Palestinian ambassador visits Cornell, makes camel jokes

SafiehAmbassador of the Palestinian people and the PLO Afif Safieh visited Cornell University last night, and spoke to the collected students and faculty about what he called the responsibility of the U.S. to help solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with its overwhelming political power.

Interspersed between his serious pleas for increased diplomacy, Mr. Safieh joked around a bit, saying that while most camels can work for ten days without drinking, most diplomats can drink for ten days without working. After the laughter died down, he assured the audience that he was, in fact, more like a camel.

He also poked fun at the U.S. for behaving like a powerless country when dealing with Israel, and urged the superpower to wage peace, not war, in the Middle East.

“We would be your consenting victims if America decided to wage peace on us,? he joked.

Mr. Safieh took a number of questions, many of which accused him of ignoring the Israeli side of the equation, or being irrelevant, seeing that the Gaza Strip was recently wrestled away from his party, Fatah, by the terroristic organization Hamas.

(Disclosure: Yeah, so I sort of wrote the article I’m linking to.)

Roundup: More McSwane; Good, Bad, and Dalai News

Collegian Chatter: There’s been some local reaction regarding the process McSwane went through and its aftermath. Denver’s alt-weekly Westword has a fantastic piece on the whole McSwane thing, looking at the College Republican’s involvement in this thing, and more importantly, journalism as a whole in the Colorado area, taking the local media to town about their ethics. On the other side of town, the Denver Post’s Diane Carman (who’s on her way out) wrote about McSwane, calling him “the future of journalism” ? I’m going to go out on a limb and say if he’s the future of journalism, then I’m really disheartened.

Speaking of Colorado… This actually has (almost) nothing to do with higher ed, but Miller and Molson Coors are merging to fight the good fight against Anheuser-Busch. There’s a joke there, and I was almost tempted to do the research about how students would be affected by this new alignment ? the “champagne of beers” in bed with Keystone Light? ? but you could always wait for The Booze News? (If more staff doesn’t resign I guess.) Or come up with your own jokes in the comments.

U of Memphis shooting update: Four men were charged with the shooting death of University of Memphis player Taylor Bradford. I didn’t report it at the time, but Memphis did a pretty good job controlling the situation, canceling classes ? but questionably not canceling their football game. It appears to be over money; the Commercial Appeal is reporting that one of the defendants arranged a robbery of Bradford. That defendant will be in court tomorrow; the other three in court today and will be back Oct. 23. Sounds like at least one will plead guilty: One lawyer of the students called his client “very remorseful,” saying the next step is finding out who did what.

Mellencamp and the Jena 6: Jena’s mayor is pissed at the rock star for singing in response to the incident. Here are the opening lyrics from Mellencamp’s song, “Jena” (which you can listen to on his site):

An all white jury hides the executioner’s face
Is this how we are, me and you?
Everyone needs to know their place
And here we thought this blackbird was hidden in the flue

Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena
Take your nooses down

Mayor Murphy R. McMillin called the song inflammatory and defamatory, and Mellencamp’s response on his website is a pretty clear defense. It’s a good song and has a good message. (Sorry to Wild Bill at Sharp Notes if I stole his thunder.)

Dalai’s here: The Dalai Lama is in town, just having wrapped up a speaking engagement at Cornell University. I wasn’t able to catch the live video Cornell put up, but Photo Editor Connor Gleason and Accent Editor Jamie Saine went over the hill to the event. I’m much more excited by tomorrow’s talk now. Jamie said “I love him and I want to be his friend,” and Connor said he was shooting with the likes of AP photographers (which doesn’t happen very often in Ithaca). If you’re not in the area (or couldn’t get tickets), take the time to watch these other ones online. I’m sure it’ll be worth it.

Roundup: Common sense and decency

A couple of quick hits already today, so let’s just get them over with:

Attention Ithaca College students: Start locking your doors. Seriously. Intercom has issued yet another Public Safety Alert ? what’s the common thread here? People are entering without force, taking things in the middle of the night, usually on weekends. It’s common sense people. Just lock it up when you’re going to bed.

Let’s stop this flame war: Looks like my co-blogger Aaron Munzer’s post about the SpartanEdge made it over to MSU. Junior blogs editor Jordan Barnes, who has his own blog and also writes Styledge, wrote a pretty rough post about Munzer and our blog there. I’m not going to play the measuring game of who has a more difficult time publishing or who works harder, but I’m going to clarify a couple of points. First, nobody reads our blogs before they’re published. That’s the whole point of blogs; they’re mainly unfiltered. We try to make sure we’re not dropping f-bombs but otherwise it’s the blogger’s discretion. We also don’t pay our writers.

As for Barnes’s blog and the SpartanEdge, here’s my take. Some of Barnes’s writing is interesting. It’s too bad he didn’t talk more about when he was in Ithaca for the dean’s incubator project, although from what I can understand there wasn’t much of note. The SpartanEdge style of experimentation is interesting, but it’s not our style. And Munzer’s post? A clear joke. So relax.

Also of note: Ithaca’s local newspaper is one step closer to being swallowed into a regional rag when the Star-Gazette’s publisher, Monte Trammer, became the Journal’s president and publisher today. Comments on the story were more about deadlines than dead papers. It screams of The Journal News of 10 years ago. It probably means future features like the Dalai Lama’s visit will be pared down. For shame.

Tase this: Foolish editor

In case you haven’t heard it yet, the Rocky Mountain Collegian’s editor is in hot water for a four-word editorial written supposedly in response to the UF Taser incident that happened last week. You can click through for the words from the Colorado State University newspaper; there’s no way I’m printing that here. I’m a little behind on blogging this one admittedly, but mostly because I was waiting to see what’s come out of this.

J. David McSwane, the editor of the Collegian ? also the mind behind a 2005 expos? of Army recruiters ? is standing by his decision to print the editorial, which split the editorial board before its publication. The Collegian lost $30K in ad revenue for the editorial which led to a drop in student salaries.

The newspaper stands by its “F-Bush” editorial as a freedom of speech issue.

Several places are calling for McSwane to step down, including The Tribune of northern Colorado. The College Republicans are standing up against this too, collecting signatures and calling themselves “the voice of CSU,” ? which is ridiculous, but another matter entirely.

At the Collegian, there’s a column regarding the preversion of free speech with Andrew Meyer at UF and how McSwane is using it as an opportunity to step in the spotlight. He calls McSwane out as expecting immunity, but I think the columnist could have gone further ? call McSwane immature.

The editorial was terrible. Even if its point was to raise the issue of free speech, its unnecessarily inflammatory remarks made it worthless. Did McSwane and the Collegian’s editorial board truly believed the president had a hand in removing Meyer from the auditorium? Clearly that’s not true. This editorial did neither an effective critique of how the Tasing situation was handled, nor of how the Bush administration has performed lately.

A column in Editor & Publisher says that McSwane should not be fired because he’s just a college student. That’s ridiculous. He should take responsibility for his words. The good news: He is, sort of.

There’s a hearing tonight by the CSU Board of Student Communications to decide what will happen to McSwane. I don’t care if he stays, but if his freedom of speech argument is upheld, I’ll be appalled. I’ll be back with an update as soon as this board meeting is done.

Update:That meeting didn’t seem to do a whole lot, at least not yet. The board came to no conclusion tonight, and will have a discussion this (Thursday) morning about how to proceed in the next three to five days. There are two ways this can go ? either an informal hearing for a lesser punishment, or a formal hearing that could include dismissal.

The whole meeting was covered pretty thoroughly by the Collegian, which isn’t surprising but must have been pretty difficult for those writers. I certainly can’t imagine covering The Ithacan like that. I’ll be tracking this story to try to get the conclusion and you’ll see it here when it’s all over.

“The End of Pussy Journalism”

To the many digital journalism scholars, students of new media, and all those thousands of online news associations, blogs and news web sites: hold onto your butts, throw in the towel, give up, admit defeat, etc. You’re finished.

The SpartanEdge is here, and this college news site is declaring that “the future of online campus news is now,” and “the end of pussy journalism” is nigh. Or at least that’s what their tagline declares, which is a pretty balls-y move, to continue in the tradition of describe their brand of reporting with a crude sexual reference.

really? it is?

The people behind this valiant attempt to put an end to all “vagina” journalism is a mass media class at Michigan State University. Besides just promising to fulfill the mission of their blatantly offensive slogan, the site also declares that it will “push the envelope of online journalism as far as it will go.” Hoo-aa! Just don’t push it off the table, guys.

So what kind of non-pussy journalism are they practicing? Well, the writers are reporting on parties they go to (and leave alone, I might add); writing investigative pieces on beer pong, the “Drinking Game of the Week” at MSU; and blogging about sleepovers they’ve had.

The sleepover blog is so artfully written that I’m quoting the better parts: please don’t break down in tears when you read this.

?I mean, if he?s not interested in me romantically, then whatever. I don?t want to be friends. I have enough friends,? is what I explained to Ryan last night while we were having our now very common sleepovers at my house. (Clearly platonic sleepovers, we?ve already crossed that bridge and I burnt it down.)

Ryan, who everyone (sic) once in a while really surprises me by thinking with his brain instead of another organ, replied, ?If you don?t see any qualities in him you look for in friends, then why would you want to be romantically involved??

Well done, SpartanEdge, well done. You have truly ended “pussy journalism.” To all the writers and designers of this illustrious site: don’t forget to never mention this on your resume.

Insidehighered.com mentions SpartanEdge in an article about student media, saying it is “embracing multi- and new media” but conveniently fails to mention any of the site’s plans to end “pussy” journalistic endeavours.

Keep up the great work, guys.