Several weeks ago, I wrote for the Louisiana Advocate (daily in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Lafayette) a column asking why protesters greeted Governor Bobby Jindal’s appearance at a prayer rally but had no plans to protest an appearance at Southern University by the hideous Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

The better part of wisdom, especially in the context of a university — which, by definition, is dedicated to the free flow of ideas — is to not protest any speaker unless the address carries with it an explicit or clearly implicit honor, such as at ceremonies related to a college graduation.
But being black, or being of the left, should provide no free pass to the Jeremiah Wrights of the world, from those of a protesting disposition.

Today was the day for Mr. “God-Da** America” himself. And, according to this report by the Advocate’s Elizabeth Crisp, he didn’t disappoint:

He said the war on drugs was a “war on black people” in disguise. He twice took aim at the modern conservative tea party movement and referred to the Southerners who supported the Civil War as “great-grand parents of the tea party.”
“They fought a civil war to keep black folks enslaved and they lost the war,” he said.
Later, he referred to the tea party as the reincarnation of the “lynch party.”

In the course of his speech, I suddenly started seeing tweets saying that Wright had taken offense at my column. Indeed, here is the quote:

The government said we were in a “post racial America” while majoring in black incarceration and minoring in authentic black education and producing journalists like the jackass who wrote about me coming here.

I’ve been called worse, and sometimes deserved it. But, based not at all on his mild invective towards me, but on the entire scope of his provocations through the years (as detailed in my column linked above) the question remains: Why does anybody want to give this man a forum? And what sort of twisted value system would lead somebody to applaud his hateful rants?