This is finals week for students at the University of Notre Dame.
But a new kind of buzz may be getting in the way of scoring good grades, and it's not illegal (yet, anyway).
For the past 10 days the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform has been conducting an air and land campaign in, around and over the Notre Dame campus to educate students and faculty exactly what its intended May 17 commencement honoree, President Barack Obama, supports by being "pro-choice."
On the roads are CBR's "Reproductive 'Choice' Trucks," six-paneled moving billboards with large signs such as these plastered on them:
And in the air at least three hours a day (six during finals week) has been an airplane trailing a large photo banner behind it, also showing in vivid detail what Obama means when he says he's pro-choice:
It is the plane that has caused the most commotion.
Fumed liberal blogger Wonkette in a post entitled, "The stench of death: Abortion haters go nuts, really nuts, at Notre Dame":
… [W]ingnuts are mad that President Obama – whose morning routine includes having a MASSIVE partial-birth abortion between potty and tooth-brushing time – will be the University's commencement speaker. A Wonkette operative in South Bend writes: "How are you not writing about the Abortion Plane?! I'm here at Notre Dame, future speaking site of President Obama (unless he wises up and makes a run for it), and the ever-awesome Center for Bio-Ethical Reform has hired a plane to circle over campus over the last few days, trailing a giant fetus poster."
Wonkette gave CBR's contact information, encouraging readers to "prank" the organization, as if CBR wouldn't like that. But ploys such as spam against CBR have the opposite of the intended effect.
Obama-supporting students and their parents are also contacting CBR. Wrote CBR President Gregg Cunningham in an e-mail:
This is very much a psychological warfare tactic. The students are now complaining in large numbers that they can hear the plane inside their classrooms and it bothers them.
Planes fly over Notre Dame all the time and they have never before bothered these students. What is happening now is that when any plane flies over, it is suddenly audible at a new level. They fear that it is not just some plane, but THE plane.
Now instead of picturing a generic plane, they picture "that f***ing" plane, as so many messages call it. Now the sound of the engine forces them to see an aborted baby in their minds eye, and it deeply stresses them. This is the first pro-life project from which they could not totally shield themselves. It reaches them wherever they try to hide. ...
Perhaps you're inclined at this point to feel sorry for students, a few whose graduation depends on passing that final exam. Don't.
First, it is only pro-aborts who are bothered by the buzz. Pro-lifers have clear consciences and likely get a lift from the air support.
Second, read what Notre Dame professor Jack Colwell wrote in a South Bend Tribune op-ed:
With a picture of a fetus flying high above campus and threats to create a political mud pit down below, let's ponder some questions about the May 17 commencement at the University of Notre Dame.
Q. Will President Obama still come to deliver the commencement address?
A. Of course, barring some national or international crisis that would force a president to cancel every planned event. Neither he nor Notre Dame wants the negative image of surrendering to protesters. …
Q. How large is opposition on campus?
A. The Observer [campus newspaper], deluged by letters to the editor, found that three-fourths of letters from students support the invitation. Support among graduating seniors was even higher. I teach a class at Notre Dame. This I cite to reveal that I have an interest in the welfare of the university and its students and to provide a basis for this observation: Opposition among students and faculty to hearing the president appears to be scant, even among those who did not vote for Obama.
"Scant"? Has the good professor holed himself off in a "fetus"-free classroom from all outside communication?
Whatever, I can safely say the "abortion plane" will not abort its mission.
Help keep the truth about abortion flying over Notre Dame. Donate to the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform.