Sunday, October 5, 2014

Radical chic leftist hero Mumia Abu Jamal

Cop-killer chic


Will the Left ever fall out of love with cop- killer, Mumia Abu-Jamal? 
Apparently not. Though still serving a sentence of life without parole for murdering Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981, Abu-Jamal will be giving yet another commencement speech today, delivered via a pre-recorded video.
This time the clueless host institution is Vermont’s Goddard College, an experimental school that issues no grades and allows students to design their own curriculum and then study it without attending classes. 
Is it really any surprise that students attending a school that apparently sets no hard standards for an education would find themselves choosing a cold-blooded murderer for their speaker?
Goddard President Bob Kenny thinks it’s just dandy. Choosing Abu-Jamal for today’s commencement, he says, “shows how this newest group of Goddard graduates expressed their freedom to engage and think radically and critically in a world that often sets up barriers to do just that.”
Here’s an idea for thinking radically: Why not invite Maureen Faulkner — Officer Faulkner’s widow — to address the Goddard grads on what Mumia Abu-Jamal has meant for her life?
Let’s recap the basics: Abu-Jamal shot her husband in the back during a traffic stop. He then stood over the officer and finished him off with four more shots, including one to the face. The gun was indisputably Abu-Jamal’s, and three witnesses saw the shooting. These facts have never been in doubt. During his trial, Abu-Jamal never denied killing Faulkner.
But the Left quickly painted Abu-Jamal as a victim of racism, and he became a cause célèbre and the toast of Hollywood. In another obscenity, just this spring a California school district asked its students to write essays comparing Abu-Jamal to Martin Luther King Jr.
Danny Faulkner’s widow says this of Goddard’s choice of commencement speaker: “People need to start realizing that there’s right and wrong in this world.”
The truth is Maureen Faulkner will never be invited to deliver a commencement at a place like Goddard, and for a simple reason: Such an invitation really would require students to “think radically and critically in a world that often sets up barriers to do just that.”

No comments: