On Fat Joe and Breaking the Rules

By Sara Gordon

The collegiate contingent of the vast left-wing catastrophe met yesterday at The Center for American Progress's second annual Campus Progress conference in Washington D.C. David Halperin of the Center for American Progress opened the program, by romancing the ballroom of liberal student activists with cute wordplay and tired jokes about conservatives, but then turned serious:
"[Liberals] have failed to inspire and unite. Older generations have not done the job�.There are so many challenges and opportunities, and instead of meeting them we�re spinning our wheels�.You can get us on the path to progress."

And let me tell you, those wheels are still spinning.

Adrienne Marie Brown, author of How to Get Stupid White Men out of Office spoke to the students with a very stimulating message: she explained to them that they will see things in the world they don't like, so they have to, "Get out there and break the f*#king rules!"

Sure, Adrienne, breaking the "f*#king rules" will surely progress your party forward.

The conference continued with a variety of panel discussions that focused on more specific issues. The first was entitled, "What are you doing with the rest of your life?" This panel dished out basic advice on finding a career and pursuing what you love as well as other good tips for life, such as: forging documents will help you get ahead in your chosen field. That's the advice from Samantha Power, a Harvard Professor and author of "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide." As she described her career path, she explained to the crowd of young liberals (all ready to "break the rules") that she needed a document from U.S. News and World Report that would allow her to be a war correspondent, but they would not give the document to her. After asking the moderator if the program was being filmed no less than three times, she told the crowd that, "When the cleaning ladies came in [to the U.S. News and World Report offices]�you know [laughs]."

Campus Progress staff then gave us all a preview of their new commercials regarding the growing problem of college student debt. Campus Progress dodged the issue of student credit card spending and student financial responsibility and blamed these personal financial responsibility issues on the Bush administration. Robert D. Manning, a professor and president of Newtonian Finances, Ltd writes, "By the late 1990s, over 70 percent of college students at four-year institutions had credit cards and banks commonly marketed them to freshmen. With more time to accumulate debt and much higher lines of credit, students began amassing much larger debt burdens, with $15,000 to $20,000 in cumulative 'plastic' balances not an uncommon experience."

I wonder if Campus Progress knows about the fantastic scholarship opportunities provided by the ROTC?

I then sat through more crude jokes and low blows at my own Republican party. Paul Begala, political analyst and CNN commentator, told the crowd that when one of his younger sons asked him what Viagra was for he responded to his son with, "You won't have to worry about that son- only Republican men have erectile dysfunction."

Those wheels just keep on spinning.

Begala helped to introduce Senator Barack Obama, who was the keynote speaker. The Senator delivered a very neutral speech about choosing a career that encompasses what you love and the importance of giving back to the community. In regards to anything political he only briefly mentioned that we have to "kick the oil habit."

The conference featured several "break-out" panels including, "The War on Science" which reviewed the liberal perspective on issues such as HPV, global warming, and why men's Viagra prescriptions aren't controversial and abortion and birth control are.

In another break-out session on hip-hop entitled, "Is It Better Than Hip-Hop?" popular rapper Fat Joe joined a panel of activists working for Citizen Change, the League of Young Voters, and others involved in hip-hop culture to address the young crowd. The dialogue ranged from questions regarding whether "hip-hop is only for black people" to, "Do you agree with Jay-Z's boycott of Cristal?" Surely the progressive movement has more pertinent things to talk about than boycotting 300 dollar bottles of champagne. Then, Fat Joe addressed the women of hip-hop: "I think some girls are bitches, some girls are hos."

Where are the feminists when you hear a comment like that!? Here's a rapper who celebrates the degradation of women in his lyrics and music videos, he even calls the women in his hip-hop scene "bitches and hos," and this gets no response? Again I ask: where are the feminists?

I guess "breaking the rules" a few times doesn't get anyone in trouble. But it doesn't get anything done either. The purpose of this conference was to help the Progressive movement pick up the speed by energizing young people. Yet this movement is stuck; this movement is bitter; this movement is profane; this movement is irresponsible; and this movement is raising a culture not of free thinkers, but irrational ones.

Sara Gordon is a junior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum and a student at Smith College.