I wish everyone a happy and joyous Columbus Day. That is, unless you attend Columbia University, that lefty Ivy campus uptown that is — holy irony! — named for none other than Christopher Columbus himself.
Today, city schoolkids, government offices, courts and your mailman take a day off to honor the guy who paved the way for modern civilization. But at Columbia, classes are running as usual, as a wimpy administration, I have learned, conducts a stealth ban on Columbus.
Rather than nuke the holiday, Columbia ignores it. That is, Columbia simply wishes Columbus Day would go away.
Social critics say there exists a war on Christmas, with a manger dismantled at the Staten Island Mall, religious music removed from schools in Maplewood, NJ, and — for goodness’ sake — red and green napkins prohibited on school tables in Plano, Texas.
But I would venture to say that the war on Columbus Day is far more virulent. While no one would dare malign the Christian savior, shouts of “murderer” have long been carpet-bombing the Italian explorer who stumbled on the Americas, thereby setting the stage for the creation of penicillin, malls and Twitter.
Just this spring, Brown University in Rhode Island became the latest fuzzy-headed institution to declare the celebration of Columbus Day “inconsistent with the university’s values.” To hoots of derision, Brown renamed the three-day holiday “Fall Weekend.” Brown follows the lead of such fine municipalities as Berkeley, Calif., which rid itself of Columbus Day back in 1992, and celebrates each year with a powwow.
But at Columbia, the only recognition of the day is a free barbecue thrown by the College Republicans.
“We simply want to mark Columbus Day and to celebrate his positive actions and keep the day from silently passing the university by,” said Derek Turner, director of communications for Columbia’s Republicans.
He said his group does not excuse the crimes of Columbus, such as spreading disease and slavery to the native population. A population that, no one wants to admit, practiced slavery itself.
However, Columbus’ arrival in the Western World “marked the establishment of the United States — the nation that today is actively fighting slavery in other countries of the world,” he said.
Turner said he was disappointed not to see any mention of Columbus Day on campus, other than some large protest banners “describing the Columbus-inspired holocaust.”
I called Columbia to ask how a campus that detests Columbus justifies giving a forum to Iranian madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. No one got back to me.
Virtually no public institutions in the five boroughs are open today. The CUNY system is closed. Fifth Avenue halts for the Columbus Day Parade.
Only the private NYU, Columbia’s kissing cousin in correctness, is joining it in holding classes today. Even Brown is closed.
Had Columbus never set foot in the West, Columbia University would never have been created. And political correctness would not exist.
Thanks a lot, Columbus.
They’ve got a lot of perv in H’wood
It’s even more fashionable than divorce, adultery or overdose. In Hollywood, pedophilia is the new black.
Teenagers, take cover! Tinseltown is following last year’s dreadful “The Reader” — the tale of a 30-something female Nazi prison guard who seduces a 15-year-old boy — with offerings to warm the heart of a Thailand sex tourist.
There’s “An Education,” the story of a 16-year-old schoolgirl seduced by a playboy twice her age. And “Precious,” co-executive-produced by Oprah Winfrey, about an urban teenager who gives birth to two of her own father’s children.
We’re clearly seeing the Roman Polanski Effect on a town that’s the most perverted on the planet. It doesn’t help that Harvey “Free Roman!” Weinstein set the agenda, when his petition to cut loose the child rapist attracted the likes of moral heavyweight Woody Allen.
Weinstein actually said, “Hollywood has the best moral compass because it has compassion.”
Well, Hollywood did have compassion for Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story,” a head-scratching anti-America screed executive-produced by Weinstein.
I wonder how much of the movie’s capitalistic profits will be donated to abused children?
BUMPY RIDE ON THE PEACE TRAIN
Here’s something on which the right and the left can agree: Give President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize? Not a great idea.
While the right was busy slamming the brain trust in Oslo for awarding the Nobel to a man who hasn’t actually done anything, like winning the fight against terrorists in Afghanistan, the left slammed Obama — for failing to hug terrorists in Afghanistan.
Northern Irish Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire said she was disappointed because Obama “continues the policy of militarism and occupation of Afghanistan, instead of dialogue and negotiations with all parties to the conflict.”
This is the same Maguire who was arrested in Israel this summer with laughingstock ex-Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia for their work to help Arabs and hurt Israel.
Maguire in 1976 started a long line of future chuckleheads, including the anti-Semitic Jimmy Carter, terror-loving Yasser Arafat and global-warming exaggerator Al Gore, by putting a Nobel on her mantle.
And Obama wants this?
Top cop outshines quartet of mayors
The four living mayors appeared in the same room for charity. Who do you think won the loudest cheers?
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
Mayors Bloomberg, Koch, Dinkins and Giuliani — who appeared on videotape — came to the Hilton Thursday night for the New York Police & Fire Widows & Children’s Benefit Fund dinner.
The –audience greeted the mayors warmly, and gave faint applause to outgoing Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta, but it was Kelly who had people on their feet. And he didn’t give a speech.
I think this guy has a future.