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Cheney Protests Backfire John L. Perry KNOXVILLE – In allowing itself recently to be made a mockery of higher education, the University of Tennessee actually may have helped the nation learn a lesson. Sadly, it is a lesson that came at the expense of the vice president of the United States of America's being subjected to concocted lies and filthy taunts spewed by a handful of radical-left UT students. What could have been a noble, even historic event, was turned into the stage for foul-mouth, indulged children to shriek Marxist obscenities when company came calling at the university's flagship campus. The guest of honor was Dick Cheney, who was here to pay homage to Howard H. Baker, Jr., former senator, chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan, recent U.S. ambassador to Japan, a decent man who may well go down in history as Tennessee's most-illustrious native son.
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Education for Life
It's a safe bet none of the UT "students" or their America-hating marionette faculty members will ever be remembered for much of anything. The disgrace took place on November 15, Baker's 80th birthday. This is how parents of the self-proclaimed "peace activists" raise their young to treat their elders? When – indeed if – these hooligans ever reach 80, who will respect them? The vice president had flown down on a busy day in Washington to help dedicate the Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy, which will one day grace the UT campus. Who Needs This? Cheney may be forgiven if he now asks himself if it was worth his time and effort, what with America at war and all that. How many people willingly travel that distance for the privilege of hearing themselves made the object of unproven accusations and scatological epithets? Is this how these kids treat their own parents when they go home for holidays?
As television cameras watched, a number of young UT scholars who had taken time from their classes and study time in the library tried to interrupt the vice president's speech. It was a gracious speech devoted entirely to celebrating Baker's bipartisan service to the nation and Tennessee. It praised the state's university, its Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen, one of its Republican senators, Lamar Alexander, and Knoxville Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr., a long-time friend of Baker. Not a word of partisan political advocacy. Yet the tantrum-throwers persisted until police finally led them from the hall like naughty pre-pubescent toddlers on the way to their room for "time out." Cheney did what any courteous guest does when the host's children misbehave; he ignored them as if nothing was going on. Not Unappreciated At his conclusion, the audience was on their feet applauding heartily and at length, which was all they could do by way of apology. It would have been in bad taste for Baker to have taken the moment to apologize for the rowdies' misbehavior. After all, he was the one Cheney was there to honor – not to receive an apology from. But no one else on the platform uttered a word of public apology, then or later, notably not the host, UT President John D. Petersen, who sat stiffly in loco parentis. The message was clear: children allowed to get away with anything at home must be made to feel just as at home while receiving a college degree at parents' and taxpayers' expense. Not a Happy Memory The day had to have been spoiled for Baker. What a way to have the dedication of a university center commemorating and perpetuating your lifetime of labor for the public weal remembered long after you are gone. If people writing hefty checks to fund the multi-million-dollar Baker Center had some message they wanted conveyed that day, it was lost amid all the obscenities being hurled at Cheney and by indirection at Baker. Nor was the caterwauling confined to the event held within UT's Thompson-Boling Arena, where Pat Summitt, a strong woman of unimpeachable integrity and ethics, has coached so many Lady Vols to national women's basketball championships. She, too, must have been mortified. It's unthinkable what would have happened to her girls had they engaged in such disgraceful conduct. Cue the TV On campus outside the arena, a larger festering of UT protesters disporting themselves had swarmed so the cameras could dutifully accommodate them. Anyone who thinks there was not collusion between performers and the electronic media doesn't understand how things work these days. Had no cameras been around to record the obscenities, would the protesters have shown up? A clue: When the cameras finally left, the show-offs, their purpose achieved, dissolved back from whence they came. The story that went out across America and the rest of the world was the little darlings' message of hate and filth. What Cheney or Baker had to say was lost, buried down at the bottom. But here is the good news: The fact that the protesters made their point so effectively is the very reason they lost it so decisively. How to Alienate an Audience Regardless of political affiliation, no one raised in a decent home, no one who truly loves this country, no one who held the grand old University of Tennessee in respect could have been anything but horrified, offended and infuriated by what appeared on TV or in the newspapers. Whatever level the vice president's authentic popularity level might have been before he set foot on the UT campus that day, it had to have been elevated enormously by what happened to him and by the gracious and manly way he handled it all. Talk about trick cigars exploding in one's face. If Dick Cheney wants to ratchet up his standing even more with the American people – and assuming he is willing to take all this juvenile radical-left excreta – he should schedule frequent university appearances. Go wash out your filthy mouths, precious little ones, and know that you did your country far more good than all the harm you intended. John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com. Read John Perry's columns here.
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