Sarcasm alert: Activists want room service

BONUS >> Seattle upshot: Not in Kansas anymore

I realize it’s not terribly fair to take one extreme incident and present as a fair representation of an entire movement, but I can’t let this one go without comment because it seems to encapsulate so much of the entitlement associated with the nationwide campus protests against Israel’s military action against Hamas, the terrorist group based in the Gaza Strip.

ICYMI, here’s what I wrote about it last week:

Peaceful protest: What’s acceptable?

As most of you probably know, one of the largest and most disruptive protests has been at New York’s Columbia University, where nearly 100 students were arrested Tuesday night after they took over Hamilton Hall. The students went beyond violating the administration’s orders to vacate the building, barricading themselves inside with overturned tables and breaking windows.

The coverage of the Columbia protests has been extensive, especially at CNN, which had three reporters and several camera crews on the scene. Not surprisingly, some of the most timely and insider-style coverage has come from the Columbia student newspaper, The Spectator, which broke the story that all classes and final exams will be remote for the remainder of the semester. As of this writing, commencement exercises slated for May 15 are still on. The Spectator’s editorial board has been rough on Columbia President Minouche Shafik, stopping just short of calling on her to resign.

But I digress. The video at the top of this page is a sight to behold. A Columbia protester, a doctoral student who was part of the group occupying Hamilton Hall, demanded the university provide food and water to her and her colleagues because anyone with a Columbia meal card was entitled to it. She suggested school administrators might want “students to die of dehydration and starvation” in occupied campus buildings. Um, you are free to leave the building and go to the dining commons.

A reporter noted the irony: “It seems like you’re saying, ‘We want to be revolutionaries, we want to take over this building, now would you please bring us some food’.” The doctoral student characterized her food order as “basic humanitarian aid.”

In other words, if you don’t give us munchies, you will have blood on your hands! Writers from The Onion would be hard-pressed to dream up a funnier tableau. And the protesters wonder why so many fail to take their cause seriously.

Ironically, these rebellions against authority ultimately bring about something most of the protesters don’t want to happen. They could wind up helping to put Donald Trump back in the White House.

Flashback to August 1968 when my family had just moved to the South Side of Chicago so that my father could attend grad school at the University of Chicago. The Democratic National Convention took place from August 23-29. It was plagued by anti-Vietnam War protests, many of them featuring violent confrontations between demonstrators, the Chicago Police and the Illinois National Guard. Hundreds of civilians and police were injured. I witnessed one nonviolent demonstration when I climbed a tree with friend.

This demonstration took place on August 10, 1968, as Chicago was preparing to host the Democratic National Convention. -Wikipedia

The powerful televised images suggested that the Dems were so feckless that they could not even run a convention, to say nothing of running the country. With Sen. Robert F. Kennedy dead, Hubert Humphrey emerged as the scarred nominee to run against former Republican Vice President Richard Nixon, who ran on a campaign to restore law and order. Even with segregationist George Wallace on the ballot as an independent candidate, Nixon eked out a popular-vote victory and won the electoral college 301-191-46. But even more telling is the fact that Nixon and Wallace combined for 57% of the popular vote

This year’s Democratic National Convention will be held in — you guessed it — Chicago. And you can bet the protesters will be out in full force 56 years later. I hope there are no violent confrontations but if there are, Donald Trump will come riding in on his white horse, promising to restore order.

For more reading on this matter, see Jeff Greenfield in Politico. Greenfield was a speech writer for RFK and had worked on his presidential campaign that year until Sirhan Sirhan put an end to it. Greenfield also noted that some of the biggest student anti-war protests took place that year at … Columbia.

Don’t Forget the Backlash to the '60s: Today’s campus chaos carries a grim warning for Biden

Meanwhile, as promised, a few photos from our trip. This time we stayed closer to our rental:

Photos from the other Washington

The view from our rental on Lake Washington looking north toward Seattle

My daughter Ellen has not lost her fascination with the rocks along the May Creek in Renton.

We had a delightful Tex-Mex dinner at Torero’s at Renton Landing.

The Seattle Seahawks training facility in Renton. The Seahawks moved into the 200,000 square foot facility on Lake Washington in August 2008. Known as the Virginia Mason Athletic Center, it’s the second-largest such facility in the NFL. The Minnesota Vikings have the largest at 277,000 square feet.

The afternoon sun battling with the clouds created the effect of a black-and-white image.