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In the course of the next two months, Eden's plight was front page news not
only in the Philadelphia newspapers, but, on repeated occasions, in the Los
Angeles Times, the International Herald-Tribune, the Washington Post, the
Washington Times, the (New Jersey) Record, and even the Sacramento Bee, not to
mention hundreds of newspapers that were picking up syndicated reports.
Foreign publications such as the Financial Times (London), the Times (London),
the Toronto Star, and the Spectator (UK) independently treated the story as an
example of America gone insane. As the Financial Times noted on May 8, "In
Europe it is unlikely that one would be caught up in a semi-judicial enquiry
as a result of shouting the names of Asian oxen at one's
colleagues."45 It
praised American press coverage of the affair. Important journals -- the Village
Voice, Rolling Stone, The New Republic, Newsweek, Time,
and U.S. News and World
Report -- devoted much space to the case, all of them understanding full well the
gulf between liberal opinion and Penn's cultural radicalism. The story prompted
a major piece in the New York Times, even evincing an unexpected defense of
free speech from Duke's Stanley Fish, otherwise a star of political correctness,
and the author of a book called There's No Such Thing As Free Speech...And It's
a Good Thing Too.46
The water buffalo case had become a sensation. It was not merely news, but the
occasion for often multiple major substantive editorials in the nation's
leading newspapers. It also was covered on all major television news programs.
On NBC Nightly News, John Chancellor explained the broader implications of the
event, offering, on May 13, a commentary on Eden's prosecution:
Eden Jacobowitz is a student at the University of Pennsylvania. His studies
were interrupted by a noisy crowd of students, many black and female. He yelled
out his window, "Shut up, you water buffalo." He is now charged with racial
harassment under the university's Code of Conduct. The school offered to dismiss
the charge if he would apologize, attend a racial sensitivity seminar, agree to
dormitory probation, and accept a temporary mark on his record which would brand
him as guilty. He was told the term "water buffalo" could be interpreted as
racist because a water buffalo is a dark primitive animal that lives in Africa.
That is questionable semantics, dubious zoology, and incorrect geography.
Water buffalo live in Asia, not in Africa. This from the University of
Pennsylvania. Mr. Jacobowitz is fighting back. The rest of us, however, are
still in trouble. The language police are at work on the campuses of our better
schools. The word cops are marching under the banner of political correctness.
The culture of victimization is hunting for quarry. American English is in
danger of losing its muscle and energy. That's what these bozos are doing to
us.47
Talk radio also was exploring the case, with equal scorn being displayed
by conservative hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh, particularly mordant on the
affair, and by a bemused but outraged array of National Public Radio outlets.
Eden had brought the networks, conservative radio, and NPR into agreement.
Editorial cartoonists had a particular field-day lampooning Penn's language
and thought police. Gary Trudeau devoted a full-color Sunday Doonesbury to
Penn, focusing on the inanity of speech-codes in general and on the particular
absurdity of taking "water buffalo" as a racial insult.48 The University of
Pennsylvania had become an international laughingstock. Eden, however, still
faced a potential catastrophe.
*****
From the moment that the April 26 hearing was canceled, Eden appealed to Brobeck,
Hackney, and Aiken to drop the charges. Brobeck, a decent man caught up in an
absurd situation, conceded the error of postponing the "unalterable" hearing, but
he refused to rescue Eden from a continuation of the ordeal. Hackney and Aiken
proclaimed themselves incapable of intervening in any judicial matter. In early
May, however, as media attention (and ridicule) intensified, the "independent"
Brobeck knocked, uninvited, on the door of Kors's home to announce that "We have
to have a dispositive hearing on May 14; I've been told to put this behind us."
In response to protests that almost all of Eden's essential witnesses were gone
for the summer, Brobeck relented, and promised that the hearing would involve
only a request to drop the charges. He added that Eden himself need not even
come to Penn for the session. At 10:30 P.M. on the night of Wednesday, May 12,
however, just one full day before the scheduled hearing, Brobeck called Kors at
home: "I have terrible news for you and for me," he said; "I have been instructed
by my superiors that I cannot keep my agreement with you....I've been ordered to
hold a hearing on guilt or innocence on the 14th." Reminded that he had given his
word, that Eden's witnesses were gone, and that his only conceivable "superiors,"
Aiken and Hackney, had proclaimed him categorically independent, he replied:
"Until today, I would have said that I was independent too, but I have bosses,
and they've ordered me to do this.....I have no choice. I have superiors. Please
be gentle with me."
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shadowu@world.std.com
9/19/98
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