In a grotesque example of anti-military bigotry, the University of Washington's Student Senate voted against honoring World War II war hero, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Colonel Greg "Pappy" Boyington. Reason? According to the minutes of the Student Senate meeting, concerns were expressed about honoring "rich white men," "whether it was appropriate to honor a person who killed other people," and whether "a member of the Marine Corps was an example of the sort of person UW wanted to produce."
While I'd heard of Colonel Boyington before, when I read about the man's life, I became even more outraged by the sleazy and cowardly remarks:
It all started after a UW senior sponsored a resolution to create a memorial for Boyington, a Marine Corps colonel and Medal of Honor recipient who wrote about his wartime exploits as a fighter pilot in the South Pacific in his best-selling book, “Baa Baa Black Sheep.”
Boyington and his “Black Sheep” squadron later were the inspiration for a television show starring Robert Conrad.
On Feb. 7, during a student senate debate on the resolution, critics questioned why the university should pay tribute to a Marine, someone who killed others. One student leader suggested the school had honored enough rich, white men.
Forty-five students supported the resolution, but it failed by one vote.
The next day, Kirby Wilbur, the morning radio talk-show host on Seattle station KVI, broadcast the news based on an e-mail from a member of the UW College Republicans.
“Our phones were slammed for a full hour with our audience,” producer Matt Haver told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for a story in Thursday editions. “They were literally incensed with it.”
Boyington shot down 22 planes with the Black Sheep Squadron, making him one of the war’s highest-ranking aces. Earlier, he flew with the Flying Tigers in China.
He was shot down on Jan. 3, 1944. Presumed dead, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
He had been taken prisoner, however, and was freed with the end of the war. He died in 1988 in Fresno, Calif., and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Far from being wealthy, Boyington, a Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, native and 1934 engineering graduate of the University of Washington, struggled with money and alcohol for much of his life.
Yeah, some rich white guy. But I guess it wasn't enough to just smear him for being a military hero; probably to build a "consensus," the students had to come up with an additional crime. Accuse the man of belonging to the evil white race. (The man was of Sioux descent.)
Why am I not expecting Ward Churchill to leap to this Indian's defense?
McQ at QandO has more on the disgraceful interplay of political correctness and woeful ignorance of history:
Thankfully the rest of us understand the incredible achievement of Pappy Boyington and honor his service and valor. As for the student government of the Univeristy of Washington? They need a history refresher badly. And this time, the political correctness which has apparently so infected the version they last studied needs to be left aside. They need to do some homework on men like Greg Boyington and the honor with which he was bestowed before being so disrespectful of his achievement.
Disgraceful.
Apparently, now that this has attracted talk radio and blogospheric attention, there's been an attempt at backtracking, but the real outrage is that it happened at all.
God help us if we're ever in a real war like World War II.
(I'm almost tempted to call these young slimebags "Cultural Marxists." But I think it would be a mistake to credit them with having read or understood Marx.)
posted by Eric on 02.24.06 at 11:41 AM
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Comments
"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."
Outrageous! I'm amazed at the ignorance of some people, and it seems as if our college-aged youth, few of them well-schooled, tend to be either gung-ho patriots who want to join the Marines or moral jellyfish who populate our colleges.
If they prefer to honor someone who is the complete opposite of this man, it's already been done all over the world.
One doesn't have to look far to find a shrine to Jesus or Buddha.
TRACY · February 24, 2006 04:32 PM
I got together with some former marine buddies of mine and sent out a group open letter to the university. It was amusing to see the spin the university sent back.
You have to wonder about an institution that produces moonbats who are free to criticize Pappy as evil, but miss that had Pappy’s side lost, they wouldn’t be free to do anything.
Did you guys read what actulally went on in the minutes (it's not that long)? The final vote was a tie(45-45-10), with a tie braker cast by the senate chair. The (boneheaded) comments you guys are going after came from two students, out of a hundred seat senate. 2 out of 100 is less boneheaded comments than are in this discussion.
Other sutdent concerns were:
Why won't the memmorial commemorate all the alumni who fought in the War?
How would the statue be funded?
Could they reach a point where there were too many memorials on campus?
Just because these students voted against a statue for this guy doesn't make it a University -wide "smear".
Al · February 24, 2006 05:42 PM
In addition to the points from Al above, I have read that the student putting out the proposal is regarded as something of a flake, and was not att all prepared with information.
Amusing sidenote: Col. Boyington sometimes laughingly referred to himself as a Japanese ace: he crashed/destroyed at least five of the first batch of crates, er, planes used by Chennault's group in Chna.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."