Looking at a piece on Jonathon Gruber and the credentialed class, Dr. Glenn Reynolds noted, “I’m beginning to feel that America’s educational system hasn’t produced the best-possible governing class.”

Daniel Pellegrino, a student at Franklin and Marshall College, would probably concur with this assessment.  He recently reviewed a Dartmouth’s “scholar’s” tasteless query to Texas Governor Rick Perry.

… However, motivated by her passion for freedom and truth, a young revolutionary (read: student) stood up and asked Rick Perry this very well thought out, articulate, and meaningful question:

In your campaigns you have received hard-money campaign contributions of $102 million, half of which came from 204 donors. Would you have anal sex for $102 million?

The eyes of her fellow Ivy League liberals turned red with rage, waiting to see how the bigot on stage would respond to her clearly intellectual and deserving question. Fortunately for the other members of the audience who would rather not have listened to a sitting governor’s opinion on sexual conduct, the questioner was booed out of the spotlight and the audience moved on from her childish interference.

…This student acknowledges that her question was inappropriate, but argues that it is only considered to be so because of the “confines of civil discourse” produced by the powerful. In her eyes, Rick Perry has established a standard of civility that disallows questions such as hers to be asked so that his bigoted and oppressive policies are not put into public question. This view is apparently shared by other activist students at Dartmouth, who distributed a list of even more horribly offensive questions.

Sorry to break it to you, Dartmouth liberals, but these kinds of questions would be considered inappropriate no matter where they were asked and no matter whom was on the receiving end, period. Rick Perry’s rejection of gay marriage is not some arbitrary boundary that makes these questions vulgar and inappropriate. They are inherently vulgar and inappropriate.

Any questions that includes phrases like, “Anal sex does not tear at the fabric of your butthole,” and, “Jesus liked to play with his own hairy hollow” are inherently vulgar and inappropriate. If a liberal politician with very progressive policies has been at Dartmouth and received any one of these questions, I do not think society would have instantaneously forgotten the basic rules of civility that most Americans were raised with simply because of his or her pro-gay policies.

.. Simply asking the governor straightforwardly about his stance on gay marriage and if that stance has changed would have successfully put his policies into question without being undeniably rude. Civility must not be mistaken for docility.


 
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