This, according to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal today:
While he delivered the commencement address - the final one he will give as president - 14 professors removed their robes and stood in silent protest. They wore white T-shirts that stated bluntly, "We object." A few others showed their distaste for the president by not standing or applauding during the ovation he received when he took the stage.
"I, too, am a firm believer in free speech. And to prove it, I'm about to give you one," Bush said.
For the most part, the president held the crowd's attention, though the occasional flutter of a camera or a key word in his address would stir glances over toward the line of 14.
"The point was not to call attention to ourselves, but to show our students that they can speak out," said David Turner, a physics professor. "It's not a political thing, not a Democrat or Republican thing. It's a human right."
In the weeks leading up to Saturday's graduation exercises, a "We object" letter signed by about 80 faculty, staff, students and others opposing Bush's visit was posted on Furman's Web site. It admonished the president for the war in Iraq, the treatment of so-called enemy combatants, sowing fear and the denial of global warming.
Furman president David Shi, in his charge to the graduating class, seemed at times to also be wagging his finger at the dissatisfied academics. Shi has taken heat for inviting Bush to speak without consulting the faculty.
"Many smart people are prone to take their opinions too seriously," Shi said, receiving applause from the audience but not from the teachers.
"… The humility embedded in our imperfection should prompt us, at least occasionally, to reassess our dogmas, harness our arrogance and slow our keystroke rush to judgment."
Funny that Shi didn't direct any of that clear thinking to the guest delivered to him by South Carolina Governor Mark "Pick Me, Senator McCain, Pick Me" Sanford, only to the men and women who serve him as instructors at the university he leads. It calls to mind the esprit du corps among old plantation owners, commiserating over the foibles of their respective "workforces": Aw, can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. If only they'd do what they're told and stop complaining.
As expected, the Greenville News coverage fairly nuzzles Dubya's crotch as a young spaniel nuzzles his master's. Its website is redolent with photos and text vignettes like this one:
Furman University president Dr. David Shi said in his opening commencement remarks this evening that the university community has been "fervently" anticipating the graduation address from President Bush, eliciting laughter from the football stadium crowd in attendance.
During the opening processional, roughly a dozen faculty members could be seen in white ribbons or silver duct tape armbands of protest.
Shortly after 7:30, Bush emerged from a white tunnel in a blue robe with Shi, walked through a whooping crowd of new graduates and mounted the stage to a roar from the stadium crowd. The Furman Singers offered a rendition of "God of Grace and God of Glory" while Bush chatted with current-year graduate Meredith Neville seated next to him on stage.
Earlier, Bush stepped off Air Force One into a stiff westerly wind at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport at 6:43 p.m. and waved to several dozen local residents in a roped-off area on the tarmac. Greeting him were Gov. Mark Sanford and his sons, Landon and Bolton, Sen. Jim DeMint and his grandson Jimbo, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Rep. Bob Inglis, Mayor Knox White and Susan WIlkins, wife of amabassador to Canada David Wilkins.
Bush briefly stopped into the shadow of his plane for a private, 20-second conversation with Andrew Barnhill, who received the president's customary award for volunteerism, and departed for Furman in a motorcade of more than 30 cars and law enforcement.
Interstate 85 traffic came to a standstill near Pelham Road, where people sat on the roofs of their SUVs and gawked as the motorcade weaved across three empty lanes of traffic.
Small clots of people waved flags and gaped as the caravan motored down Stone Ave. A crowd outside the Handlebar held camera phones aloft and offered mixed hand signals. A man in a grey T-shirt supported an especially large flag on his belt buckle.
The crowds thickened outside the Cherrydale shopping center. One man covered a "Wrong Way" sign with an illegible sign.
The motorcade wound past a crowd holding mixed signs in fron of Furman Hall, and staff and press entered the stadium just as graduates began marching in.
Want a little context for Dubya's visit to South Carolina? The same Greenville News tells us that abused children in the Palmetto State have been cheated by recent legislative budget cuts.
The Legislature's recent funding cut to A Child's Haven will have three times the apparent impact and comes as the number of children living in poverty is growing, an agency official says.
The nonprofit agency offers treatment and support to some 77 children 5 and younger who've been traumatized by poverty, neglect and abuse and their families in Greenville County.
And special projects director Scott Dishman says that in addition to the $135,000 it lost in state funding as Legislators whittled down the state's $7 billion budget, it will also lose the $270,000 in federal Medicaid matching funds the state money drew.
All told, that means about 20 percent of the agency's $2 million budget.
So much for abused children in South Carolina: To hell with 'em.
This, from The State newspaper:
With every brush stroke, Columbia artist Suzy Shealy remembers her son Army Sgt. Joseph Derrick. As Shealy paints scenes from Iraq, she places herself in her son’s combat boots in the dusty streets of Baghdad. She stands watch at dusk as a Black Hawk helicopter flies on the horizon. She patrols an Iraqi marketplace. She overlooks a mosque in Mosul.
The paintings are based on photos that Shealy found in her son’s flash drive, sent home with his belongings after he was killed in September 2005 in Baghdad. They have become her therapy.
“I feel like it’s a gift from God to help me muddle through this,” she said.
What would Dubya say to this woman? "It's good that God has blessed you with this gift, Mom. Keep thinking good thoughts."
What an honor.
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