« SPQR Resurgens: Life Among the New Romans | Home | More home movies from Israel »
January 24, 2007
Jimmeh at Brandeis
[ UPDATE: Among those barred from Carter's event was the father of Brandeis student Alisa Flatow, who was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza in 1995. ]
After much angst on all sides, Carter finally spoke at Brandeis.
. . . .when the former president came striding onto stage Tuesday, he played every part the Southern gentleman, charming the crowd of mostly Jewish students and winning a standing ovation in the end.
Gag me.
He also milked the crowd for sympathy.
“This is the first time that I’ve ever been called a liar and a bigot and an anti-Semite and a coward and a plagiarist,” Mr. Carter told the crowd of about 1,700 at Brandeis, a nonsectarian university founded by American Jews, where about half the students are Jewish. “This is hurting me.”He added, “The fact that they deteriorate into ad hominem attacks on my character has probably been a greater barrier to progress than the fact that I chose a particular word in the title.”
Gag me.
(Meanwhile, Melanie Phillips spoke at UC Santa Cruz - a much less hospitable venue - without incident.) (Via Campus-J)
Looks like Brandeis carefully controlled the whole event and not that many people were interested anyway:
In the gymnasium the students were a model of quiet decorum. A number of students wore blue and white in response to a call from pro-Israel groups, but everyone stood for the ovations at the beginning and end.The protest section across the street never drew more than 100 people, and most of them were pro-Carter. The only people protesting Carter’s visit were small contingents from The David Project, an Israeli advocacy group, and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, a pro-Israel media monitoring organization known by its acronym, Camera.
Leading up to Carter’s appearance, all the talk was about who would and would not be in attendance. Dershowitz was not allowed in the gymnasium during Carter’s speech due to a carefully crafted rule limiting the crowd to people with Brandeis identification.
Also not there was the president of Brandeis, Yehudah Reinharz, who was in Florida on a fundraising trip. A spokesman for the university, Dennis Nealon, said Reinharz had asked Carter to come on a day when Reinharz did not already have plans to be out of town but the former president was unable to comply. Carter had no official meal or reception on campus, despite the fact that he was only the second president to visit Brandeis, the first being Harry Truman.
The other notable absence was Jonathan Demme, the film director who is currently shooting a documentary about Carter and his new book. University spokespeople denied Demme’s request for press credentials in the gymnasium, saying that a documentary crew would be too disruptive. Later on, Dershowitz invited Demme’s film crew to join him as he watched Carter’s speech elsewhere on campus but the university administration also did not allow this.
After Carter's speech half the auditorium emptied out and Dershowitz rebutted the usual empty chair.
Kin you say ..... anticlimactic?
Judith | 01/24/07 at 11:14 PM | Categories: - Useful idiots
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.keshertalk.com/cgi-bin/mtb.cgi/6068
Comments
I'd like to say that Carter is just oblivious to the uproar that he has caused. I'd like to say that this is merely ignorance, but I just don't believe that to be true.
Jack | January 25, 2007 02:26 AM
“This is hurting me.”
Truth hurts, don't it?
Robert Schwartz ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.keshertalk.com/nav-commenters.gif)
| January 25, 2007 01:28 PM
I feel your pain, Jimmy, and I hope you continue to feel it. Carter is by no means stupid, presumably his publisher assigned an editor and a copy editor to him, and I don't think the pain is because he made a mistake. I think the pain is because people picked up on his condoning terror and murder.
On the other hand, I don't doubt that he feels genuine love for Jews...that love is predicated on our behaving according to our highest ideals. He doesn't hold anyone else to that standards--especially not Palestinians. Well, OK, I guess he does with the Palis, because apparently savage violence and Jew-killing are among their ideals.
Alex Bensky | January 25, 2007 02:11 PM
I just can't get over the total lack of self-respect displayed by Brandeis, a supposedly Jewish university, in hosting a sanctimonious, anti-Semitic hack like Dhimmi Carter. The only "welcome" Carter should have gotten from Brandeis was a a big Bronx cheer.
And how can Jewish students give a man like that a standing ovation? Don't they have any self-respect as Jews? They should have spit in his face.
Goyim don't respect Jews because we don't respect ourselves. Until we do, they will continue to treat us like dirt.
Ephraim | January 25, 2007 03:00 PM
"This is hurting me"--Jimmy Carter
"If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen"--Harry Truman
david foster | January 25, 2007 04:18 PM
The people at Brandeis seem to me carefully respectful. I told my best friend at medical school, 'Heh, Dr. Seldin didn't criticze my movie vignette!' The Jewish Dr. Seldiin was, in our view, the one person most responsible for the success of UT Southwestern. My friend said to me,'He only criticzes (publically) those he considers his friends.' It actualy moves into the merely annoying the comment quoted In Instapundit the other day:
New York Money People? That's me!
I live on Park Avenue in Manhattan, run a hedge fund, consort with the upper strata private school crowd in NYC, and am the son of Holocaust survivors.
I have yet to meet a single "rich Jew" (I am one myself) who has had a kind word for W, the war, or anything at all related to the GOP.
Rich Jews in my building have donated money to Clark!
michael | January 26, 2007 01:34 PM
As a recent alum of Brandeis (who very much loved his time at his alma matter), it's strange to see the differences in the way Carter's visit was haneled and took places, versus, say the way Daniel Pipes was treated when he came to campus to speeak in the fall of '03. (Not to engage in shameless self blog-promotion, but I blogged the whole todo back then, and I've got it in my archives). Same with Bernard Lewis' visit the year before (didn't have that blogged though--it was amazing to say hte least!)
jaws | January 27, 2007 02:48 PM
