No Doctorate for Doctorow

At least not one in civility and wisdom. Newsday reports that E.L. Doctorow was "nearly booed off the stage" because of the anti-Bush harangue he substituted for a commencement address at Hofstra University yesterday. Among the great author's clever exhortations to the class of '04, according to Newsday's Bart Jones:

"Doctorow, who spent virtually all of his 20-minute address in Hempstead criticizing Bush, told the crowd that like himself the president is a storyteller. But 'sadly they are not good stories this president tells,' he said. 'They are not good stories because they are not true.' That line provoked the first boos, along with scattered cheers. 'One story he told was that the country of Iraq had nuclear and biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction and was intending shortly to use them on us,' he said. 'That was an exciting story all right, it was designed to send shivers up our spines. But it was not true. 'Another story was that the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, was in league with the terrorists of al-Qaida,' he said. 'And that turned out to be not true. But anyway we went off to war on the basis of these stories.'"

Such tiresome behavior isn't novel on college campuses, and the reaction of some members of the crowd who were interviewed after the exercise drives home the point that the real split in red/blue America is between elites and their wanna-be followers, on the one hand, and the folks whose work and ingenuity support the nation, on the other. To wit:

"Many parents and relatives of the more than 1,300 undergraduates were livid over the address, saying afterward that a college graduation was not the place for a political speech. 'If this would have happened in Florida, we would have taken him out' of the stadium, said Frank Mallafre, who traveled from Miami for his granddaughter's graduation."

"Bill Schmidt, 51, of North Bellmore, shared the outrage. 'To ruin my daughter's graduation with politics is pathetic,' the retired New York Police Department captain said. 'I think the president is doing the best he can" in the war against terrorism."

"Many students also called Doctorow's speech inappropriate. Peter Hulse, 24, of Manchester, England, said, 'He's a bit like Michael Moore,' the documentary director who provoked booing at last year's Oscars' ceremony by criticizing the war in Iraq."

Compare their reactions to that of sociology professor Cynthia Bogard, who, not content to applaud Doctorow, attacked the parents of offended students:

"'I thought this was a totally appropriate place to talk about politics because that's the world our students are entering,' said sociology professor Cynthia Bogard. 'I only wish their parents had provided them a better role model.'"

What Bogard should really be upset about is that, after four years of instruction by her ilk, the students still possess enough common sense to know a charlatan when they hear one.