Kip Full-of-It can call himself an artist, poet, professor, world-class swimmer, identity expert, philosopher, rheumatologist, whatever (we’d add blowhard, though) – apparently his numerous job titles make him the ideal speaker to inform this generation of Andover students. Fulbeck, we imagine, did not disappoint those who brought him here – he was engaging and articulate and provoked quite a bit of discussion. And we would have been with him during Wednesday’s speech to the school, if he had stopped at telling students that they should sacrifice consumption of tabloid sleaze to follow more important issues. That’s fine – Miley Cyrus may be living the best of both worlds, but one of them is running out of fossil fuels. Even that rhetoric would have been too constructive for him. While the school has every right to bring speakers with strong opinions and incendiary rhetoric – in fact we’d love to see more – Fulbeck spewed comparisons between the Vice President and Satan, allegations that McCain “lies out of his ass,” and incorrect quotations to disparage Sarah Palin. Palin’s response to a question on her opinion about the Bush Doctrine was, “In what respect, Charlie?” It’s not much better than Kip’s paraphrased, “What is it?” but give her some credit for the spin. Fulbeck swallowed left-wing, liberal media propaganda – and if only he hadn’t acted as though his opinion were the only one, we might have had more respect for his claims. In his evening session in Kemper, he said he knew no one who voted for Bush. And Fulbeck acted as though gay marriage, something even “our next great president,” Barack Obama, won’t even endorse, is the interracial marriage of our time, when polling shows that less than a third of Americans desire to give gays full marriage rights. It’s election season, and many Seniors will be voting in this election, likely to be a close one. Keeping the students apprised of issues is never a bad thing. But we deserve balance, and we deserve better than what two Seniors called “indoctrinating and patronizing” in this space last year. Political diversity would be great; politics delivered by the reasonable for the reasonable, otherwise not at all, would be a more realistic goal.
