I’m often disappointed at not getting more protesters when I speak — I mean, you only hit the big leagues when someone throws a pie at you. Even when I’ve spoken to a full house at a place like UT Austin (and remember, this is the cover of my book, though the content is less provocative), I couldn’t get the kind of lefty storm-trooper theatrics that Tom Tancredo experienced at Chapel Hill last week.

I mention this because I was supposed to appear on a panel last night at the New School in New York, but got a particularly unpleasant stomach bug (which still graces me with its presence) and had to cancel. So you can imagine my chagrin when I learned that the “Bail Out the People Movement” and the “May 1 Coalition for Workers and Immigrant Rights” were scheduling a press conference outside the auditorium to denounce my appearance on the panel. I look at their websites and weep at the lost opportunities — if only “Comrade Shahid,” for instance (see the Coalition site) could have denounced me as a running-dog of capitalism!