Yesterday, Gawker posted a YouTube clip of professional insane person Glenn Beck promoting one of his books. What makes the clip noteworthy is that Beck tries to encourage people outside his usual audience to purchase his book. The way in which he attempts to pitch to liberals is mesmerizing. He says that Harry Potter changed his daughter's life and that he feels like a fraud compared to other authors. And this is a man who thinks that Americans will be using toenail clippings as currency by 2014 at the latest. The most important of the liberal-enticing snippets Beck throws out comes near the end of the video (around 2:20).

I invite you to read the book. And mainly because my middle daughter, she wants to go to Columbia. Do you have any idea of the price of Columbia? Please buy the book. Buy two. Buy three.

If we had to guess which college Glenn Beck's daughter wanted to attend--knowing nothing about her other than the fact that she's Glenn Beck's daughter--we'd have guessed something like Oral Roberts or Liberty. Columbia would be about 316th on our list. Hell, if she likes Harry Potter so much, why doesn't she want to go to Yale?

What's interesting about this video clip is that while it was only put up on YouTube by Simon and Schuster this week, it was made two years ago. Hence why the video sees Beck hawking An Inconvenient Book, which was released in the Fall of 2007. Today, he would have a more difficult time using a video to promote a book of his to liberals, as saying that President Obama hates white people doesn't really endear one to the left. Or sanity. (And by the way, when Brian Kilmeade is the sane one in a conversation, you know that something epically ludicrous was uttered.)

A few months after the video clip was made, Glenn Beck's daughter still desired to attend Columbia. In fact, Beck took his daughter to visit the campus and go on a tour in April of 2008. Beck wrote a long blog post (of course Glenn Beck has a blog!) about the visit and his impression of the school. And yes, his opinion of Columbia is exactly what you imagine it to be: that he thinks it's full of Communists and the French. Some sic-filled highlights after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Ed: No, but seriously, enough with this schlemiel. To conclude our coverage of Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia, here's Columbia miscreant J.D. Porter again with a roundup of the reactions in the news and on campus. Hopefully Lee Bollinger won't take offense at one of J.D.'s statements and yell at him, but that's his problem.

Of all the media covering the Ahmadinejad speech, Fox News was the most impressive. After a week decrying Columbia as maniacal liberals supporting a dictator, a weaker network might not have known how to report on an orderly hour spent ridiculing him. In classic form, however, Fox simply elected to report on their own fictional version of the event.

More of J.D.'s trenchant commentary and edgy photography after the jump.

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Thank God for Columbia. Every year that campus blesses us with a major scandal -- but this early in the year? Twice? It's like Christmas before Halloween!

In the latest development of the Minuteman fallout, two Columbia students crossed swords on The O'Reilly Factor tonight. In one corner: Chris Kulawik '08, Columbia Conservative Club president, Spectator columnist, right-wing firebrand with boy-band good looks. In the other: Avi Zenilman '07, Blue and White editor, brainy ubermensch with, uh, David Brooks good looks.

Kulawik won the coin toss (which on O'Reilly's show tends to land dickheads up) and got the first question. O'Reilly asked him if he felt personally threatened since the event. Kulawik, to his credit, was pretty level-headed in noting that threats "were out there" but had received none personally.

Zenilman tried to frame the protest as "an isolated incident in terms of a breakdown in the conversation." O'Reilly shot back that on a "Kool-Aid campus" like Columbia, this kind of stuff is expected. He is "convinced there's a left-wing jihad" afoot -- that nothing like this would ever happen with a liberal speaker.

The biggest slam of the night went to Columbia president Lee Bollinger, who O'Reilly called a punk for not showing up to defend the university's free speech climate himself. At least he's consistent. On the Oct. 5 edition of the Factor, O'Reilly said Bollinger was "hiding under his desk, as he always does" -- and then noted 25 words later that he himself, who once gave a talk at Columbia, didn't have the "courage" to return there.

(Full disclosure: We know Avi, and worked with him at one point. We may still have a turtleneck of his we borrowed once.)

UPDATE 10:53 p.m.: President Bollinger sent out a school-wide e-mail today, calling the Minuteman disruption "one of the most serious breaches of academic faith that can occur in a university such as ours." Finally, Bollinger and O'Reilly can agree on something. Read his e-mail in full after the jump.

UPDATE 11:52 a.m. Saturday: Here's the video. Having watched again, we thought we should toughen this up a bit. Avi definitely got floored on a couple questions -- notably the one where O'Reilly asked him if he knew the J-school was 100 percent liberal, and Avi just said nothing. He joins the ranks of the 99 percent of other not-conservative guests on the show who mostly get bulldozed.

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