GMU Disinvites MooreThe same goes for Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy, James Carville, Paul Begala and any number of similarly vicious idiots out there -- left and right -- who have nothing to add to the sum of human knowledge. The citizens of Virginia (and I was one of them for most of 40 years) shouldn't pay one red cent to support the gaseous emissions of the lunatic fringe.
Speech, $35,000 Fee Drew Criticism
By Amy Argetsinger and Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 1, 2004; Page A01
George Mason University canceled a scheduled speaking engagement by liberal filmmaker Michael Moore yesterday after two conservative state legislators and others complained that public money should not support an overtly political event.
Moore, the outspoken director of the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11," was to have received about $35,000 for his Oct. 28 speech at the Patriot Center on the Fairfax campus -- an event that university officials had arranged a week ago and had not begun to publicize.
Word spread quickly, and after complaints from the legislators and some members of the community reached the office of President Alan G. Merten this week, the school announced that the event, coming so close to the presidential election, would be "an inappropriate use of state resources."....
It is the second time in recent weeks that a public university has canceled an appearance by Moore, currently on a 20-state "Slacker Uprising Tour" of college campuses that has drawn sellout crowds as well as heated criticism at almost every stop. The president of California State University-San Marcos, near San Diego, canceled a $37,000 campus appearance by Moore....
Del. Vincent F. Callahan Jr. (R-Fairfax), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and considered a moderate on many issues, called Moore "a sleazebag of the first order."
"They should have Democrats and Republicans speak, but not somebody whose living is libel and slander. . . . That's not appropriate for a first-class university," Callahan said....
Advice to GMU: Take the $35,000 and buy 7,000 pocket copies of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States from the Cato Institute. (Maybe Cato would throw in a few more thousand copies for such a large order.) Spread the copies all over campus. The contents would be an eye-opener for most students. They'd learn something about the wisdom of the system that Moore and company are busily trying to tear down.
