-By Warner Todd Huston
The Associated Press must have thought that it had quite a story on its hands when it published “Protest brews over Cheney center at Univ. of Wyo.” After all, it had Dearth Cheney, protesters, a university and a petition drive to keep the evil VP at bay. It was all the makings of a good story of “controversy” of the Bush/Cheney years. Apreantly the era of hope-n-change has not quite depleted the APs desire to rehash the Bush years.
As it happens, the Cheney family is donating $3.2 million to the University of Wyoming for the new Cheney International Center that is being built on the Laramie campus. This donation was a result of several installments that Mr. Cheney made while he was vice president.
The AP starts out with its strongest shot over the former vps bow.
A decision by the University of Wyoming to name a new center for international students for former Vice President Dick Cheney is drawing criticism from people who say Cheney’s support for the Iraq war and harsh interrogation techniques should disqualify him from the distinction.
Oh the humanities.
And that isn’t all. There was a big petition drive, too, because of the Bush administration’s “very controversial” actions, you see.
The university’s decision to name the center after Cheney, a former Wyoming congressman, prompted a petition that collected more than 150 signatures.
It “collected more than 150 signatures,” did it? What, maybe like 151 or 152? That’s the big deal, here? The AP story also notes that it took Suzanne Pelican over a year to find this “more than 150” signatures.
Meanwhile, there is an anti-Obama healthcare petition that raised well over one million three hundred thousand signatures. These people are upset at Obama’s controversial healthcare policies. Is the AP writing about that little petition? If they are, I can’t find the APs story on that event.
And catch this illogical claim made by Ms. Pelican:
“We feel that by naming it the Cheney International Center, that the programs and UW can’t avoid being identified with that ideology and that approach to global politics that the Bush-Cheney administration championed,” Pelican said Tuesday.
So, does that mean that Henry Ford was an extreme leftist? After all, his Ford Foundation now funds some pretty hard left, anti-American programs. Do you think Andrew Carnegie was as far left as his charitable group the Carnegie Corporation now is? Hardly. So, to say that the Cheney International Center must follow what Ms. Pelican imagines are the former vice president’s “controversial views” is not even supported by the historical evidence of organizations that drifted far afield from the ideology of its founders.
Still, all that aside, the fact that the AP thought this woman’s weak attempts to attack the Cheney’s was newsworthy is amusing to say the least.
150 signatures…. in over a year’s worth of gathering… indeed!
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as NewsBusters.org, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, TheRealityCheck.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, and the New Media Journal, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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