About Those Concerned Alumni

Yesterday, we wondered about the article from the Concerned Alumni of Princeton’s magazine, Prospect, that Ted Kennedy used to discredit that organization. It sounded suspiciously like a humor piece. This was the dialogue that Kennedy had with Judge Alito:

KENNEDY: You called CAP a “conservative alumni group.”
It also published a publication called Prospect, which includes articles by CAP members about the policies that the organization promoted. You’re familiar with that?
ALITO: I don’t recall seeing the magazine. I might have seen…
KENNEDY: Did you know that they had a magazine?
ALITO: I’ve learned of that in recent weeks.
KENNEDY: So a 1983 Prospect essay titled “In Defense of Elitism,” stated, quote, “People nowadays just don’t seem to know their place. Everywhere one turns, blacks and Hispanics are demanding jobs simply because they’re black and Hispanic. The physically handicapped are trying to gain equal representation in professional sports. And homosexuals are demanding the government vouchsafe them the right to bear children.”
Did you read that article?
***
ALITO: I feel confident that I didn’t. I’m not familiar with the article, and I don’t know the context in which those things were said. But they are antithetical…
KENNEDY: Well, could you think of any context that they could be…
ALITO: Hard to imagine.
If that’s what anybody wat if this is the most “offensive” article CAP was responsible for in its decade-plus of existence, the Democrats’ whole guilt-by-association effort was much ado about nothing. If being associated, however remotely, with attempts at humor that don’t turn out to be very funny is enough to place a public figure beyond the pale, the Democrats had better stay away from Al Franken.

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