Religion - the Sandusky Scandal - Science - Uncommon Threads

by Barry Bozeman

Politics & Religion are touchy subjects when it comes to attempts at unity. That makes this entry a tricky one for my partners Ray & Eileen, along with other members of the FREEHdom Fighters. There are element to the Sandusky Scandal that are necessarily political when one of the key villains is embroiled in a campaign for Governor - a position that holds the key to future Board of Trustees appointments. We should be able to agree that having a Governor who favors Penn State would be a welcome change for all of us. That is the major thrust of this essay. How we might help defeat Corbett and earn the respect of the next Governor enough to gain his ear and the regard of his supporters through our support for his campaign.   

This lengthy essay incorporates some new yet ancient angles about the forces that shaped the Sandusky scandal into the Penn State scandal.There is a general agreement among Penn State people over the injustice done to Penn State and Joe Paterno among people who radically disagree over the politics, science, and religion. Ray and I could not disagree more on politics and climate science but we couldn't agree more on the injustice done to Penn State. 

Penn State is home to two prominent climate scientists who were defended by Graham Spanier in a meeting with Republican leaders in Harrisburg prior to Nov 2011. Those legislators wanted the scientists removed or they would reduce PSU funding. Did Spaniers defense of the scientists impact the actions of Tom Corbett that removed Graham when he and Joe Paterno would have been the most effective defense for Penn State? 

The following "Uncommon Threads" essay muses about connections that have not been explored. These connections may be evident to some and seem absurd to others. I have played them over in my mind for weeks before deciding to let you determine for yourselves if you too see the relevance. Did certain political interests see Graham Spanier and Penn State climate scientists as an impediment to their plans?  What role did religion play with Louis Freeh when he was hired to do harm to the credibility of your university by the accusations against it's President and culture? 

 If we all set aside political differences and support Wolf over Corbett can Penn Stater's earn the respect and confidence of the next Governor and in the process get a large number of Pennsylvanians to take a closer look at what Tom Corbett did to Penn State?  

Back in Nov of 2011 there was an overwhelming amount of information about the "Penn State" Scandal that led to the naming of this website as The "Second Mile Sandusky" Scandal, and it seems I missed something very important to understanding Louis Freeh along with another reason for Corbett to seek the ouster of Dr. Graham Spanier. 

We all know - or should know how this came to be known as the "PENN STATE" Scandal. The Board of Traitors led by John Surma as arranged by Tom Corbett decided to sell Penn State in the persons of Joe Paterno, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz (and later Graham Spanier) down the proverbial river. They accepted a Presentment now known to be a bald faced lie by Corbett/Kelly as unassailable truth. There are other acts of treason in history that rival Nov 9 2011 but few so clear cut and egregious as the BOARD OF TRAITORS capitulation and breach of fiduciary duty represented by that decision.. 

We came to learn why John Surma did it: THE SURMA VENDETTA. And none among us can find any valid reason why Surma should not have recused himself from that decision instead of leading the drive to dismiss Joe Paterno. 

We know about Tom Corbett's UNCOMMONLY COMPLETE CONFLICTS OF INTEREST and why Corbett and his appointees should have recused themselves or supported Spanier and Paterno as the two individuals who could have commanded enough respect to make the media and the public aware of the facts in the face of that bogus presentment and the media tsunami. 

We were even made fully aware of how Louis Freeh was inflicted on Penn State in just one week after that Nov 9, 2011 disaster. A mere 4 hours of interviews of only 2 candidates by  the CORBETT, SURMA, FRAZIER, TOMALIS & BALDWIN - UNCOMMONLY CLEAR CONFLICTS OF INTEREST were revealed here on SMSS. 

        WHAT I MISSED IN NOV. 2011.  

 I missed an article in ESQUIRE that wondered:  
What the choice of former FBI director, Opus Dei running buddy, and cutthroat careerist Louis Freeh to lead Penn State's investigation into itself as regards the Jerry Sandusky scandal would come to mean to the people involved. 
It all depends on two factors the writer mused:

1) How often Freeh's finely rehearsed performance-art public morality comes into play; and 2) What result will be best for Louis Freeh, secular saint and avenging angel.

As it has turned out Freeh based his entire finding on his self-serving moral superiority. He definitely had no evidence to support his conclusions. It was the "failed culture at Penn State" and an "omnipotent head football coach" indicted and skewered in the court of public opinion over a mere 2 email fragments mentioning "coach". The Esquire writer now seems downright prophetic with his observations. Freeh pocketed 8.2 million Penn State dollars for trashing the university as a failed culture without ever having to interview the key witnesses to the charges Freeh makes or the need to justify his results. Freeh was all moral outrage hat with no evidence cattle as Esquire points out: 

"Freeh has a long history of Opus Dei morality. He was the cilice around Bill Clinton's upper thigh because Freeh disapproved of a president having non-Vatican-endorsed sexy time with a young woman. Freeh's FBI railroaded Wen Ho Lee because Freeh was convinced that the Clintons played loose with national security secrets because of Chinese political contributions. Another charge with no basis in fact.
In 2005, Freeh wrote a book explaining how he, the righteous moralist Louis Freeh, stood alone against all enemies, foreign and domestic. He absolved the FBI of involvement in the framing not only of Lee, whom Freeh still believed to be guilty of espionage, but of Richard Jewell, the innocent man Freeh fingered as the 1996 Olympic Park bomber. Freeh claimed that what happened to Lee was the New York Times's fault, and that the FBI went after Jewell for the sake of thoroughness. Freeh was too busy pointing his moral finger at Jewell and Lee to keep an eye on his own FBI where US secrets were being sold to Soviets costing US billions". 

Freeh was perfect for the heavily Corbett influenced Special Investigation Task Force - an Opus Dei member out to eviscerate non-priest child molesters and redeem the moral standing of his Church in the wake of decades of priest pedophiles. Joe, Graham, Tim and Gary never had the chance for a fair unbiased investigation by this angry righteous Opus Dei scold. A PSU version of Tomas de Torquemada, Freeh would have preferred the rack and wheel ending with a burning stake.   

Freeh's investigation could not be his preferred inquisition but the report would be his sermon as avenging angel striking back against the priest pedophiles who besmirched the reputation of his church. Freeh could refocus national attention away from his church and on Penn State. No evidence is required in the case of child abuse. The allegations are as effective as any proof, particularly when the Attorney General and the Board of Trustees were not about to challenge his word. 

Corbett demanded that Freeh work with his Attorney General. This was never an "independent" investigation - it was designed from the start to reinforce the Presentment and the case of the Commonwealth.  Simply read the bottom paragraph in this email from Corbett's hand picked SITF member Ron Tomalis telling of the Governor's desire to have Freeh work hand in had with the Attorney General.  

"I talked with the Governor this afternoon re the Attorney General and our approach about having the outside firm talk directly with that office. He strongly agreed with the approach and added that he had already discussed the role of the committee with her........." 

It doesn't get more direct than that.  In fact it is amazing that such an email exists. Here the Governor's man on the SITF writes it down. The Governor is so involved with this case he is discussing the role of the so called "independent investigator" with the Attorney General  and having that "outside firm" work directly with her. Since when is it appropriate for a sitting Governor to plan the prosecution of cases with the Attorney General? 

Catholic Tom Corbett wanted Louis Freeh and he wanted Louis Freeh to work directly with his hand picked Attorney General. That should result in criminal charges of undue influence and impeachment.  Ron Tomalis was Corbett's hand picked Special Advisor on Education. A man with no experience in teaching who oversaw drastic cuts to public and higher education while championing school vouchers that benefited private (Catholic) schools. Tomalis as Vice Chair along with Chairman Ken Frazier arranged the selection of Opus Dei member Louis Freeh.  

Criticism of Opus Dei includes allegations of secretiveness, controversial recruiting methods, strict rules governing members, elitism and misogyny, and support of or participation in authoritarian right-wing governments, especially the Francoist Government of Spain until 1978. Mortification of the flesh practiced by some OD members is bizarre. Even within the Church, Opus Dei is criticized for seeking independence and influence and extremism.  

It is impossible to overstate the control exercised by Tom Corbett in the defamation of Joe Paterno and Graham Spanier - the two men most visible as the faces of Penn State University. Corbett set out to cut Penn State funding and get rid of President Spanier because:
1) Spanier was an effective voice for funding for Penn State
2) Corbett thought Spanier was supporting his opponent 
3) Corbett's fossil fuel industry supporters disliked Penn State climate scientists and 
4) Blaming Penn State diverted attention from Corbett supporters at The Second Mile.  

This Freeh OPUS DEI connection brings us to Rick Santorum. In 2002 Senator Santorum sponsored Jerry Sandusky for the honor of "Congressional Angel in Adoption,"  Even Santorum was fooled by Sandusky enough to sponsor the Second Mile founder 2 years after Joe Paterno parted company with him. Surely a US Senator has methods of vetting those chosen to receive such a high honor. Even with his connections in Pennsylvania nobody warned him that Sandusky might have exhibited questionable behavior? 

In 2012 fellow OPUS DEI member Louis Freeh's high minded moralizing brought sanctions against the football program at Santorum's alma mater by denouncing the failure of Joe Paterno to stop a predator he had no authority to stop in 2001 when Sandusky was a Second Mile employee not under Joe's control. 

Santorum's alma mater Penn State was paying the price for Freeh's moral outrage. An irony that is hard to miss in the world of "family values" where a dedicated family man and "success with honor" coach was forced to bear the cross of Freeh's Opus Dei fervor. One can only imagine the internal agony suffered by Joe the short time between his public disgrace and death. This irony evidently failed to reach the rock solid mass between Freeh's ears when it's clear to all that Paterno lived the exemplary life of a family man of unimpeachable honor.   

Rick Santorum was one prominent PA politician in a position to offer support to Penn State and Joe Paterno. But this is all he could do for Joe and his Alma Mater:

 "Look, I pray and hope that he [PSU coach Joe Paterno] didn't do anything he shouldn't have done, but it certainly looks horrible for the university, horrible for the football program and obviously people were fired, should be fired." 

It was Rick Santorum who chose to honor Sandusky in 2002. Joe was done with Jerry back in 1999, but Santorum couldn't manage to come to the defense of a man he knew was all about family values and "success with honor"? Was that because of this Opus Dei connection and a fear of being tainted by his award?  

The worst spy in American history was former FBI Soviet expert Robert Hanssen and Hanssen was not only Opus Dei, he attended Mass with Louis Freeh on the day of his arrest and was a member of the same church. St. Catherine of Great Falls, Virginia claims 3,400 parishioners. "Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and his wife attend Mass there with the head of the National Rifle Association, and former FBI director Louis Freeh. The church also suffered brief notoriety eleven years ago when FBI agent Robert Hanssen—then a member of the congregation—was arrested for selling intelligence to Russia. Santorum attended Mass with his family nearly every day."  

The movie THE BREACH is recommended for those of you who do not know about Robert Hanssen and the damage he caused the United States while working under Louis Freeh for years. 

Freeh and Santorum belong to Opus Dei and even attend the same church. What effect did that have on Rick Santorum's failure to stand up for his alma mater and Joe Paterno against Tom Corbett and Louis Freeh? What effect did the pedophile priest scandal have on Louis Freeh and his fervor for accusing Joe Paterno and Penn State? It is not easy to find connections between Opus Dei and The Second Mile - we have to wonder if there were any. Many in Pennsylvania are Catholic so it's not unusual to see Corbett, Freeh, Santorum, and Paterno all a part of the same church. 

Joe Paterno is an iconic family man and molder of young men in his care as a coach and it's difficult to understand why Freeh felt compelled to attack him so viciously as a fellow Catholic based on such flimsy "evidence" But in order to detach the pedophile tag from priests in his church and tie it  to Penn State, Joe had to be involved along with Graham Spanier because they were the most identifiable faces of Penn State. Freeh owed his selection to Corbett through Ron Tomalis - he had to earn that 8.2 million by reinforcing the Corbett case against Penn State. 

THE SANDUSKY SCANDAL & CLIMATE SCIENCE - NOT SO COMMON THREADS 

The apparent conflicts between science and religion are well known. It is not my purpose to dismiss the importance of either and I am not attacking religious people or Catholics since I can believe in God and trust science.
I did not draw the connections made in the references below but I find the parallels to be compelling and intriguing. Of interest to every Pennsylvanian is the current campaign for Governor. The result is of even more importance to Penn State since the make up of the Board of Trustees and a potential reversal of the narrative concerning the Freeh Fiction becomes possible with Corbett's defeat. 

First we have to accept that Climate Change is part of this race between Wolf and Corbett.  

Climate change stokes billionaire's campaign against Corbett

HARRISBURG (AP) — The fall campaign for Pennsylvania governor is likely to cost tens of millions of dollars, and some of that could be spent as part of an effort to defeat Gov. Tom Corbett over the Republican's position on climate change. Corbett's campaign manager Mike Barley said the plan by an environmentalist billionaire, Tom Steyer, to try to defeat him is a case of one "super-wealthy, well-connected political insider" supporting another. Wolf campaign spokesman Jeff Sheridan responded that it is laughable for Corbett to call anyone else a well-connected political insider after he took huge campaign donations from oil and gas interests. Directors of the super PAC NextGen Climate Action, founded by Steyer, said they plan to raise $100 million to make global warming a major campaign issue and attack Republicans, including Corbett, running for U.S. Senate or governor in seven states. Steyer, a longtime Democratic donor, is a retired investor and donated $50 million. Corbett's campaign said the governor understands that climate change is happening and that scientific literature points to a human role in it

Politics being as polarizing as they are may make it difficult for some of the new Alumni Trustees to reach out to Corbett's opponent with support. But what if Wolf were to take on Corbett for his conflict of interest in the 11/9 meeting that led to Joe Paterno and Graham Spanier being sidelined when they alone could have cast serious doubt on the narrative about a Penn State cover up. At minimum it would compel the media to revisit the Freeh Report and understand the fictional moralizing for what it really is. That may be something that Republican BoT members would find important enough to support the Democrat this time. If we could just get Wolf's campaign people to read this entry and a half dozen more - like those listed at the top of this post - it would go a long way in introducing Wolf to the reality of what happened at Penn State. 

Climate Change and the Sandusky Scandal as described by the Freeh Fiction are connected because Penn State has some of the most prominent climate scientists in the country. 

Penn Stater's should be proud of  Dr.. Richard Alley, who received the Nobel Prize for work on climate change Dr.Alley is a Penn State professor, environmental scientist, PBS host, book author, polar ice expert, bicycle enthusiast, geologist, Nobel Prize winner, Johnny Cash impersonator, former oil company employee, and—according to The New York Times’ Andy Revkin—a “cross between Woody Allen and Carl Sagan.” (without Woody's baggage) 

Richard is an Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences in Penn State's College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. His research interests focus on glaciology, sea level change and abrupt climate change, and he frequently discusses earth sciences on major media outlets, including NPR, BBC and PBS. He is widely credited with showing that the earth has experienced abrupt climate change in the past—and likely will again, based on his meticulous study of ice cores from Greenland and West Antarctica.

Graham Spanier went to Harrisburg to defend Penn State's climate scientists to legislators who threatened to reduce funding for Penn State if they were not removed. We are left to wonder what effect this may have had on Corbett's actions to remove Dr. Spanier from the PSU Presidency. Corbett fought with Spanier over PSU funding and Corbett thought Spanier was supporting his opponent in the 2010 race. Corbett was the beneficiary of much fossil fuel support along with TSM support, so it's not much of a leap to see the defense of these scientists as another strike against Graham Spanier on Corbett's scorecard. 

SO WHAT DOES CLIMATE SCIENCE HAVE TO DO WITH THE SANDUSKY SCANDAL?

When I read articles like this one from The American Thinker I have to wonder what Graham Spanier's defense of the faculty at Penn State might have done to incur the wrath of Corbett and PA legislators who wanted to de-fund Penn State. 
COMMON THREADS - CLIMATEGATE and the SANDUSKY SCANDAL  In this particular article the bogus "climategate' from the bungled "hockey stick debunking" is raised to compare Graham Spanier's defense of Professor Mann with the Freeh Fiction on a cover-up for Sandusky. 

Professor Mann was cleared by Penn State of any violations in the bogus "Climategate" blowup. And taking it further Mann has sued the people who attempted his defamation much as Graham Spanier has gone on the attack suing Louis Freeh and his Freeh Fiction for defamation.  

A Win for the Climate Scientist Who Skeptics Compared to Jerry Sandusky

In 2012 after writers for National Review and a conservative think tank accused him of fraud and compared him to serial child molester Jerry Sandusky—climate scientist Michael Mann took the bold step of filing a defamation suit. The defendants moved to have the case thrown out, citing a Washington, DC, law that shields journalists from frivolous litigation. But on Wednesday, DC Superior Court Judge Frederick Weisberg rejected the motion, opening the way for a trial.Although public figures like Mann have to clear a high bar to prove defamation, Weisberg argued that the scientist's complaint may pass the test. And he brushed aside the defendants' claims that the fraud allegations were "pure opinion," which is protected by the First Amendment:

Accusing a scientist of conducting his research fraudulently, manipulating his data to achieve a predetermined or political outcome, or purposefully distorting the scientific truth are factual allegations. They go to the heart of scientific integrity. They can be proven true or false. If false, they are defamatory. If made with actual malice, they are actionable. 

Weisberg's order is just the latest in a string of setbacks that have left the climate change skeptics' case in disarray. Earlier this month, Steptoe & Johnson, the law firm representing National Review and its writer, Mark Steyn, withdrew as Steyn's counsel. According to two sources with inside knowledge, it also plans to drop National Review as a client.

JUNE 12, 2014  SIX THINGS MICHAEL MANN WANTS YOU TO KNOW ABOUT THE SCIENCE OF GLOBAL WARMING  shows us that Dr. Mann remains one of the most visible and oft quoted of climate scientists.

Penn State has produced a number of very notable Climate Scientists like Dr Richard Somerville. The Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Research Professor at the Scripps Oceanography Institute in San Diego. His 60 minute lecture in the addendum below this article is another example of Penn State excellence. 

I have not drawn these parallels between Sandusky and the Penn State climate scientists. That comparison was fostered by the National Review and conservative thinktanks. Those people manipulated information just like Louis Freeh, by taking email fragments out of context from 5 of 480 scientists to claim that temperature measurements were a fraudulent manipulation of data. Freeh used a few email fragments without context out of some 3.5 million documents to accuse Joe Paterno and Graham Spanier of a cover up. Freeh never interviewed the principals he claimed were involved in a "cover-up". The sharpest critic of Michael Mann relied on plagiarized material.  The tactics are too similar to ignore. 

Subsequent observations and data have proved Michael Mann's temperature model correct and close review of the Freeh Report reveals the absurdity of the "Spanier cover up" accusations. Mann's and Spanier's defamation suits move forward but it's almost impossible to put those malicious attacks back in the foul sewers from whence they came because 'defamation' is so difficult a case in the land of free (no matter how foul) speech.

The Mann = Sandusky attack is another example of science - in the form of one Nobel Prize winner and fellow prominent Penn State faculty member and their work on Climate Science on one hand facing extreme religious views represented by Louis Freeh - Rick Santorum - Tom Corbett and Opus Dei on the on the other. As we know Santorum is an outspoken Climate Denier who considers Climate Science a HOAX. Biblical literalist Creationists claim the scientifically accurate 4.5 billion year old Earth is a Hoax because the Bible shows the Earth to be around 6,000 years old. That "belief" is far more prevalent in southern, high-school or less educated over 65 evangelicals and almost completely disregarded by nonsectarian college graduates who understand the plethora of accurate dating methods and the science of evolution through natural selection.    

A University is the place for science and Dr Ally and Dr. Mann have brought credit to Penn State with their meticulous work in the field of climate science. 97% of climate scientists are in agreement with their positions based on their research. Of over 11,944 peer reviewed scientific papers less than 3% argue against anthropogenic (man made) climate change. But like all good scientists they maintain a skeptical nature. This is what the evidence available now suggests as they continue to add observations and data to their skillful models. To claim they have perpetrated "a HOAX" to fool everyone is a lot like claiming Joe Paterno would cover up for a pedophile. It just makes no sense. The Freeh conspiracy theory of a cover up at Penn State is quite like the theory that credentialed climate scientists and scientific groups around the globe have conspired to perpetrate the "hoax" of global warming. 

HOW THOSE WHO OPPOSE CLIMATE SCIENTISTS SHOULD VIEW THIS RACE

Our differences of opinion on the validity of anthropogenic global warming or climate change is not the debate for Penn State supporters of due process for Joe Paterno or Graham Spanier and Penn State. That issue is introduced in this campaign for Governor and it may have played a part in the attack on Graham Spanier by Tom Corbett. So how can those of you who do not support the views of climate scientists get the most out of your support for the opponent of Tom Corbett? 

In this situation the defeat of Tom Corbett and the repudiation of the Freeh Fiction should be something all Penn Staters can find worthwhile. Will we be able to set aside normal political preference and really get behind the Wolf campaign in a way that encourages Wolf to seek counsel from the elected Alumni Trustees on his appointments. The way this is done could help draw the attention of Wolf and his staff to the truth about what happened at Penn State and if that happens soon enough it might become a campaign issue that spotlights Corbett's conflicts of interest and Freeh's obvious fiction. Shining the light of what we now know on about the Freeh Fiction could change a lot of minds in Pennsylvania and free Penn State from the Freeh stigma. That is my hope.  

 72% of Pennsylvanians favor greenhouse gas emission limits on coal fired plants.  If Wolf supporters take a fresh look at the Freeh Fiction that would be a huge step in the right direction. This may appear to be an unfortunate nexus of events for some Republicans among you. But Wolf's democratic supporters and climate science supporters are most likely to take Penn States side against Corbett and Freeh if Wolf decides to make Corbett's conflicts of interest a part of his campaign. That is what could lead the media to review the Freeh Fiction and Corbett's role despite a long reluctance. 

In a nationwide poll in 2012, 87 percent of registered Democrats said they believed that global warming was happening, compared with 53 percent of Republicans. As expected, there were higher numbers of Democrats versus Republicans, but the bottom line: Even a majority of Republicans are in tune with doing something about carbon emissions. It seems obvious that more Pennsylvanians might be willing to take a fresh look at what happened at Penn State with Louis Freeh if Wolf were to attack Corbett's conflcts of interest and his role in protecting TSM while unfairly denying Joe Paterno due process. If every Pennsylvanian who supports reduction of carbon emissions were to support a review and rethinking of the Freeh Fiction it would go a long way to restoring the reputation of Penn State in the Commonwealth. 

Corbett is vulnerable on climate science and everyone knows it is much easier to get the ear of a political candidate during the campaign than once he has assumed office. So now is the time to reach out to Wolf to assist his campaign and show him Corbett's plan to hire Freeh and have him work with the OAG to validate charges in the presentments - not to be an independent investigator. Wolf should be made aware of the parallels that exist between the Spanier and Mann defamation suits. and the conspiracy theories promoted by Freeh and the climate deniers. A sitting Governor who knows how Corbett used Freeh would be a great benefit,  a candidate that uses that information in the campaign could make a huge difference in the minds of his supporters in PA. 

So it appears by virtue of available polls at this early date that Tom Corbett is done, we can never be certain, and that's not really the point.  Engaging Candidate Wolf on the subject of Penn State's Board of Trustees appointments is a worthwhile endeavor.  This is a point where the Corbett supporting old guard is vulnerable, and ensuring that Wolf hears from the Alumni Trustees in order to give him the true picture of what Freeh and Corbett did to defame your alma mater could make a huge difference in the public's perception of Penn State and Joe Paterno. 

NOTE: Although I would be glad to debate climate science this is not the place for that debate. It is a part of this entry because of the connection with the Wolf campaign and Corbett's actions against Penn State. I'm not trying to get anyone to change their minds on the science. The aim is to show how I think Penn State can gain more support from a broader spectrum of Pennsylvanians in working against Cobett and exposing his conflicts of interest during the current campaign. 

Recommended Reading: 
MIchael Mann's Lawsuit vs National Review and Competitive Enterprise Institute 

PENN STATE Graduate Dr Richard Somerville - Video 


Climate Scientist's lawsuit could wipe out Conservative National Review Magazine 

Steyn quoted “paid anti-climate science operative Rand Simberg — an employee of the right-wing think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute — who compared Mann to Penn State’s convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky. Mann, Simberg said, is “the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data.”

Setting the Record Straight on Misleading Claims about Michael Mann 

There are many elements in the deniers inquisition of selected climate scientists. Their tactics are confusion and misrepresentation. If there are 20 studies that offer the same conclusion the deniers pick the one with the least certainty and ignore the continued observations and measurements that further strengthen the model. It's obnoxious and misleading. The point is to confuse and mislead - rather than inform and enlighten. 

The Hockey Stick and Climate Wars by Michael Mann

The global warming denial machine's predatory "Serengeti strategy" of singling out individual scientists and scientific findings for attack has been applied relentlessly to several leading climate scientists, none more so than Mann and the iconic "hockey stick" graph from paleoclimate research published in 1998. That path-breaking work found that warming in the late 20th century was unprecedented over the last millennium. Since then, a growing and diverse body of painstaking paleoclimate research has produced multiple studies that essentially confirm and strengthen that early finding.  

Climate Scientist Compared to Jerry Sandusky, Files Libel Suit

Mann's paper, as a first attempt at this sort of reconstruction, attracted some criticism on scientific grounds. But it also attracted no end of non-scientific vitriol because it was mistakenly considered to be so central to the entire argument about climate change. Eventually, it even became the subject of Congressional hearings where climate science as a field was accused of being sloppy with statistics and too insular to notice. But the report that accused climate scientists of helping each other through peer review turned out to have been heavily plagiarized (and, ironically, was pushed into publication by a friendly editor). The National Academies of Science analyzed how the field had progressed since Mann's publication, and found that multiple studies, using improved methods, had now replicated the hockey stick result.

And finally the IRONY 

Climate Science Critic Sees Paper Retracted Due to Plagiarism

The so-called "hockey stick" plot of recent climate, in which recent temperatures appear as a sudden and anomalous rise after a thousand years of relative stability, has become a bit of an icon for climate change. Even though it's rather secondary to the concerns about rising greenhouse gas levels—CO2would be a concern even if we were limited to the 150 years of instrument records—the hockey stick attracted so much attention that, in 2006, it was the subject of Congressional hearings. Now, it appears that the sharpest critic of climate scientists at those hearings relied on plagiarized material to prepare his report.

And Now a few words from the other side for fairness and balance

JESUS WEPT - BY GARRY WILLS

How Nixon Used the Media, Billy Graham, and the Good Lord to Rap with Students at Tennessee U

Garry Wills

Jesus Wept


America, student radicals claim, is all a war zone—with one exception. The war, they say, is over on the campus and the students have won it. The enemy may not enter this liberated territory. As if to prove this point, administration spokesmen gave their commencement speeches last year at garrison colleges (West Point, Annapolis, Air Force Academy) But then Nixon, in a brilliant strike seemed to destroy the thesis and went to a large university late May; was enthusiastically received; left a happy glow behind him. One had to admire his nerve and calculation, timing and choice of place, his orchestration of all circumstance to optimum effect. In fact the more one knows about that blitzkrieg of improbable tranquility the more awesome it becomes, This was perhaps our greatest “non event" not the kind Daniel Boorstin analyzed, the contrived TV "happening," but a real non-event one that did not happen. The campus did not invite Nixon, did receive him, did not enjoy peace hen he left it. Fact was everywhere at variance with appearance. And because it did not happen, the campus is still liberated territory.
What, then, did happen? It is so hard to see, so fast the hands make the shells fly, hiding the pea. Like all slick con games, it looked simple, but wasn't. The first trick, no mean one was to get Billy Graham onto campus, Crusade and all; then to have the Crusade invite Nixon, and pretend he was invited by the campus: then keep the campus from the crusade, while claiming that Nixon's reception by the Crusade was really acclaim from the campus (Now where's the pea?) and voila student resentment would vanish.
It was touchy work, each step of it. First the campus had to be large and representative yet relatively safe. The University of Tennessee was fine, the Knoxville campus just fine. Tennessee, that Republican ear of the state, what Kevin
Phillips calls "the hill vote" so crabbed and parochial it fought it’s own neighbors in the Civil War (East Tennessee did not join the Confederacy till 1954), the land of Alvin York and "The Vols" (Volunteers), so called because, when there is dying to be done, they are always first to get in line.
Though Knoxville is the largest campus in the South, it does not house a statewide university. Four other campuses in the state system serve places like Nashville and Memphis. Those who came to Knoxville were always either East Tennessee or they got East-Tennessee-ized very rapidly. Football players, of course, were sought everywhere, but they soon learned to join the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (some of them would guard Nixon's platform on the twenty-yard line). Football, fundamentalism, and fraternities controlled the campus. Clean living meant confiscating Playboy and killing the other team's quarterback. There was no town-gown tension. Every Saturday Knoxville emptied into the stadium. Stores and streets were splashed with the team colors (orange and white); and the region proudly calls itself Big Orange Country. Campus leaders without the giveaway i-for-e of "East Tinnissee" were unthinkable. Fraternity leaders, inducted into a super-fraternal secret society, the "Scarabbeans," graduated from college into the First Baptist Church as the ruling elite of Knoxville.
The people of the city always felt this was their school. Local kids, at the Saturday game, grew up with a single ambition—to sit in a fraternity bloc marked out, in the stadium, by its own banners and cheers and cheerleaders. The town recaptured its youth at these games, reliving early escapades—fraternity indiscretions winked at here, where bootleggers and Baptists, in alliance, prevent sale of liquor by the drink. Maintaining the fiction of "private clubs" and the omnipresent brown bag (to keep booze decent), Big Orange Christians confess their sin of drinking even as they commit it. So Billy was bound to come, and to this stadium. The First Baptist city fathers wanted him.
The football field was already sacred consecrated by a stirring liturgy (invariably bringing tears to alumni, adopted alumni, projected alumni, and pretend alumni, everybody – all Knoxville first the band and Tennessee Waltz and the prettiest drum majorettes imaginable, trained up all their lives to this orange explosion of loveliness; then the hush of The Star-Spangled Banner, and finally the whole town turned to one throat as the team came, one by one, announced, up the stem of a giant T formed by the band, then peeled off, alternating, along the arms of the T, poured onto the field and into local history, a dynasty, a succession of names remembered as, in other places, kids recite the list of Presidents). Other teams had coveted this field, its rubbery artificial turf— pro teams offering cash to play on it. But the temple was not profaned. Only Billy would be worthy of it, hold services as awesome as those of The Vols, decanted out of their T, in a sacrifice to local gods. Yet, getting Billy was not easy. The impresario was Ralph Frost, long a power on the campus, now reduced to "Manager of University Concerts." He came to the university years ago, to run Y.M.C.A. affairs; for a long time he arranged fundamentalist religion courses, given for credit, with their climax in a week-long convocation of religious renewal and academic revivalism. Out of his "Y" office, Frost booked the best entertainment and edification, bands and singers and gospel choirs and preachers, celebrities, Ralph greeting stars, stars shining down on him in his office from publicity glossies, some stars greeting Billy, Billy greeting Ralph.
But in time the faculty thought better of these state-school revivals, and used legal objections to introduce a scholarly Department of Religious Studies—which left Frost with nothing to arrange, anymore, but concerts. Nothing, that is, till Billy, his best booking coup.
He had to go off-campus, and he went where the power was, to First Baptist's leading businessmen. A party of them, six in all, including the First Baptist pastor, came to the university's president, Dr."Andy" Holt (so known to all, and idolized by Knoxville's solid citizens, of whom he is the solidest), with a request to lease the stadium for Billy's coming. Holt and his underlings said yes, and charged the Crusade a mere $20,000 for ten days ($2,000 per day-and-night in the giant modern horseshoe, capacity 65,000-a fine rebuff to football teams that bid huge sums for a single afternoon in the place).-
Two justifications are offered for this transaction. The first one, stressed increasingly as Dr. Holt disclaimed responsibility for what ensued, was that an outside group —the Graham Crusade—had rented a facility from the university. The school had nothing to do with what happened in that facility during the period of lease. Separation of Church and State, y'know. A straight cash deal. It was all Billy's show, not the university's.
This explanation skids over several things. The ridiculously low rent, the fact that President Holt had signed Ralph Frost's petition asking Billy to come, and Holt not only attended the Crusade, but led an offertory prayer soliciting funds for the Graham organization. Whatever the legal fiction, the administration was aiding and sponsoring a religious crusade and doing so with casual disregard for the students interests The stadium contains in its semicircular outer rim two dormitories and officials had in effect rented out these dorms for ten nights during final exams.
So the Crusade came, with all its hoopla, like a circus pitching its tent on the campus. Two student rock festivals were canceled so they would not disturb the Crusade. Other student gatherings were frowned on, discouraged, threatened. The night was filled with super-amplified Billy sermons. Buses lined the campus streets as crowds ranging from 50,000 to 100,000 came and went, each day, on a campus of 23,000 students. It was all extraneous to campus life, goes Dr. Holt's defense—and, as if to back that up, Graham refused invitations from faculty and students to meet "in a more academic setting" than the stadium. The Department of Religious Studies, for instance, asked to speak with him, and was told Dr. Graham was too intensely caught up in a Crusade to make other appointments during its course. Yet as soon as Billy arrived, local papers blossomed out in pictures of him playing golf with Andy Holt and the pastor of First Baptist. The city power structure, not the students, had invited him, and Billy observed the priorities.
The second line of defense is offered by Chancellor Charles Weaver, technically the custodian of this campus. President Holt is in charge of the whole state system, with chancellors under him to care for the major campuses—though Holt's home and power base, in every sense, is Knoxville. Ralph Frost knew what he was doing when he took his businessman-panel to Holt's office; Weaver was summoned there to rubber-stamp the deal.
Yet Weaver claims it was all done on his authority, and was an educational affair, properly sponsored by the university. "As a matter of fact, frankly, I would not turn down any speaker here, so long as an authorized campus group requested his presence." What group asked for Graham? "The Fellowship of Christian Athletes." Frost, after securing his businessmen and First Baptists, sought ecumenical cover for his operation, suggesting that various groups cosponsor the Crusade—including the Knoxville County Fellowship of Christian Athletes. But no one, not Frost, not Weaver, not Coach McDonald (Assistant Athletic Director for the Knoxville campus and Secretary-Treasurer of the County Fellowship of Christian Athletes) could give me the name of a single student who requested Graham's presence or took part in negotiations to bring him into Knoxville—though all three men still claim this elusive student and his fellows were official hosts for the Crusade.
"Graham came as a result of our open speaker policy. As you may know," Weaver winked at me, "I, frankly, got burned on the subject of that policy, and now I’m the firmest believer in it
Two years ago when Weaver took the fist post of Chancellor His first act of any importance was to refuse Dick Gregory permission to speak on campus. He was just continuing the former policy. Shortly before, President Holt had banned Adam Clayton Powell Jr. with this avuncular comment: "He preaches hate, and I want you children to hear nothing but love." But by this time, students were restive. A group of them sued the university and named Weaver in the suit, and won a court order for the open speaker policy.
"So you see," Weaver expanded complacently, "the courts made it necessary for us to accept Billy Graham. We had no choice in the matter." But Graham was not a lone speaker come to address some student group—he was part of an operation conducted by hundreds of men, working in closest conjunction with the city political structure and police department, bringing in crowds that dwarfed the student body, soliciting and receiving large sums of money, preempting facilities and student affairs, distracting the whole campus on the eve of exams. How can you treat him as just another speaker? "Well, when Kunstler was here recently, outsiders were free to come and listen to him, too." (Kunstler, much on Weaver's mind, came up again and again, haunting our conversation. All Knoxville had choked with rage at his appearance. A local politician won favor by saying he should be executed.) What about the fund-raising aspects of this "educational" event? "Freedom of speech! Kunstler could say anything he wanted—from advocating violence, to praising marijuana, to asking for money."
But the open speaker policy stems from the university's academic function, and the Graham Crusade was called a religious service by Knoxville police. "Well, if the campus Catholic Center wanted to call in a priest as speaker, we would have to let him speak under our open speaker policy." And if the Pope came to hold Mass every day for ten days in the stadium, while collecting large sums for Catholic missions, would you let him? "Well, frankly, if the Catholic Center asked us, we would have to." As an academic duty? "Yes! In fact, to tell the truth"—he continually lets one in on secrets—"it was the educational value of the Crusade that made me especially glad to bring it onto our campus. People at a university tend to exist in an ivory tower; they forget the many different types that make up :he outside world. What the students saw, rolling in here by the busload, was the real America." A new, an iron note had entered his voice. Now students were not being taught by one speaker, whose presence they had requested; they were being impressed by thousands of "good American" types they ignore or do not know about (and therefore could not request as "speakers" or supplementary teachers). "It was a cross section of America you know." Yet it was only that kind of American who goes to Graham crusades, a type these students see about them in the Knoxville community. The point of Weaver's Agnew outburst was not that kids do not see good Americans - but that they do not—not out here, on the Big Orange campus—heed them enough, grasp their number and importance, fear them adequately. These buses rode, with their silent majority of bitter kid-hating Christians, as the Klan once rode, to impress men with reserves of force to be summoned at need. A lesson was being taught. The experience was educational.
Yet the point of the open speaker program, as it touches on education, is that the university is responsible for allowing or not allowing speakers to address students—so responsible that it could be sued when, for instance, Dick Gregory was banned. President Holt, nonetheless, claims the university had no responsibility in the Graham affair—an outside activity performed on land leased away from the school. "Well, I don't know about that. All I know is that the open-door policy is here, and Graham's appearance was the big spike that nailed that door open." Yet Graham's appearance was not controversial with the surrounding community—not an extreme instance, proving how far the mandate stretches—as, say, William Kunstler's appearance was. Why wasn't it Kunstler who nailed the door open? "Yes, but don't you seel Now I can say, to anyone in Knoxville who objects to a Kunstler, or whoever, that he appears because of the same policy that let Billy come onto the campus. And who can object to the policy thenl" He smiled beatiflcally, like one who just found the philosopher's stone, That was how Billy came— making it possible for Nixon to come. The President had been invited, by Andy Holt, to appear on the very day when he did show up (May 28, a Thursday), as part of the school's 175th anniversary. But Nixon, invited onto a campus, has tended to be busy and regretful, even when the campus is full of Volunteers, of Southern football lemmings and military suicides. Now, however, Dr. Holt's golf partner, Billy Graham, could call his friend the President on in, with the assurance that 100,000 avid Crusaders, psychic bodyguards in this harsh academic terrain, would emanate warmth all around him in the stadium like a living protective shell.
And Knoxville police, looking about for applicable laws, had found one to protect him from "political" dissent. Tennessee statute TCA 39-1204 forbids anyone to disrupt a religious service. That would allow cops to take away political placards, ban any political shouts (even those for Nixon), expel all who indulged in politics during "the service" so much for outside agitators. For inside ones, the police had another inhibitor. After a disturbance on January 15 of this year, police had identified and arrested some of those present, with the help of photographs; now they would ostentatiously shuffle those same photos while taking new ones, pointing (pointedly) at known campus radicals; promising, by that simple act. more arrests of the January 15 sort. Just to make sure that the nonpolitical nature of the meeting was understood, the campaign manager for Republican senatorial candidate Bill Brock, on the night before Nixon's appearance, talked with a Nixon advance man, Dick Andrews, and told Y.A.F. people not to bring their placards to the stadium—instead to line the motorcade route with them.
Would the plan work? Secret Service men, after careful soundings, decided that it would. After all, this was Big Orange Country. The school belonged to the community, which belonged to the First Baptist Church, which was heart and soul (if only he would have them) devoted to Billy, who is servitor and celebrator of any President (of power), but especially of his friend and fellow addict of success-religiosity, Richard Nixon. Town, gown, bank, church, and Crusade were of one mind. Even the Mayor of Knoxville addressed the Crusade, sang in its choir, and acted as counselor to those coming out of the stands, after Billy's sermon, to make their decision for Christ on the rubber turf. He also issued a proclamation to all city employees, telling them to renew their commitment to God. The police chief's daughter told the Crusade why she was an American. A high-school graduating class held its baccalaureate service at the Crusade, in its gowns and mortarboards. If this was not Nixon country, then what is?
But what of the university's own students? Would they join this universal hymn of praise to God and Nixon? The question hardly crossed local people's minds. The U.T. product was well-known—the perfect fraternity man, the perfect sorority girl. Call them Ken and Barbie— they were mainly wardrobe. "The first thing we did to a pledge," one senior remembered for me, "was grab his shirt by the collar and look at his label. London Fog coats, Gant shirts, Canterbury belts, Haggar slacks, a red carnation on one's blazer, three-piece suits— that's what we looked for."
It made a pretty package, whether male or female. Barbie, for instance; Tricia Nixon corn-fed to pleasanter roundnesses—a Tricia with a body, as it were; and with the same fixed smile, the lidless doll-gaze, to proclaim unassuming dutifulness. Barbie is pretty, glib, obedient, glowing—every Big Orange footballer's patriotic wet-dream.
Or Barry—Barry Bozeman. His father, a local politician, was the university's head of student activities as an undergraduate; his mother was editor of the school paper and a Torehbearer (one of the all-round top-seven seniors). Barry had not missed a single home game since he was six years old; he had acted in the university's theatre for children. Easily, with no effort, he became president of his freshman class (in which capacity he led a demonstration in favor of the Vietnam war), president of his fraternity (Phi Sigma Kappa). Pinned for a while to the Phi Sig National Moonlight Girl, he returned to his high-school sweetheart, the storybook ending. Another perfect product, Ken-Barry matching Barbie-Sue, ready to be set up like a trophy in some cushioned Knoxville office. But what happens when Perfection displays a crack or a flaw? Terrible things in Knoxville and that’s what happened with Barry, last fall, while he was working as a booking agent for a rock band, he began to let his hair grow. All his father's friends noticed, and whispered, and his father noticed their whispers. Which led to an ultimatum by Christmas—cut his hair or get out of the house. Barry got out; got arrested with twenty-one others in the January 15 campus disturbance; joined a March Against Repression led by Jerry Rubin, in Nashville; ran—and ran strong— as a radical for Student President this spring. Something bad was happening on campus.
So Barry, once the rah-iest of rah-boys, was there, with two hundred others, on the day before Nixon came, plotting ways to show student disapproval of his coming. It was a small group but influential, containing most of the active politicians on campus. Even the new Student President, a conservative, was there—John Smith. The Student Government Association used to belong to the fraternities, but changes had been taking place across the last four years. John Smith, Barry's Phi Sig brother, barely squeaked in when the school's Left vote split between the "radical" (Barry) and a "liberal" candidate. Smith had Y.A.F. people on his ticket, but he knew the temper of the school was still set by his predecessor, an immensely popular, darkly skeptical young man— and a black. Jimmie Baxter was the first black Student President of any major white Southern university (bad things were happening on campus). Baxter, in his customary Levi's, "shades," and Afro, helped shape this meeting's decision to dis-invite Nixon. A telegram was drafted, and John Smith agreed to send it.
Then Mr. Smith became most elusive. While the meeting had been in progress, three of his friends were on phones to White House aides, asking that "Johnny" be allowed to see the President. The response was heartening—they were already answering questions suggestive of "security" clearance for Smith. In this area, his credentials were very good, very conservative —except for the damn telegram.
He decided to sit on it. And when he heard that night about uncomplimentary telegrams sent to the White House by students, singly or in groups, he feared that Baxter or others might send something in the Student Government's name, even send the telegram drafted for his signature; so, without telling anyone but his three friends, he sent his own telegram at one-thirty Thursday morning (the day of the visit) welcoming Nixon in the name of the student body. At the very last, the eleventh hour, things had all fallen into place for the President; even the campus had joined the chorus of universal praise.
Next day, Jimmie Baxter was mad. He sent his own telegram, as this year's Student President (just out of office one week), telling Nixon he was not welcome. Then he sought out Smith, next year's President (just installed), with a demand: if Smith went to see Nixon, he must take Baxter (Baxter could have made it stick before any student gathering). Smith said yes-I agreed to meet him that afternoon to arrange things but failed to show up.
What further protests would work in this Bible-tipsy town where Nixon's appearance was protected as some kind of religious epiphany? Several hundred people—faculty and students—gathered that afternoon, defying an informal ban on public meetings, to discuss the matter. They agreed on a religious protest, their only signs quotes from Scripture ("Thou Shalt Not Kill"), their only gesture the V-for-peace, their only action a silent filing down onto the field to kneel in prayer for the war dead.
The stadium was packed by late afternoon. A first glimpse (between two buildings) of its great upper tier made it seem like a patch of sky suddenly marbled, a bright mosaic catching the sun's late rays. Before Nixon arrived, the place was overcrowded and its gates sealed. People squabbled with impassive cops at each break in the fence. Maintenance men hung a closed-circuit TV out one window and collected a small mob. Some scrambled up the campus's famous Hill, a Civil War redoubt, and sat on the school colophon (T superimposed on U) poured in cement across the slope—a gift from Barry's fraternity when he was president.
Meanwhile, Barry was inside, with a group of protesters who arrived together and were sealed off in one section by police. They could not get out, nor others in. Some who came to protest were kept out of the stadium with other late arrivers; others had to sit in small groups scattered through the audience. A few had smuggled in large sheets of paper—cardboard and placards were taken at the gates—that said "Thou Shalt Not Kill," and the main group of kids stood out in this starched Sunday-school crowd by their ragged locks and beggars' clothes.
When a first arrest was made— a boy with long hair (Gary Thompson?) dragged on to the field, then marched down all its length by the police— the Sunday-school crowd went wild with applause. The religious service was on. This made it religious. Preachers and policemen chase, assist, become each other here. Workers in the Graham organization, beefy Southwest minister-types, prowled the aisles with plainclothesmen, and looked like them; they are brothers, alter egos, Doppelgangers. Billy himself is just God's friendliest cop, preaching "Jesus must convict the sinner, or he would be a liar, he would lose his holiness"— as Barry lost his, by growing long hair.
The kids forgot all their plans to be sedate in this Colosseum of religious hatred. "Outside slime!" one Grant Wood granny shrilled across two sections of the stadium, shaking the black prayer book or Bible in her hand. Police worked their way all around the "hippie"
group, and bunched in front of them on the football sidelines - Vols, twitchy for action; one rubbed his pistol butt lovingly as he watched the kids, meditative masturbation. A photographer for the school paper had gone in among the demonstrators to snap pictures. When he tried to get out of that section a State Trooper stopped him then since the boy argued with him he threw the gate open, braced himself in a half-squat, spred his arms wide open like a Japanese wrestler’s, un-crotched his Jockey shorts with a deeper squat and jiggle and said, "All right, come on, you bastard." A Secret Service man glided up to him, whispered, "Cool it," and closed the gate. The trooper looked about, rage baffled of a target; saw me writing what had happened, and took a taurine swerve in my direction. I backpedaled ingloriously into the stadium's locker room, where press tables had been set up.
There were about two hundred young people shouting slogans against Nixon. Some of these held the paper signs. Others held signs but did not shout. Still others, dressed "straight," simply stood with the protesting faction—some faculty members among them. There were roughly a thousand dissidents scattered about—one percent of the crowd inside or at the stadium, a number easily ignored. (The TV camera taping the whole "service" never swung in their direction; it was a private crew, hired by Graham; its tape was leased to commercial stations later that night.) But the crowd did not want to ignore these kids. It faced toward the main patch of them, shouted back, pointed out the sinners in their temple with righteous attention and anger—and goaded the kids to new indignities. This was undoubtedly the first Graham Crusade where hundreds of people chanted, in angry replication, "Bullshit! Bullshit!"—seized, it is true, by a surge of mere anger, but also by a clear new realization, with Billy and everybody up there, of this region's whole interconnected-ness of bullshit and religiosity.
There was a roar when a black minister prayed for our beloved President. As Graham introduced Nixon with a roll call of other Presidents who had made unpopular (but correct) decisions, The protesters chanted, "Politics! Politics!" Then Nixon. He rose, at this non-political religious service, from a platform studded with Republican candidates and officeholders. Democrats like Senator Albert Gore (who happened to be in Knoxville that night) were not invited, on the excuse that this was an East Tennessee Crusade. Yet Dan Kuykendall, from farther west than Gore himself, was present and prominent. All the state's Republicans seemed to have got religion at the same time, "Tex" Ritter, to his credit, refused an invitation, saying he did not mix his politics and religion. Nixon's "four years warming the bench" line was inevitable, here on the football field. But he added, "Even if we are on the twenty-yard line, we are going to be over that goal line before we are through"—and the kids went into their football chant: "Push'm back, Push'm back, Wa-a-ay back!" At times he could not go on ("if I could have your attention for just a moment"), not so much because of the two hundred shouters; because of the large crowd shouting back at the small crowd. Nixon looking uncomfortable made the best of it –“I’m just glad that there seems to be a rather solid majority on one side rather than the other side tonight.”
The pitch was to youth so Nixon used what he as been told was his surefire youth issue one his youngest white house aide Christopher DeMuth worked up for him pollution. “I want the air to be clean and it will be clean." (Kids take up the Jerry Rubin cry, "Do it! Do it!")
Most of the crowd's emotion, heated up before Nixon arrived, was sheer hostility bounced off the kids. But he will settle for that, thank the crowd on-camera for its "warm reception," and trust that the cheers and jeers, mingled, would all sound like hosannas on TV. And they did.
Most of the "longhairs" left when Nixon finished. Only a few stayed for Graham's fervorino, then tried to get onto the field when he issued his call. They were stopped by police, semi-frisked, stripped once more of their signs (those who smuggled them in, or improvised them inside), asked questions, turned back—though some made it through and talked with "counselors" about the war. Some were arrested.
The national press contingent was gone by this time, racing for its plane to San Clemente. It knew nothing of the Crusade's slick operation on the campus, what a faculty member would later call "the rape of this university." Some of the Graham press people told newsmen that tonight's audience of 100,000 was made up of students— eighty percent of it under twenty-five years of age—and contained most of The University of Tennessee student body (both statements false). More important, Graham had welcomed Nixon not to the Crusade but "to the campus of The University of Tennessee. ... In a day of student unrest, here on the campus of one of the largest universities in America." And Nixon had not thanked the Crusade for his invitation, but said, "It is a great privilege to be on the campus of the largest university in the South." The news angle was obvious—even after Cambodia and Kent State and Jackson State, the President could be well-received by college students.
And to cap it all, along came Smith, the Student President. He rode to Air Force One in the same car with Bebe Rebozo (who muttered, darkly, of the demonstrators. "There's only one way to handle them") and H. R. Haldeman's wife. Mrs. Haldeman asked Smith how the university's three-day strike after Kent State had been kept peaceful—he did not answer, what was the truth, that his black predecessor, Jimmie Baxter, kept the lid on, growling at students that they were outgunned by the cops.
On the plane, Nixon asked Smith what troubles the youth of today. Two things, he was answered—they think the war unconstitutional, and they need a higher goal than the merely material things. Smith had just heard both Nixon and Graham say, on the platform, that youth needs a higher goal than the merely material things. This is how the President discovers what is troubling youth. Smith, off the plane photographed, interviewed, sighed with relief that the President does understand and care for the youth. I talked, the day after, with Smith. Short, with a vacant fraternity face, his eyes bleared, he was suffering a political hangover after his bender of publicity. Did he think yesterday's Crusade a religious service or a political meeting? "Political." Was the aim to convince the nation that students would still welcome Nixon? "Yes." Is that a misconception? “Yes” Didn’t you help create that misconception with your telegram of welcomyou’re your praise for Nixon? "Well, I do believe he understands our problems." What about the telegram? I think most of the students here would welcome a chance to see the President." Even under these phony auspices? "Probably." Do you consider that an informed or an informed preference? "Uninformed I suppose." Yet you cater to it? "Well, I just wanted to size up the President for myself. I don't opinions about people I have not met." You satisfied your curiosity: "Look, didn't I get a chance speak out against the war?" About it’s unconstitutionality? "Yes." Don’t you think kids would still oppose the war as immoral even if it was legal? "Sure, but I could denounce the war the same way radicals do and never get a chance to see President. It is a question of sounding off before 23,000 students or giving my views on the war to millions of television viewers." bleared eyes had lit up, last night fuming once more into his brain, an intoxicant. I left with a strong impression I could not, at first, define -- but eventually it came to me, I had been talking to a twenty-year old Nixon.
And Nixon, all the Nixons, won. The reception was warm; his gamble paid off; the con job 1 worked. Though his son-in-law and daughter could not attend their own graduations (at Amherst a Smith) this year, Nixon could still go onto a campus - a Southern campus, admittedly. The Crusade gave him a sheltering presence of 100,0001 hot-gospelers out of the hills, a whole stadium of bodyguards. Still he did it. Results are what count that instant impression carried to San Clemente in the press plane filed that night to hundreds papers. He had made it "over that goal."
And yet, and yet. . . . Just as the Crusade crowd could not ignore that small irritant, those hippie-clothed hecklers, in its midst, so Knoxville could not forgo some act of vengeance on the hippies—though that might disturb the impression that Nixon came wafted peacefully on campus, and left it in tranquility behind him.
Nixon had appeared Thursday. Sunday, Graham folded carnival tent, and left. Students were cramming for exams; nasty rumors were already circulating - of arrests to be made, attempts to get at kids involved earlier protests, of indignation being worked up by local papers and politicians, of "blasphemy" performed at the Crusade and crying to heaven for punishment. On Mayday, the rumors were confirmed; police said they would arrest "about fifty" of the hecklers all those they could identify from photographs. By Tuesday morning, fifty-seven warrants had been sworn out. It was the last day of exams, and rainy. Arrest teams cruised around the campus, two men to a car—campus policeman to identify, city police take in custody. Kids were snatched from church communes and street corners. Two full-time faculty members and two teaching assistants were booked. A dean's office employee called a teaching assistant ("We need update department files") to get 1 address for the cops. President Holt was out of town. Exams went on. The school paper had closed down for the year. Everything seemed to help the police. Attempted protest rallies on that first day got rained out. The arrest cars came and went everywhere in the downpour, kids learned to fear the sucking sound of their tires on the wet street.
That night there was a student meeting. Even a twenty-year-old Nixon had to realize these charges were flimsy, were widely resented on campus—John Smith denounced the arrests as acts of political repression. The community was punishing the campus because it did not join the Crusade, heart and soul, in support of Nixon's policies. Eighty professors met in support of those arrested and intended to join the meeting, to appear onstage waving V-signs for photographers—here, where teachers had always been told, in a thousand subtle ways, to serve Knoxville's city fathers, not their students. The student meeting had disbanded, but the teachers' protest went on.
John Smith, joined by the local chapter of the A.A.U.P., authorized a telephone call to Nixon's campus adviser, Alexander Heard, asking that the President call for an end to the arrests (Secret Service men had opposed them all along). Len Garment responded with a wire from the White House to Knoxville's mayor: Nixon did not consider the protest violent or disruptive, merely rude; he asked the authorities to be temperate, not to arrest students during exams. The mayor ignored the telegram, said it would be discriminatory and unfair to the nine arrested that night if all other hecklers were not arrested and punished. A teaching assistant John Riches appealed to various Congressmen. Allard Lowenstein came down from New York and held a tape recorded hearing. Two of those arrested went to Washington to present a transcript of that hearing to the Justice Department.
Dr. Holt, through it all, was serenely detached. But when he promised to cooperate with authorities in their search, two hundred students signed a confession that they had heckled Nixon, and dared their president to turn them in. He fudged that issue, went back to his stand that the school was not involved. I asked him, if that were the case, why campus police were identifying people. "They just happened to be in the stadium that night—you know, when a President drops by, all local security forces are called on—so they happened to see some hecklers they knew." But it was clear that campus police had not spent much time on their immediate task of keeping the peace Thursday night; they were busily collecting evidence - spotting people, helping photographers—for use in future trials against "campus troublemakers."
I went to ask Chancellor Weaver a question: If Nixon had gone to a Washington church (as he does on occasion) and listened to the sermon (as he does), but then rose to give the very same speech he delivered at the Crusade, who would be considered in bad taste, exploiting a religious service? "That's a good question. I don't know about that. The courts will have to settle it. All I know is that we had to let Graham and Nixon speak, under our open-door policy."
I went to Ed Boling, who will take office in September as Holt's successor. He had worked for Governor Buford Ellington in the state finance department before coming to Knoxville as Vice-President for Development. Everyone knew he was heir apparent, but respectable cover was sought for his appointment—faculty-student "hunt committees" on three state campuses were asked for recommendations. All three rejected Boling for his lack of academic background. Yet the Governor got his way, and Boling was appointed in December. That led to the student protest in which Barry, and twenty-one others, were arrested on January 15. Peter Kami, a Brazilian student organizer (known to the Knoxville community as "Peter Commie"), challenged Boling to a wrestling match for the presidency, since muscle and sheer force seemed the acceptable qualifications. When a crowd gathered on the Hill to hear Kami elaborate his Yippie challenge, police moved in with another of those useful Tennessee statutes—this one against gatherings of more than three where any potential for trouble exists.
Boling, beginning his reign under this shadow, knows who his masters are: "I think it was a religious gathering, and if there is one thing this community will not put up with it is mocking any man's religion." This community is his theme. He is proud, not apologetic, on the question of his academic background. "Academician presidents are naturally on the teacher's side, and they have bent over too far in that direction. Now we need manager-presidents to right the balance, repair the damage done by the other type, and make the university serve the community again. When the faculty comes to me with complaints, I threaten them—well, I don't openly threaten them, I kind of subtly threaten them—by mentioning all the letters I got from the community, during our three-day strike this year, asking why taxpayers should pay teachers who do not teach. And I can tell you this: we have an academic calendar announced for next year, and we will stick to it. I will not even deal with those who want to depart from it."
It was Big Orange Country serving notice on the school. When John Smith called another rally on the Hill, repeating circumstances of the January bust, right-wing students brought union men onto the campus to guard buildings and "prevent vandalism." Even a faculty often cowed by city fathers will not long submit to such open coercion by Knoxville's know-nothings. Students were outraged to hear that the Y.A.F. candidate (Ron Leadbetter?) in the last student election was financed by a local businessman.
This is the prospect, then, for the coming school year. While other students, across the country, campaign for peace candidates, a new president will insist that The University of Tennessee's calendar not be interrupted. John Smith will start his year as Student President having forfeited conservative support by calling the city repressive; yet he is not trusted, either, by the student left. In any trouble, he will not have Jimmie Baxter's moral leverage or radical credentials when trying to"cool it." Meanwhile, Knoxville will have a string of political trials stretching out through the fall, trials of the January 15 twenty-two, trials of the Nixon hecklers. The community will want blood; the administration will profess noninvolvement; the faculty and students, already convinced that the charges (in both cases) are unjust, will harden toward resistance as the local cry for vengeance rises in intensity.
The long-range lesson of Nixon's pyrrhic victory is clear. Even so large and well-oiled a con operation would not work a second time at The University of Tennessee. And if it cannot be made to work here, it will not work anywhere. Furthermore, Nixon left behind him a train of disruptive conditions. Kunstler was opposed, when he came, because he might cause trouble. But he did not. Nixon did. What campus can afford to have the President come if even this campus, while inundated by Graham's Crusaders, could not weather the experience without radicalizing its students?
Those are the lessons of the visit; but Knoxville will refuse to learn them. The city pushes on where even Nixon—or John Smith— would hesitate. It has a growing, quite justified certitude that something has unsettled this hill country's central hearth. Outside forces, alien, professing strange beliefs, have taken their campus away from Big Orangers. And the outsiders are their children.
There will still be Barbies, predictably, sorority Sues, the old product—which Knoxville knows how to humor and honor. But there will also be Barrys, be more of them by this fall, their number increasing all through the foreseeable future—and Knoxville does not know what to make of Barry, or do with him. It must simply, with Ed Boling, not deal with him. It will try to crush the Barrys, thus making their number grow.
And what, meanwhile, does Barry make of his father? "I have given up trying to see him." Why, because you can't make him understand your position? "No, because I might. If I could persuade him, it would destroy him. It would make everything he worked for meaningless. I don't want to see that happen to him."
That sentence tips the balance for Nixon—victory (pyrrhic or otherwise) to defeat. It heralds the end of the hard-hat war on long hair. Age is, by convention, forbearing. It endures youth's indiscretions because it foresees, all along, their term. The high jinks over, serious life begins. But when the elders are too terrified to deal with their own young, unable to imagine any world their garb and locks portend; when, by contrast, the children begin to forgive, confident that time is on their side, not needing to rub in their victory, then that victory is assured. Even here, in "hill vote" territory. In what Nixon, nervous on the twenty-yard line, called "the largest university in the South."