New School Grads Boo John McCain

While speaking at the commencement for The New School on 5/19/06, John McCain was heckled and booed by students and faculty. As he delivered his remarks, several dozen students and faculty turned their backs and lifted signs saying "Our commencement is not your platform."

A student speaker named Jean Sarah Rohe said, "He will tell us we are young and too naive to have valid opinions. I am young and though I don't possess the wisdom that time affords us, I do know that pre-emptive war is dangerous. And I know that despite all the havoc that my country has wrought overseas in my name, Osama bin Laden still has not been found, nor have those weapons of mass destruction."

McCain later thanked Rohe for her "Cliff's notes" version of his speech. Sticking to the remarks he made in earlier speeches, McCain reaffirmed his support for the Iraq war but urged debate and dissent. "When I was a young man, I was quite infatuated with self-expression, and rightly so because, if memory conveniently serves, I was so much more eloquent, well-informed and wiser than anyone else I knew," McCain said.

I always liked McCain. He had the balls to sit on The Daily Show while John Stewart criticized him for speaking at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. That takes balls and humility, which can be rare in a politician. I think his response to the students was a good one to, as far as politics goes.

This whole thing reminds me of the South Park where the boys meet hippies who want to change the world through music but end up only getting high and going to concerts. What good do these New School graduates achieve by NOT listening to McCain? Better to listen and understand his point of view than simply to close one’s ears. Empathy is the first step to change. I hope 4 years of college helped teach them that. Looks like McCain learned it during 7 years in a Vietnam POW camp (had to throw that in here).