We Hate Ourselves More Than We Hate Rove

The strangest thing about this Karl Rove visit is how liberals at Oberlin clearly hated the protestors more than they hated Rove. It shouldn't be a contest: on the one hand, you had a professional (and knowing) slanderer and propagandist for the most reactionary American administration in at least 60 years; on the other, you had people whose worst crime would be to disrupt a mediocre speech by a man's who's mediocre in all respects except in his cruelty and lack of scruples. (He's not a "political genius," guys. The regurgitation of this piece of pure media hype proves that Oberlin has, if nothing else, successfully cultivated the next generation of Time magazine reporters.)

Yet the hate isn't directed at the bad guy; rather, it's directed at the people who want to fight him- even though we all may hate Rove, at least in theory. And any excuse, no matter how presumptuous, is good enough for the hate. The protests won't be effective, Rove won't care, we're just a bunch of whiny college students, we’re spoiled, a protest would be self-congratulatory, etc. All these excuses don't even come close to explaining the sheer amount of abuse the protestors received.

Which convince me that the real reason for the hate-fest can be best explained by an article about liberal hatred toward Michael Moore, written years ago by John Dolan at the brilliant The eXile:

"You hate Moore because he's likely to drag you into a streetfight. That's what happened at the Oscars: Moore took the podium and used it as a weapon. He bludgeoned Bush with that Oscar, right there in front of everyone, until the crowd booed him off. And they didn't boo him because they were "conservatives," either. I'd bet that the loudest booers were classic H-wood liberals. They booed because when Moore started fighting, they felt ashamed, then angry -- because in some vestigial corner of their minds, they knew they should have been standing with him.

"As a lifelong coward, I know the feeling, the shame of watching someone fight your fight for you--and I know that it's not your tormentors you hate most. No, it's your champion, your damned officious champion, whose courage only throws your cowardice into relief, that you hate most--after yourself."

But the excuses were interesting for being revealing. Take the “protests won’t be effective” argument. It was the argument the anti-protestors made the most; it also happened to be exactly false. About the only time colleges make the news at all these days is when there are student protests against prominent figures who are invited to speak at them.

Professor Steve Volk tacitly acknowledged the effectiveness of protest in a letter that encouraged student to observe decorum during the Rove speech. He listed Chris Hedges and Michael Oren as notable examples of people who were famously disrupted during their speeches. Other examples that ring out are the protests against Ehud Olmert at the University of Chicago and even a rather impressive protest against that indefatigable idiot Martin Peretz when he spoke at Harvard. This means Harvard activists upstaged us, and for a significantly less repulsive figure. Can we please stop promoting that obnoxiously self-aggrandizing “oh, we’re just so darn radical at Oberlin” cliché now?

And I’m willing to bet that some of the same people who directed spite at the Rove protestors watched or could watch some of the above examples on Youtube with glee. And we all enjoyed the video of the Iraqi journalist throwing his shoes at George Bush or of the student who pied Thomas Friedman. It’s only when such protests effect us that they suddenly become despicable.

Of course, the protestors share the blame in all this. Campus activism- real campus activism, the kind that has acted on the remarkable pretense that Oberlin is a community and could thus unite around certain causes- has emerged from hiding a few times since I’ve been a student here. The Coalition was an example; the Karl Rove Is Coming activists are another. And each treated politics as though it were a grim duty, our dubious birthright as privileged Oberlin students. The Coalition argued that we were spoiled and ignorant of racial issues, necessitating immediate reeducation. The Karl Rove is Coming protestors, on the other hand, argued that it was our responsibility to protest Rove so that we could vindicate our reputation as a liberal campus.

On this, the protestors and the anti-protestors were united: it was our duty to the school to either make a ruckus or to sit quietly to show that we were either liberal or tolerant enough to honor the school’s image. It was typical self-deprecating Oberlin politics on a slightly grander scale; eating out of dumpsters and not showering to conserve water expanded into political theatre.

What everyone seemed to miss is that protesting Karl Rove could be fun. Not fun in a cute, Harkness sort of way, but in a righteous and invigorating way. Imagine the spectacle of hundreds of students, unapologetic in their noble hatred for Karl Rove, directing a furious and joyous tide of boos at that repulsive pig- because we could, and because we wanted to. As everyone knew (deep down, at least), that kind of bold display would become Oberlin legend and would have an effect both in and outside of the campus- which is the real reason that people hated the protestors.

We’re too spoiled and lucky to be able to go to such a venerable institution to allow ourselves any joy or collective gratification. The reputation of the school was paramount, however false that reputation actually is. And the same crippling deference that defines this wretched campus scored another victory. On that note, I should add that I didn’t go to the speech/ protest. Maybe it was because I was too busy, or because I never got around to buying a ticket- or maybe because, “in some vestigial corner” of my mind, I was afraid.