Bristol Palin, the daughter of ex-governor and Fox News contributor Sarah Palin, was scheduled to speak as part of a panel at Washington University's Sexual Responsibility Week. The appearance, however, has since been canceled after students protested Palin's involvement and objected to her fee for speaking at the event. According to a Washington University statement, the decision was “mutually agreed” upon.

Andrew Breitbart's BigJournalism.com, however, viewed the cancellation of Palin's paid appearance at a university seminar as akin to the Southern opposition to school desegregation. BigJournalism contributor Jonathon Burns wrote in apparent seriousness (emphasis added):

And after a day or two of protest attacks against SHAC, the [student union] capitulated and announced they had axed Bristol from the panel, because, “the controversy surrounding her appearance would overshadow the event's intended message of sexual responsibility.”

So the message is, “Don't bother coming, Bristol, or we'll shout you down and riot because WE DON'T WANT YOU HERE!” This seems eerily similar to Southern intimidation and oppression of blacks during attempts to desegregate. It's reminiscent of a scene from Forrest Gump, where a young black girl is harassed by a young white student and knocks her books out of her hands.

Millions of college students have been indoctrinated with the importance of diversity -- so long as that diversity includes approved races, ethnicities, political ideologies, backgrounds, etc. If you're conservative, from a rural area, and you're supporting abstinence, well, let's just say that kind of diversity isn't desired.

No, instead of supporting diversity, the celebrated ideal of college land, let's applaud and bow to bigotry.

The specific flavor of “bigotry” on display here, according to Burns, is “ethnicism” and “urbanism,” which he defines as “bigotry against all things non-urban.”

I'm not sure what's sillier about this: that BigJournalism apparently thinks lucrative speaking gigs are a civil right, or that their understanding of the Jim Crow South is gleaned from Forrest Gump.