RUTHFULLY YOURS

Pro-Hamas protestors have been feeling their oats lately, proud to have run circles around Columbia University for weeks with their illegal and smelly campouts, their antisemitic signs and screams, their building takeovers, their endless ‘negotiations,’ their adoring media coverage, and the groveling of their woke university leaders anxious to please them.

This crap went on for weeks, with deadline after deadline missed, suspensions reversed, non-charges filed, food delivered, and other foofaraw until the cops were finally called in and tasked with the dirty job of shutting them down and hauling them off by the busload.

They’re out of course, but Columbia is out a commencement, saying it’s too risky for more disruptions. Too bad about the kids who had put in the hard work to graduate, most of whom missed their high school graduations, too, based on COVID lockdowns. What do they need a big commencement for anyway? Gaza, Gaza, Gaza! And why wouldn’t it be cancelled? The university has proven singularly inept at handling these fanatical protestors. The score? Pro-Hamas Protestors: 1, Columbia: 0.

Yup, protestors happy, got the Columbia main commencement cancelled under their belt.

Naturally, they wanted to take their show on the road after that spectacular, moving their act to the Met Gala.

They were in for a surprise.

According to HyperAllergic, a hipster e-zine of sorts:

As celebrities posed for the cameras on the Met Gala red carpet, hundreds of pro-Palestine protesters marched across Manhattan’s Upper East Side tonight, May 6, during the annual fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.

A heavy police presence surrounded the museum with steel barricades, street closures, and dozens of armed officers blocking demonstrators. Around 6pm, protesters who cut through Central Park and managed to dismantle barricades set up near the entrance were met with arrests. Hyperallergic has contacted the New York Police Department (NYPD) to confirm the number of arrests and charges.

 

So rather than let them camp out and spoil the party, the cops were called real quick to sweep them out, shut them down, slap the cuffs on, and arrest the interlopers who tried to sneak in anyway.

Cops got ’em all, and the Met Gala show went on, preening celebrities running around nearly naked or in ridiculous costumes, the adoring press fawning over them like the flatterers of the naked emperor.

Nobody messes with Anna Wintour, the devil who wears Prada, who put this pricey celebrity preenfest, on at the museum. Money, after all, was involved. And nobody messes with Anna’s money.

So with a certain grudging respect, one can say that Anna demonstrated how it was done. You don’t let uninvited clowns into your members-only party. You don’t let them steal the cameras. You don’t allow disruptions of celebs or the trains on their gowns. You don’t let the great unwashed malcontents take over your main event. You call the cops quick and you make sure they have Plan A to shut the clowns down and keep them in some public space away from the Gala, Plan B for barriers to make sure they didn’t drift in, Plan C for those who try to sneak in over barriers, and hardcore arrests ready for all of them if they dare disrupt this event.

What a startling contrast to what happened at Columbia, where kids who spent four years grinding away at their college majors, the computer and engineering labs filled to the brim every Friday night (I know, I went there, I saw it), sleepless, working through the night, grind, grind, grind. Those kids don’t get the big commencement, which is a grand thing.

But the Hollywood chi-chi crowd at the Met Gala? They get their party, and cops are called instantly for those who would stop it.

Which raises questions about what the university’s priorities are, and how embarrassing it is that a commercial venture like Anna Wintour’s Met Gala understands that if you want to hold and event, you keep disruptors out, you don’t ‘negotiate’ with them, you don’t kowtow to them, because the show must go on.

What’s Columbia’s excuse?