I grew up in a Notre Dame family. My father, brother and cousin went there, and I spent a good many football weekends of my childhood sleeping in the dorms on campus and observing student life in South Bend. As an adult, I’ve returned to campus several times and partied with students on and off-campus.
So having been around ND students and alumni for countless years, I feel pretty well qualified to comment on a MSNBC report out this week that describes an “uproar” at Notre Dame over Barack Obama delivering the commencement address there in June.
The point of contention is Obama’s liberal view of abortion and stem cell research. That view led to attacks on the President in the student newspaper and protest from alumni.
Funny thing though, Obama easily defeated John McCain in Notre Dame’s presidential election poll, Obama was victorious among American Catholics in the country-wide election and Obama was the first Democrat to win Indiana in a presidential election since 1964.
Not to mention the Notre Dame administration, led by priests, made the invitation.
ND President Father John Jenkins, said, “We are not ignoring the critical issue of the protection of life. On the contrary, we invited him, because we care so much about those issues, and we hope … for this to be the basis of an engagement with him.”
Call me a cynic, but I think a lot of the criticism coming from ND-types has nothing to do with abortion. It could be instead a case of ND’s College Republicans howling that a member of their “team” wasn’t invited to speak.
Our current culture of vicious political partisanship was certainly not around when I was growing up. Yes, D.C. has always been uber-competitive between the parties, but all you have to do now is turn on talk radio, Fox News and MSNBC to see that times have drastically changed. No one is on the same team anymore. And I think this protest is most likely an extension of that.
On the bright side, at least the students dodged the Reege bullet for another year.
8:59 pm on March 24th, 2009
ALl college kids are lib's. I would hope that anyone with an ounce of conservatism will uphold this. Obama is fraud. I am a graduate of Loyola Marymount and I would protest if they invited Obama as well.
10:46 pm on March 24th, 2009
DenverPilot you are a jackass
11:50 pm on March 24th, 2009
Thanks for voting GWB into office, DenverPilot. Perhaps we'll be able to crawl out of the hole he dug at some point.
12:45 am on March 25th, 2009
SB you are always such a liberal suck a$$…what a suprise you would have a negatve comment about this! (sarcasm)
2:36 am on March 25th, 2009
Sorry Brooks, if you think that "vicious political partisanship" is new to this era, you are a little naive. Hell, take the 1800 election. Per Wikipedia, "Federalists spread rumors that the Democratic-Republicans were radicals who would murder their opponents, burn churches, and destroy the country," and ultimately Burr killed Hamilton in a duel. Makes Rush look a little tame.
4:04 am on March 25th, 2009
Brooks, your niche is plastering half-naked women into a pseudo sports blog. Leave the political and historical commentary to people who know what they're talking about. Sometimes those ND priests get a little too caught up in hype and publicity and open their robes for the wrong, overrated pompous windbag (witness Charlie Wiess). Maybe they'll finally learn their lesson with President Barry.
8:06 am on March 25th, 2009
As a former employee and Grad student of Notre Dame. I'm happy and honored that PRESIDENT OBAMA, is speaking there. At what point did dialogue and debate become a bad thing in this country? The people who are really opposed to this are the staunch Catholics, where was their outrage over other issues in the Catholic Church (rogue priests anyone?) also when the last pro-death penalty (a sin for catholics) president got to speak at schools like ND? And let's not get into discussions on War based on fictional WMD.
P.S. Lord Cornholio, it's Weis with one "s." In the future, please do your research.
8:39 am on March 25th, 2009
I question why BHB would want to speak at ND. Get over yourselves.
9:01 am on March 25th, 2009
ND sucks. they are cry babies on pretty much every aspect of their school…from their rootin tootin conservatisms to their 'we play who we want to play in our own league' football team. i hope Obama cancels at the last second, leaving them only the thoughts of what could have been…a real world leader speaking at their school. Instead let them have their hyped up narrow-viewed Repub leader (pick any of them…Rush, etc) to stroke their egos that they are the top school in the world.
2:38 pm on March 25th, 2009
"Perhaps we'll be able to crawl out of the hole he dug at some point."
Hey Chris, Nobama is digging way faster than GWB.
2:44 pm on March 25th, 2009
Obama is a fraud? As opposed to Mr. Bush - who was born in Connecticut, whose family's main compound is in Maine, went to a private NE high school, then went to Yale and Harvard - yet who speaks with a Texas accent while on his several hundred acre "ranch"? Just curious as to your definition of "fraud" - are you sure you understand the word correctly?
3:46 pm on March 25th, 2009
Catholics are against abortion- Obama is viciously pro- abortion- why should the preeminint catholic school in the country support this….why is this hard to understand?
4:59 pm on March 25th, 2009
Danr, this is hard to understand for Brooks because he isn't very bright. <p>VegasJ: No, a fraud would be a glorified community organizer who can't speak English without the aid of ateleprompter; who changed his name in college to sound more exotic; who hung out with a racist preacher for 20 years then claimed he never really paid much attention to him; who defines change as putting a bunch of re-tread Clinton hacks into his admin; who signs a trillion $ spending bill without reading or writing it then goes back and complains about it…. I can go on but I have to go earn some $$ so Barry can tax 54% of it and quadruple the national debt with (how exactly does that work, anyway).
7:26 pm on March 25th, 2009
No surprise here whatsover… ND is the single most hypocritical program that exists today. Anyone that thinks differently must ask themselves why a proven cheater is the face of their football program. Just more of the same for an utterly disgraced, woebegone institution.
12:06 am on March 26th, 2009
Lord Corn has forgotten that Mr. Obama won the popular and electoral votes.
Mr. Bush won the 2000 election by a 5-4 vote in the Supreme Court, and then proceeded to wipe out our national surplus within 3 years.
10:42 pm on April 28th, 2009
"Catholics are against abortion- Obama is viciously pro- abortion- why should the preminent catholic school in the country support this….why is this hard to understand?"
Thank you for simplifying it "Lord Corn" and removing it from the spin cyle.
This point of all this is completely about the utter hypocrisy of N.D. university.
You're a Catholic university and you're having someone who is pro late term abortion speak for you.
C'mon. Show some backbone.
Not to mention you are going to give him an honorary degree.
I guess the current N.D. president isn't too hot about holding up the principles the school was founded on, not to mention funded by.
Real smart.
It looks as if someone else is soon to be upping the unemployment rate.
Speaking of the unemployment rate, does anyone here know what the Dow was at not to mention the unemployment rate the day the Democratic controlled took power?
The Dow was at almost 14,000 and the UER was at 4.3%.
Change you can count on.
Oh the times they are a changin'.
10:46 pm on April 28th, 2009
I meant the Democratic controlled congress and when it took control in 2006.
Way to go Pelosi and Reid.