Energy Politics

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman made the mistake of continuing to support ethanol after the college elites decided that oops, turns out corn usage is a zero sum game where you reduce its presence as food once you dedicate it to energy use instead. For his sin of bolstering this argument mere days after the issue started coming to light, he was rewarded with a pie in the face at Brown University. During a speech at the university, two members of a group referring to itself as the Greenwash Guerillas ambushed Friedman on stage by flinging pies at him. Most of the audience was stunned, and then shouted at the vandals and applauded for Friedman.

One of the attackers was captured, and in an extreme moment of chutzpah said she “wanted to open up a dialogue about what it really means to have free speech on an elite college campus like Brown.”

Free speech? You just attacked someone whom you disagree with. That doesn’t sound like free speech to me. It’s sounds pretty fascist to me.

I guess the real issue here isn’t danger of flying pastries at college campuses. No, it’s the fickle nature of protesters, and how quickly they feel entitled to attack someone after a new idea is introduced into the public discussion. Just how soon after the media starts mentioning something are you allowed to attack people over it? And for goodness sake, just how serious should I take the message of someone who has chosen to channel the Three Stooges for their act of disobedience?

–Stephen Payne, Editor, Oil and Gas Investor This Week; spayne@hartenergy.com

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