Congressman Rogers Equates Ann Coulter With...

As LiberalLucy posted the other day, Congressman Mike Rogers didn’t shy away from saying Ann Coulter should be paid to speak by the Livingston Economic Club this coming October.

My argument again, sometimes that they're going to get speakers there that are not in line with where everybody is at but that, and offer some controversial ideas, and I don't think we should shy away from that. Just like when Michigan State University brings in some very, very controversial speakers who certainly aren't, certainly that I don't agree with, and I imagine a lot of the people in the area don't agree with. But I still believe it's important for them to come to an environment like that, and offer their ideas and offer their - I mean that's one of the things that made us great, we've never been really afraid to hear things we don't like.”
[Emphasis added.]

It's one thing to hear things you don't like. It's quite another to have your Congressman support a bigot and an idiot like Ann Coulter.

Congressman Rogers didn’t name the”very very controversial” speaker or speakers he doesn’t agree with and that he imagines a lot of people don’t agree with. It's his way of both equivocating and trying to smear Michigan State University's choice of speakers. But since he didn’t name the objectionable speakers, I thought I would take a look at just who has spoken (and will speak) at MSU to see who he find objectionable.

This past year at MSU had at the Wharton Center;

• Historian David McCullough
• Richard Monette, the Artistic Director of Canada’s Stratford Festival
• Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa
• Azar Nafisi author of “Reading Lolita in Tehran”

In a previous year they invited Kweisi Mfume, president and chief executive officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), to give a speech in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Oh, and this year’s undergraduate commencement speakers are

Jaime Escalante, a mathematics teacher whose life inspired the movie “Stand and Deliver,” and Julie Gerberding, who played a major role in leading the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s response to the anthrax bioterrorism events of 2001.

Three of the speakers at the this year’s individual college ceremonies include,

• MSU Undergraduate Convocation. Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser, will address the undergraduate candidates for degrees.
• College of Human Medicine. Andrew Schechtman, associate and field coordinator for Doctors without Borders, and 1999 Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
• MSU College of Law. Kwame M. Kilpatrick, mayor of Detroit, a 1999 graduate of the law school, will present the commencement address.

We can’t forget that yesterday, Minutemen Project co-founder Chris Simcox spoke at the request of the Young Americans for Freedom and the MSU College Republicans. As controversial as the Minutemen are, and as much as I disagree with their take on immigration and their misguided ideas for securing the border, they are not as offensive and ignorant as Ann Coulter or MSU's very own Young Americans for Freedom.

Most people would hardly find Ann Coulter as controversial as Mario Vargas Llosa, Azar Nafisi, David McCullough, Condoleeza Rice, or Jaime Escalante, or a Nobel Prize winner like Andrew Schechtman.

But to Congressman Rogers, MSU's speakers are sometimes as disagreeable to him as Ann Coulter is to most of the residents of the 8th District of Michigan. That he could find objectionable some of the people noted above seems ridiculous to me. What that tells me is that he betrays a rather low opinion of MSU on his part and that his character judgment leaves a lot to be desired.