OntheWilderSide

IW:  Steve Levy continues his foot-in-mouth politics.  An article from the Stony Brook Press explains how

During his State of the County address, Suffolk County Executive and Stony Brook University alum Steve Levy called out the Political Science Department as being riddled with communists.

That Levy would use 1950’s red-baiting to try to gain points with his new Republican friends is funny enough, but when you read the entire article it becomes rolling on the floor funny.

Levy said he knew he had a communist professor because: 

When I was in Political Science 101 in Stony Brook University, I had one of our professors, one of those communist professors—there were many of them, and I’m not making that up—who came out the first day [and said] as a matter of moral equivalency there were no good guys or bad guys in international politics, just national self-interest.

According to the Stony Brook Press, it seems that at least one  Stony Brook Poli Sci Prof would have flunked the verbose County Executive:

“I think it makes him look foolish,” said Jeffery Segal, chair of the Political Science Department. The specific comment irked, “Nations aren’t right or wrong they have interests—It’s not a communist, not socialist, not even left or center point of view, it’s from the school of thought realism as practiced most heavily by Henry Kissinger.”

But how could Levy be so badly mistaken about simple Poli Sci facts like Communism and Kissinger, since according to the Stony Brook Press:

In 2003, the Political Science Department selected Levy for the Distinguished Alumni Award, the same year he would be elected as Suffolk County Executive.

Makes you wonder what kind of standards the Poli Sci Department has?  After all, they couldn’t have just given him the award as a craven attempt to curry favor with the new County Executive?

According the the Press, oddly enough some of those that made the political move of inviting Levy to be Alumni of the Year are now questioning their decision:

“He’s using us as sort of a whipping board to c[u]rry favor with some people,” said Helmut Norpoth, a professor in the department who specializes in electoral behavior and public opinion. “It makes me more than angry about somebody like him–you take us to get some advantage in the process to trash us, demean us and slander us. There’s something really terrible about that.”  Norpoth had invited Levy to talk at the department’s commencement address in 2003.

More over, if Stevy Levy was chosen as the Poli Sci Dept Alumni of the Year, and the Poli Sci Dept is crawling with Commies, then doesn’t that make Levy the Commie Poster Boy?

According to Stony Brook Press, in order to save his own reputation, Levy takes on the mantle of Senator Joe McCarthy by naming names of 3 well-known commies in the Poli Sci Dept.

The Press found out that:

Upon further investigation, all three scholars were never in the political science department nor did their controversies arise when Levy was at Stony Brook.

Filed under: 3rd party, Education, grassroots democracy, local, long island Tagged: | commie, communist, red bait, steve levy, Suffolk County