“Greenwash Guerillas:” Brown U. enviro-nitwits throw pies at Thomas Friedman; Update: Video link added
Conservative campus speakers have long endured the threat of pie-throwing, shoe-wielding, salad dressing-tossing nutballs (see below). MSM types have barely batted an eye.
Now, enviro-nitwits have been caught throwing pies at NYTimes columnist and author Thomas Friedman because they disagreed with his approach to global warming.
I predict we’ll see a blossoming of liberal media pieces decrying the mob atmosphere at American colleges and universities and calling for civility in academic exchanges. Better late than never. I guess:
A Brown University student was apprehended by Brown University police last night after allegedly throwing a green pie container filled with what appeared to be green whipped cream at a New York Times columnist who had been invited to speak to students about energy.
Thomas Friedman ducked the pies, which were thrown by two people who rushed the stage just after he stepped to the microphone. He avoided the brunt of the contents, stepped off stage for a few minutes, and returned to deliver his speech.
“We are grateful that Mr. Friedman went on to deliver his lecture to a full audience, who gave him a standing ovation,” reads a statement from Vice President of Public Affairs Michael Chapman.
The two rushed the stage with the pies, and then threw fliers into the crowd which aired their criticisms of Friedman’s views on the free market and climate change.
“Freedom of speech is prized on a university campus,” Chapman said in his statement, “While Brown students are encouraged to express their opinions on any subject and in a variety of forums, the University does not tolerate such assaults against a speaker or disrupting the right of others to hear a speaker’s perspectives.”
The student was placed in the custody of the Department of Public Safety. The school in a statement said it will review the incident through a “non-academic disciplinary system,” and determine what to do from there.
I also predict slightly more than the usual slap on the wrist that other speech-squelchers have received. It’s one thing to bully one of us right-wing speakers. But academia simply can’t have students tossing objects at Pulitzer Prize winners.
***
The Brown Daily Herald has more details and a photo of the apprehended pie thrower. The assailants called themselves the “Greenwash Guerillas.”
A female audience member ran on stage last night and threw a green pie at New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who had just begun a lecture on environmentalism in Salomon 101. The woman had been sitting in the south side of the auditorium’s front row when she pulled the pie out of a Brown Bookstore plastic bag that had been tucked in a red backpack and leapt out of her seat.
At the same time the woman threw the pie, a male accomplice seated a few rows back ran down the aisle and onto the stage, throwing small pamphlets explaining the actions into the crowd.
After the pie hit Friedman and splattered on his face and torso, the two jumped offstage and ran out of the southeast exit of the building, followed closely by a man trying to catch them. A police officer also ran toward the exit but stayed inside…
…The pamphlets thrown by the male accomplice identified the pair as the “Greenwash Guerillas,” who wrote that they were acting “on behalf of the earth (sic) and all true environmentalists.”
One side of the pamphlet contains an excerpt from a September 2006 review of Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat,” written by Raymond Lotta for the journal “Revolution,” which styles itself as the “Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.” The review is highly critical of Friedman, who the review claims cannot see his own errors while “seated in the business class of his analytical jetliner.”
The other side contains five bullet-points explaining why “Thomas Friedman deserves a pie in the face,” which include reasons like “his sickeningly cheery applaud for free market capitalism’s conquest of the planet,” and “for helping turn environmentalism into a fake plastic consumer product for the privileged.”
The pamphlet declares “Thomas Friedman’s ‘Green’ as fake and toxic to human and planetary health as the cool-whip (sic) covering his face.”
***
So predictable it’s cliche. But here you go, fresh from HuffPo:
You’re right, Bulbul. As one of the main cheerleaders for the Iraq War,he got his just “desserts.”
Posted 04:43 PM on 04/23/2008Was it humble pie, this neocon-artist needs a big slice of it.
Posted 04:25 PM on 04/23/2008Only if the “innards” of the pie came from the horse stall…….
Posted 05:02 PM on 04/23/2008It could be argued that a cream pie IS free speech (though a concrete pie is not). Certainly it’s one of the better means of deflating the pompous and self-important. I’ve always
thought that to deliver a cream pie in a truly classy manner, one should include a cheque to cover the cost of the dry cleaner.
Posted 04:59 PM on 04/23/2008Pie throwing is not bullying. Pie throwing tells these self-appointed MSM pundits that their clever triangulating columns and positions are simply wrong, and not at all wise. The bullies are on the other side of the equation. They squelch scientists reports for political favor. They disbelieve in evolution, photosynthesis, geological time, and whatever else their hillbilly Christians want them to disbelieve. They are criminal, and the least we can do (absent tar and feathering) is pie them.
Posted 04:28 PM on 04/23/2008Couldn’t have happened to a nicer Zionist NeoCon. Next time hopefully it’ll be a plate of whipped fecal matter.
Posted 04:10 PM on 04/23/2008
***
Update: Allah’s got the vid clip.
***
Previous:
Mob rule at Michigan State University
The mob wins at Columbia University
Mob rule at Georgetown U.; update: disruption called “minimal”
Mob rule at Columbia University
Liberal thuggery at Ball State U.
Unhinged pie-thrower update
When angry liberals attack
The Buchanan pie incident continued
Campus thuggery continues
The myth of liberal tolerance
Speaking of pies
See what others have said
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Your predictions are on target, I’m afraid. Some are truly more equal than others.
Did they recycle the pin tins? That’s really what I want to know.
Stoooopid Brown U. enviro-nitwits - pies are for Coulter!
Seems to me that the NYT may just be out of touch with their base… maybe they should move more to the left
Brown University hasn’t been worth squat ever since Joe Paterno finished playing quarterback there.
In the 90s I visited Melbourne, Australia and visited the campus of Monash University, an MIT-type school. The buildings on the campus had been thoroughly aerosoled with some slogan or another. I guess the activists wanted me to think of commitment when I thought of Monash. I have happier memories of visiting great Australian rules football grounds later that day, and don’t pity their patrons at all.
::sighs::
Sady, Michelle, you’re probably right … and wrong. Here’s what I mean.
We all know that the Left just loves anti-war nutballs, enviro-alarmists, and anybody that espouses their PC views. Speak, however, in dissent about their views, and you learn how quickly they love to stifle truly FREE speech. (Which, if I remember my history correctly is what the Founding Fathers were doing.)
These particular guttersnipes might get more than the usual slap on the wrist. But I’d be willing to bet you that somewhere, behind some closed door, some dean or other person of authority at Brown will take them aside and chide them not for committing the crime, but for doing it to a PC speaker. IF they do get more than a slap, that’ll be the only reason for it.
To be sure, they’ll make the usual noises about “tolerance” and “freedom of speech.” But do any of us believe them anymore?
And in reading the backstory you had earlier, it isn’t guns I fear. Although, some of the more unhinged will undoubtedly use those too. What I fear is a pie filled with acid or some other caustic chemical.
What, exactly, is the left’s beef with Jews?
My THEORY (and this is only a theory) is that the liberal left haven’t forgiven anybody for the Jewish people actually getting their own state in 1948. After all, it certainly isn’t Politically Correct.
But that’s the the end of it. To REALLY understand what’s going on over there requires that you not read what the liberal media is saying. Those “poor” “disenfranchised” palestinians actually did it to THEMSELVES.
Research Lebannon 1900. Research Palestine 1900. Who also annexed the Gaza Strip at one point? Egypt and Syria.
Palestine is actually part of Syria.
The liberal left and the PC crowd would have you believe that those “poor” palestinians are victims. Really?
By an act of the UN, the palestinians were given the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank.
The Jews were given the deserts. The Jews said yes…the palestinians said NO. They said that the Jews weren’t entitled to ANY of the land. They got their stuff and they left…going to Trans-Jordan, and Egypt. They (the palestinians) put THEMSELVES into the refugee camps.
Again, don’t trust the liberal media to give you the facts about this. Go to the library (and/or Library of Congress) and research the documents of the period.
Israel has a military and isn’t afraid to use it. Even preemptively. Plus as a group they prefer success to victimhood under the protection of big government.
I especially got a kick out this moonbat’s rant MM quoted above from the HP:
Evolution? Ahh yes, the age old debate of origins. Nevermind skipping over the whole where did matter come from problem.
And we’re not hillbillies. We’re bitter people who cling to our guns and religion (trademarked by the Obamination campaign).
And lastly the only thing criminal here is your internet tough guy threat of violence. I garuntee you if some moonbat decided to actually attack me over my beliefs that person is in for a nasty surprise. Uncle Sam may not get all things right, but he sure trains the Infantry well.
What are we teaching in schools now? If we don’t believe in Communism then we are some kind of “hillbilly Christian”? Have they studied some of these past communist countries they think are so great? Hasn’t every single one failed? How many years after college will it take our students to come back to reality?
On April 23rd, 2008 at 5:27 pm, PBoilermaker said:
What, exactly, is the left’s beef with Jews?
Well, Jews,(for the most part) don’t feel the need to rely on the government… it’s an old testament thing & the left HATES that.
Why the Jews? Here’s a good read on it. Also, Ken Timmerman’s The Preachers of Hate has excellent references. And even if you are a leftist, you could read Paul Berman’s Terror and Liberalism to see how several political extremes converge at Jew-hatred.
Why The Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism
Looks like the enviro-wacos are on the march. In Berkeley (yea, that place again) protesters have been camped in trees on University property for 18 months. The University wants to build a student athlete center on the site of the trees (the womens’ softball team has to change into their uniforms in their cars). The project has been on hold due to lawsuits filed by the City of Berkeley and NIMBY neighbors. The ironic part is that there is an injunction preventing the University from removing and replanting the trees until the lawsuits are resolved. The idiot tree protesters don’t even need to be there. The protesters to date have cost the University of California over $400,000 in security fencing and policing. the University can’t touch its’ own trees, but the protesters have been allowed to live in them. Your taxpayer dollars at work.
I hope you’re right on this, but I’ll have to read it (On MM, of course!) to believe it.
This is part of the DOD’s new weapon system: stealth pie throwing executed by brainless nitwits with an issue.
I give up on Universities!!!!!!!
Where’s my French Army knife?
RTater - you beat me to it - foiled!
The Prager read on it is excellent. I have heard an audio version and I found it compelling and dead on.
Isn’t the French Army knife the one with 6 white flags and a corkscrew?
Why the Jews? Jews believe that charity is something to give, not to receive.
Courageous young college students - standing firm on their principles.
I guess in her world there is no freedom of speech!!.
They jumped off the stage, but didn’t break their leg like John Wilkes Booth, another famous jumper.
No matter your political tendencies, no speaker should be subjected to this level of disrespect. How universities, whether Ivy League or not, do not take a stronger stance against this is beyond me.
Censorship goes both ways; disrupting someone’s speech is infringing on their right to free speech. This is completely embarassing and the parents of those children should have a lot to answer for to the university administration.
This should not go unchastised.
I’m sure that the University, under advice of a lawyer, will counsel the students involved and place a non-punitive letter in their student record.
No wrists shall be harmed.
Not to get too radical, but if a stranger,(that being a person or persons unknown to you) confronts you and, throws, attempts to throw, or threatens to throw, (with malice) an object (see projectile) of unknown origin…
Awww whatever, just punch their freakin lights out.
yes lets make a protest about saving the environment by throwing non-biodegradable pie tins full of green synthetic dye-stained whipped cream, while littering with pieces of paper covered in toxic ink.. yes, see how environmentally conscious we are?
/sarc
Hangfire, don’t give up on Universities just yet. Many college students I’ve known are actually pretty conservative and just want to get good educations. The tree squatters in Berkeley aren’t even students (some are the same group protesting the marines) and most students are opposed to them or indifferent. The vocal and outrageous minortity just need to be re-educated.
it’s a Brookly thing.
Re: #27
Lets just hope they rode a bicycle or drove a Prius to the lecture.
Duh, BrooklyN thing.
btw, Friedman should sue for assault with a lethal weapon - if tweezers are considered so dangerous by the TSA, then surely a large pie tin must be way more dangerous..
That’s good news to hear, Southpaw. I wish that I had gone to college, but I lacked the intestinal fortitude to attend and live an out-of-the-closet conservative existence. I took the easy route and spent 20 years on submarines.
I hear ya Brooklyn red.. they try that here, fuggedaboudid, a fiddy says they get their friggin lights punched out..
As the loony-leftists begin turning on those that were liberal but didn’t follow all the way - I wonder if they will reconsider who is running their party. I am thinking of what happened to Leiberman, now Shrillery, heck even DiFi has Code Pink causing a racket outside her townhouse and preventing her neighbors from getting any sleep.
Its a Bizarro world, dejack.
A plastic bag? A Greenie with a plastic bag? No way, did anyone see Karl Rove behind the curtain?
These freaks long for the good old days of race riots, LSD and Viet Nam. They desperately need some cause to give their pathetic lives some sort of meaning.
If only their fathers had a set of balls.
Libocrat - just wait until Denver this summer! You will see the moonbattery in full force. The Whole World is Watching! The Whole World is Watching!
Very, very simple. The Soviet party line was anti-Israel. That trumps the anti-woman fascistic Arab states.
Though something is changing if the leftists demonstrate against Sudan’s genocide in Darfur and, of all things Communist Chinese.
The Democrat anti-war types seem to be some of the most violence prone people I have ever met. Once one started yelling at me when he overheard me talking to someone about a political view that was not PC. Eventually he told me to go f*****g get hit by a car and die. Nice peaceful tolerant liberals.
personally, I’d have a hard time ducking a pie. yum.
these screw loose people need to get a life.
It’s not just the schools, badly enough, but the educational media complex as well! My little neighbors were assigned to watch a Discovery/Science Channel program speculating what would happen to earth if people suddenly disappeared, and echoing what’s taught them in school, this program said earth and its poor downtrodden creatures would all be better off if people weren’t around! I don’t mind speculation shows, but that’s a (”green”) message agenda, NOT science!
James Greenidge
Queens NY
This is the kind of deep thinking a $47,000 a year education gets you.
The global warming alarmist college kids just need to mellow out and take a chill pill and eat the pies instead of throwing them they are going to need all the carbohydrates they can load up on. They are going to need a layer of fat to stay warm. The first thing I found on Fox New this morning:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352241,00.html
It’s global cooling we are all going to die! I was glad I was the only one in the office when I read this at work or I would have been on the way to the Base Hospital for a psych evaluation I was laughing so hard.
Pardon me, I had to make that statement less general.
is there a link to thomas friedman’s speech?
Interestingly enough, a lot of Jews went to work for Stalin’s regime after the Russian’s liberated some of the Holocaust death camps.
I don’t want to go as far as postulating a connection between Zionist Jews (who created Israel) and Jewish Communist apparatchiks. However, there were two schools of thought during the time Israel was created; some Jews for and some against.
I saw Freidman at Auburn University last October. Either he isn’t terribly left-wing or he tailored his speech for the Southern audience. Although he said some things I did not agree with *sigh* I stayed in my seat and didn’t throw anything at him. Perhaps I am too much of a hillbilly to accost someone invited to the university.
That whipped cream could of released 2 ounces of CO2 in the air. Shame on them.
Freidman was speaking about his book, “The World is Flat” and went on to pitch his new work, “Green is the New Red, White, and Blue.” (I don’t know how to underline on here.)
Anyway, one of the statements that struck me was, loosely quoted, “A company or industry can ‘go green’ by finding ways to cut the generation of waste products, use less energy in production, and produce the same amount of goods using less raw materials. Not only is this good for the environment, it is good for business.”
His book “The World is Flat” focused on a ‘leveled playing field’ created by the Internet, globalization, and industrialization. He was saying the US needs to change priorities if we wish to keep up in our changing world. Some of his recommendations were promoting more of our students into engineering and science education instead of the liberal arts.
Seems like he was right…you don’t hear of many chemistry majors getting all bent out of shape like an art, political science, or sociology major. (Interestingly, I am an English major; go figure.)
And as an English major I will be the first to acknowledge the grammatical errors in my last post…
Harris it sounds to me you were raised better as a hillbilly then any liberal elitist born with a silver spoon with the decency and manners to not physically assault someone you have an intellectual disagreement with. Served with a couple of USAF pilots that went to school at Auburn they were pretty good guys. Roll Tide!
I attend a school in Georgia, we had just gone into enemy territory, I mean to Auburn to hear Freidman for extra credit. My sister went there for her doctorate, though. It broke my heart.
Go Dawgs!
Opps!
Sorry about the school mix-up. Some of the best fun I had in the service was watching some of the Officer’s carrying on their school rivalries. Made for some interesting bets during football and basketball season.
Look at the bright side! These little pie-throwing f-tards will leave their Ivy League schools with $100K in student loan debt and an intellectual capacity that barely qualifies them to operate an
organcoffee grinder.Those who can, debate. Those who can not, throw pies.
Weak.
OT - no need to rub it in…:)
AlohaGuy,
The SEC is a tough division. I felt bad for you guys since your record was (I think) 12-0.
At least some of the Georgia 2nd and 3rd-stringers got some Bowl time in! It’s all in good fun. Like I said, the SEC is a tough division.
I hate to disagree with you, but Allahpundit’s right. The state of modern liberal orthodoxy is that one must agree 110% with the nuttiest of it, and Friedman has not one but two big strikes against him in a stadium where a single swinging strike is an out.
Speaking specifically to the media’s coming (lack of) defense of Friedman, if there was any real defense of ABC in its war against the nutroots, I must have missed it. Bear in mind that was over simply being in the wrong liberal camp, and not an outright and open abandonment of a major tenent.
from one of the HuffPo comments cited:
…or better still, don’t throw one at all. But that would mean just a little too much restraint on thei part, now wouldn’t it?
Name me one instance of someone on the right doing something akin to this.
(crickets…)
This is what gets me. What happened to open debate? Is that what “higher” education is for?
I consistently listen to liberals espouse on their mistaken, lack of real facts perspective. I listen politely, then I begin rebuttal with facts. Usually I am immediately interrupted while getting verbally accosted and sometimes threatened physically.
I don’t need to resort to verbal or physical assaults. I believe that as a conservative and constitutionalist, my ideas are better. When/if my ideas aren’t better, I go back to reading and research and come back again. I don’t get angry.
I’m beginning to the think that angry liberals are just subconsciously mad that Reagan and Goldwater etc., are right.
Who are you kidding? And what planet have you been on for the last forty years?
What, exactly, is the left’s beef with Jews?
The Soviet regime used them as scapegoats for the failure of various 5-year plans, etc etc. See also “wreckers” and “counter-revolutionaries”.
I’ve got a podcast of Mike Adams in which he says that in one school year UNC (forget which campus) had nine speakers on gay marrige. All nine were in favor of gay marriage.
That is their idea of diversity.
That is because their arguments rarely stand up to even the lightest scrutiny, and hence, the reason they always quickly devolve into ad hominem attacks: put your opponent on the defensive as quickly as possible if possible.
If only it were so.
See above.
The Algore system of scientific proof, you mean.
Wow. Even photosynthesis? Photosynthesis is demonstrably provable, unlike some theories. Belief as a means of proof is not the basis for only religions. Sometimes, religions take the place of science, like in global “warming.”
Ah yes. For libs, their criminal acts are “free speech,” while anyone else must be condemned without judge or jury.
I don’t wonder why these gutless wonders don’t go to the obvious alternative: China. Maybe capitalism ain’t so bad.