Pushing back against the New York Slimes. Liberty University is suing the New York Times for defamation, accusing the paper of crafting a “clickbait” story intended to create the erroneous impression that there was a COVID-19 outbreak on the school’s campus this spring, reports the News & Advance. The lawsuit says that reporter Elizabeth Williamson misrepresented the statement of a university-affiliated physician, who said that twelve students showed signs of “upper respiratory infection,” which can refer to the common cold, as evidence of a COVID-19 outbreak. “We’re not looking for money,” said Liberty President Jerry Falwell Jr. “We want to expose the New York Times for the liars and Buzzfeed clickbait organization they’ve become.”
VCU’s purge of the past reaches logical conclusion. Having completed its review of buildings, names, plaques and places, the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Committee on Commemoration and Memorials has targeted 16 memorials on the campus for removal. Regardless of life-long accomplishments and contributions to the community, any individual who served in the Confederate army in any capacity is being stuffed down the memory hole.
One memorial identified for removal a plaque honoring Simon Baruch. In 1939 philanthropist Bernard Baruch gave $100,000 to the Medical College of Virginia to renovate a building in honor of his father, Simon. The elder Baruch graduated from MCV in 1862 and served as a surgeon in the Confederate army. The plaque outside the auditorium lists his accomplishments and mentions his Confederate service. Similarly, the committee recommends de-commemoration and deletion of all references to the university’s Ginter House on the grounds that Lewis Ginter, one of Richmond’s great business leaders and philanthropists of the late 19th century, served in the Confederate army.
Drunken revelry and the COVID epidemic. If you wonder what’s contributing to the uptick in COVID-19 in Virginia, here’s a hypothesis: Drunken young people are dispensing with their masks and infecting one another.
“This past weekend,” writes Allen W. Groves, Dean of Students at the Universitiy of Virginia, “large numbers of students gathered in Corner bars, rental houses and apartments, and a few fraternity houses as part of Midsummers. Despite rapidly rising cases of COVID-19 in many parts of the country, students were observed by peers and other sin the community disregarding social distancing requirements and forgoing use of facial masks.”
Question: Does Governor Ralph Northam’s imposition of new workplace safety rules, the first in the nation, address a real problem? Will his crackdown on bars and restaurants displace alcohol-fueled partying in private homes and fraternity houses?
