Commencement Hijinks

While looking around for what pronoun to use for Magorn in my previous post, I clicked over to that blogger's home site. Among some interesting posts was this one. Apparently, in looking around for a nice, fundamentalist place for W to give another shout-out to the Christian Right, his handlers set him up to speak at the commencement of a conservative, religious college. Aside from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, this will be W's only commencement appearance of the year, so they want to make it a good one. If you're looking for strict, doctrinaire faith, you usually can't do much better than John Calvin, so Calvin College, a school proudly bearing his name in Grand Rapids, Michigan, would seem like an obvious choice, right? Well, maybe not. The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin talked to some Calvin College students and faculty who are not thrilled about the graduation festivities being co-opted (scroll down to "The Calvin College Rebellion"). They've started a Google Groups e-mail list, Our Commencement Is Not Your Platform, where the rest of us can follow their discussion of how to respond.

Redstate.org has come up with its own response to Froomkin's column. Although the writer admits, "I have no firsthand knowledge of Calvin College," a Google search offers reassurance that Calvin College is indeed safely enough ensconced within the Religious Right to make it safe destination for a Presidential address.

Calvin's commencement is coming up on Saturday, so keep an eye out to see if everything runs according to White House plans.