather than "gay" or vice versa.

@30: Y'all bakers toasting in a roll bread.

@35: In this instance, Satan, I find myself in agreement with you.

@36: So basically, threats from white supremacists don't matter because of the old specter of black-on-black crime. Do I really need to explain why your argument is bullshit? Because I'm buzzed on Jarritos and Tito's and I don't really feel like being particularly articulate right now.

@38: oops, you just agreed with the resident unapologetic racist. sorry. :(

Not hard to see where your sympathies lie, is it?

@40

There are worse things than being called a racist: i.e. SJW, cultural masochist, traitor, delusional hippie, laughing stock of entire world, etc.

Good to see that this journalist confrontation is being reported and discussed more broadly than any of the original underlying events! Don't want anybody asking what was so relentless about the environment there that even the football coach had to back his players who were going to walk out if something wasn't done. Could there be more going on than just the two incidents that the press is reporting and being so dismissive of? Who cares! Let's talk about how these college students being overly protective of a hunger striker is a Major National Incident, so we don't have to ask anything else. Better yet, let's not mention the hunger striker at all. Everybody knows how stupid college students are, right? And that hunger striking student is stupid too. Everybody is so stupid - and ineffectual at things that they are stupid to try to do anyway.

First sign of successful action toward social equity = Right wing/racist trolls dive to the comments to attack.

Hey @Venomlash, @Keenan C and @Patriarch, you guys are losing the battle. If you had 1/2 the nerve and 1/10th the sense, you would be trying to defend your racism to those protesters in person. Ive been to MAAAAAAANY anti-state violence/anti racism protests. Ive studied coverage on even more here in the pacific northwest. With the exception of the Olympia Blacklivesmatter protest where the local chapters of the open White Power movement came out to defend law enforcement, Ive yet to see any righters foaming at the mouth with such linguistic eloquence as you do on comment sections.

So in short, nut up or shut up. Cowards.

@44 At MU you had two (or more) faculty members of a public university leading a mob attacking journalists. That IS state violence. Sorry, you are on the pro-state-violence side this time.

@44 P.S. First sign a regressive leftist can't defend his position: he starts throwing around slurs like 'racist' and 'coward'.

You know what liberals like me do when SJW activism jumps the shark? We don't go down and confront the protesters championing 'White Power' (which we don't believe in). We stay home. Enjoy your dwindling lunatic fringe.

@44: Whose side do you think I'm on exactly?
I'm wholeheartedly in favor of ensuring equality and pluralistic harmony in this country, which is why it breaks my heart to see idiots disgracing the movement by, well, being idiots. What do you think happens when protesters agitating for racial issues to be properly addressed mob a journalist? Do you think that helps their cause or hurts it? You call what happened "successful action toward social equity"? I call it "sending a message that pro-equality protesters are violent hypocrites"! Is that a message we want to be sending?

How about the vocal minority of trans activists who flip out at people for unwittingly using the wrong set of gender-neutral pronouns? Do you think they make it easier or harder for everyday Joans and Jameses to be accepted for who they are?

For that matter, how about the Jews who cry "anti-Semite" whenever anyone criticizes Israeli foreign/domestic policy? Do you suppose that gives a greater or lesser voice to the Jews actually suffering from persecution?

You can call it "respectability politics" if you so desire, as some derisively do. I call it "don't needlessly piss off people who you want on your side". There are things worth getting angry, even militant, over, but it is important to recognize when that approach does more harm than help. There are, sadly, some people who are so attached to their victimhood that they refuse to be diplomatic, that they don't really want people on their side. And they hold the entire movement back by alienating people who would be firmly in their camp if only they had been approached rather than attacked.
The best way to get people to really think about and confront white privilege is not to call them oppressors, but rather to tell them to think about people who don't have the same advantages that they do.

I thought I'd share this fine piece by Peter Berkowitz regarding the meltdown at Yale and the Ivory Tower in America for that matter:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/article…

@47 VM, Good fare. I may not share much of yours or Sloggers' POVs but I enjoy reading your eloquent postings by & large.

@48: Thank you. The Berkowitz article was a good read except for the part where he said something favorable about the work of Dinesh D'Souza.
I'm perfectly fine with the idea, by the way, that defending people who wear costumes of racist caricatures does marginalize minority students. Where I differ from a lot of the protesters is in their attempt to silence all debate, to not let people who say things they dislike explain why they said them. The tactic of "he said something mean, therefore he's a horrible person, case closed" smacks of a witch hunt.

@49: Really? You can't tell the difference between "not treating racial minorities as second class citizens" and "drag[ging] this [country] into the ghetto". Well, nobody here really thought you weren't racist, so nothing of value of lost by your statements.