American Univ. Prof. Adrienne Pine breastfed her baby in class while lecturing to undergraduates.

77 PERCENT OF POLL RESPONDERS SAY ‘INAPPROPRIATE’
 
An unofficial poll taken by ABC Television Network’s Good Morning America in conjunction with the website Yahoo! that asked if readers and TV viewers thought American University Prof. Adrienne Pine acted inappropriately by breastfeeding her infant daughter while lecturing to 40 undergraduates, found that 77 percent of responders said Yes, her action was “inappropriate.”

More than 4,600 people responded to the online poll, with over 3,500 of that number voting “inappropriate” compared to just over 1,000 who said they thought breastfeeding while lecturing was acceptable.

Pine ignited a firestorm Sept. 5 when she went online to defend bringing her sick baby to class and allowing the child to crawl around the lecture hall floor, putting paper clips in her mouth and playing at electrical outlets.

When the child became cranky, Pine breastfed her in full view of the 40 students, a number of whom objected, as one undergraduate described it, to paying high tuition “to watch a professor babysit.”

In a humorless rant published on the left-leaning website CounterPunch.org, Pine — whose description in the university’s faculty profiles IDs her as a “militant medical anthropologist” — attacked the university’s student newspaper The Eagle and one of its reporters for allegedly “hounding” her and insisting on writing a story that she decreed was “not news.”

However her bullying tactics so intimidated the paper’s editor and reporters that no story was posted for more than a week, and when the newspaper finally did publish an article its tone was insipid and subdued.

In the meantime the story was reported by Voice of Baltimore and the Washington Post, followed by other national and local news media.

In its Sept. 13 edition The Eagle finally published a story, along with an apologetic editorial stating that had Pine not beat the student publication to the punch, “we may have never run a story in the first place.

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American University Professor Adrienne Pine breastfed her year-old baby while lecturing.

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY ANTHROPOLOGIST PAUSES TWICE,
ONCE TO EXTRACT A PAPER CLIP  FROM CHILD’S MOUTH,
A 2nd TIME TO SHOO BABY FROM ELECTRICAL OUTLET

Accuses student newspaper of causing ‘hostile work environment’

BERATES REPORTER  FOR ‘MANUFACTURED CONTROVERSY’
AND FOR ASKING ‘BIASED AND SOPHOMORIC’ QUESTIONS
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
In the name of academic freedom and feminists’ rights an American University professor breastfed her year-old baby in full view of 40 anthropology students the first day of class for the fall semester, then intimidated a reporter and the editor of the campus newspaper to prevent them from publishing a news story about it.

Adrienne Pine, an assistant professor of anthropology in her fourth year of teaching at the Northwest Washington, D.C. university, further accused the student newspaper, The Eagle, of “threatening to create a hostile work environment” for her by reporting the incident, which she termed “a manufactured controversy.”

Declaring, “It feels like harassment that something like this should even become a ‘story,’” Pine said in an online published essay, “I’ve been breastfeeding in public for a year, and this is the first time anyone in three countries and numerous states has made an ‘issue’ out of it.”

However, despite what she termed the “current national anti-woman climate,” she said she works in a “family-friendly setting” and that it wasn’t until her undergraduate students “saw me feed my baby through my breast that my workplace became a hostile environment.”

Pine’s students spread the word about her public child-feeding habits on Facebook and Twitter.

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WEEKEND WRAP
A VOICE of BALTIMORE OCCASIONAL SERIES
Op-Ed Musings on the Week’s Events

Former Presidents George H.W. Bush, left, and Bill Clinton, seen here in January 2005, became friends years after Clinton unseated Bush, who was running for reelection (1992).

A PRECURSOR TO FOUR YEARS DOWN THE LINE?
WILL IT BE MD.’S GOV’NOR VS. THE FIRST LADY

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WEEKEND WRAP
A VOICE of BALTIMORE OCCASIONAL SERIES
Op-Ed Musings on the Week’s Events

 
It was the GOP Convention to nominate Mitt Romney for President, and Dirty Harry did it — his way:  Energizing the delegates, pulverizing the pundits, electrifying the country and confounding the media talking heads.

For a different perspective on Clint Eastwood’s allegedly “off-color” performance — which Voice of Baltimore contends was not off-color at all; rather, on-target — read the Weekend Wrap analysis which follows and watch the controversial Dirty Harry video of the event.

It’s an eye-opener, and it might just put Mitt Romney over the top.
 

Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood offended TV talking heads and other pundits with alleged ‘off-color’ remark at last week’s GOP Nation- al Convention at Tampa Bay Times Forum.

ROUNDLY CRITICIZED BY MEDIA TALKING HEADS
AFTER  ROUSING,  ‘RAMBLING’  PERFORMANCE

OFFENDS  MOST  TV COMMENTATORS
WITH ALLEGED ‘OFF-COLOR’ REMARK

‘When somebody does not do the job, we gotta let ’em go’
— a not-so-veiled reference  to  President Barack Obama

‘WE OWN THIS COUNTRY,’ HE DECLARES;
‘POLITICIANS ARE EMPLOYEES OF OURS’
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
Republican or Democrat, Libertarian or whatever, anyone who watched Clint Eastwood in his “Dirty Harry” persona at the Republican National Convention with an open mind last week would have to agree that the 82-year-old iconic actor/director has a future as a standup comic.

Deviating from the highly scripted, carefully vetted, rehearsed and pre-approved speeches of the various politicians, GOP elected officials and Romney Family members, Hollywood legend Dirty Harry made the day of the nearly 5,000 convention delegates and alternates plus untold millions of television viewers — if not the 15,000 credentialed media and TV talking heads who roundly criticized him for what many termed a “rambling, off-color performance.”

In a mock one-way conversation with an absentee President Obama, imagined to be sitting on an empty stool, Eastwood twice responded to an unvoiced suggestion from the President that he and GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney — whose acceptance speech was to follow later in the evening — do something sexual to themselves that is physically and biologically impossible.

Hence the “off-color” charge by national news media critical of Eastwood’s performance — which was in fact a highly comedic presentation, not a speech.

View the Eastwood performance in its entirety by clicking here:  (http://bcove.me/10nfbyfz)

Embarrassing maybe — judging from the facial expressions of some of the delegates, including a blank-faced vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan — but entertaining nonetheless. And not nearly as off-color as what one sees and hears nightly on the various television network talk shows.

Nor hardly as disrespectful as the many talking heads, pundits and reporters who frequently described — and still continue to describe — George W. Bush as “stupid,” failing to recognize that the former President’s academic record is as good if not better than that of his successor.

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