Rice and free speech

"I have defended America's belief in free speech and the exchange of ideas."

So says "Dr." Condoleezza Rice. But in fact The Princess of Torture doesn't quite believe in free speech (just ask a Guantanamo detainee) or, for that matter, in speech that communicates truth. What she most believes in is being paid to speak.

This is why, I would say, she initially accepted to give an address at the Rutgers University commencement ceremonies. She "was scheduled to receive an honorary Rutgers doctorate and $35,000, paid by privately-raised funds to the Rutgers Foundation, in exchange for her speech."

When Rutgers students and faculty protested that a (charged) war criminal should speak at their school, Rice decided that "As a Professor for thirty years at Stanford University and as (its) former Provost and Chief academic officer, I understand and embrace the purpose of the commencement ceremony and I am simply unwilling to detract from it in any way." So she disinvited herself.

So Kondi won't get her 35K. Not the financial end of the world for her. At the University of Minnesota, after all, she raked in $150,000 for opening her mouth at its graduation ceremony this year.

Maybe the Rutgers Foundation can use the money intended  for Condo to provide scholarships for needy students. Or to pay adjuncts decent salaries.

This would be far better than having wasted it on someone who, according to the respected American Historical Review of one of her early academic works, did "not sift facts from propaganda and valid information from disinformation or misinformation."

No wonder the good doctor Rice's "phenomenal skill at spinning," as one of her biographers put it, equipped her so well to "catapult the propaganda" for the Bush II administration.

Image from