Return to Front Burner

BLACK COOKIES (AND HISPANIC COOKIES AND ...)

A sweet, sartorially challenged, stuffy-headed FrontBurnervian writes:

Hey, I'm curious to know what the FB staff thinks of the aborted affirmative action bake sale at SMU. I'm appalled that when confronted by a violent element that wants to shut down a legitimate political protest, SMU sends in campus security not to defend the free-speech rights of the protesters, but to gag them. Aren't you?

If you missed the story, here tis. Basically, some wacky-ass right-wing students were having a bake sale wherein cookies were priced $1. For white women, though, they only cost 75 cents. For Hispanics: 50 cents. And so forth.

No. I'm not appalled. Or, rather, yes, I am appalled. But everything turned out for the best. If you're a Hispanic student and you don't believe in free speech and you wanted the bake sale shut down, you're happy. It was shut down. And if you're selling the cookies, you WANT to be shut down. Because then it becomes a real news story. People read about it. People blog about it.

It's like the PETA nuts. Some PETA chick (who you wished was hotter than she turns out to be) gets naked and locks herself in a cage on a street corner to protest the treatment of circus ferrets or what have you, and she gets arrested for being naked and locked in a cage on a street corner. She's exercising her right to free speech. But she WANTS to get arrested. So it becomes a real news story.

So everyone wins at the SMU bake sale.

But there was a much smarter way to shut it down. Blacks could buy cookies for a quarter. All you needed was one black guy with $20 to walk up and buy every cookie they had. Bake sale over.

Tim Rogers · September 25, 2003 02:05 PM