It used to be the quickest way to notoriety in this country was to strip down to your birthday suit and run in front of cameras covering some nationally televised event like the Academy Awards or the Super Bowl

My how times have changed.

In the last few years we’ve seen that the quickest way to get your name in the paper and your face plastered all over TV is to be the victim of a “hate crime” carried out by wicked conservatives or, better yet, attest to some action by the Bush Administration that smacks of dictatorship.

Recently, we’ve witnessed the edifying spectacle of people caterwauling about “oppression” only to find out later (after the camera lights have been turned off) that these “victims” are lying through their teeth:

• A gay student claiming harassment and vandalism was found to be perpetrating the incidents herself.

• A black student’s apartment door is vandalized with racist comments. Guess who it turns out wrote them?

• A Muslim store is burned down. CAIR screams racism. Cops arrest Muslim store owner for arson.

• A college professor vandalizes her own car with anti-homosexual slogans. Gets a year in the slammer for filing a false police report.

• Numerous racial incidents called hate crimes that turn out to be bogus.

Hate crimes are one thing. Real crimes carried out against blacks, gays, and ethnics are diminished as a result of few liberals who want to stick it to whites, or conservatives, or just America in general while basking in the glow of their victimhood. Besides, we all know that somewhere, sometime, these incidents could have happened in America. Who really cares if liberals create some guerrilla theater to highlight the “injustice” of the system?

The latest hoax perpetrated by liberals involves a case that smelled to high heaven from the get go. A UMass-Dartmouth student claimed that she was visited by FBI agents after checking out Mao Tse Tung’s tiresome Little Red Book from the library:

NEW BEDFORD —A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung’s tome on Communism called “The Little Red Book.”

Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library’s interlibrary loan program.

The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand’s class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents’ home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.

The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a “watch list,” and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.

First, the myth that the Patriot Act allows the government to keep track of library loans is now so well established that it will be impossible to debunk. To those who still believe such nonsense, I suggest you get a life or, failing that, READ THE DAMN THING AND CONFIRM IT FOR YOURSELF!

Secondly, while this news story says that “DHS agents” visited the student (and that the student was male) other stories have the FBI calling on the poor kid and that the “victim” was a female.

I guess when you get right down to it for a liberal, the facts don’t matter much – it’s the thought that counts.

But man, did this story bring out the heavy rhetorical artillery on the left:

And all this seems strikingly similar to the sad and vile days of Joseph McCarthy’s communism witch hunts, where those who dared speak out found themselves under suspicion and fear ruled the day.

Illegal surveillance is one thing. An agenda to destroy generations of American Freedoms is something else.

U. S. Fascism on the March

Bubble Boy’s Uber-Monarchy just gets curiouser and curiouser.

There is only one problem with this story; it is almost certainly a hoax:

Complicating matters has been the student, who so far has refused to talk. Boston FBI spokeswoman Gail A. Marcinkiewicz said she has been unable to find evidence that FBI agents visited the student.

“We don’t have interest in what people read,” she added.

UMass-Dartmouth is investigating and has interviewed the student but denied in a statement having any contact with federal agents. The book was requested from UMass-Amherst

While probably not carried out by the kid in question, the hoax appears to be the work of some professors who seem more than eager to push the idea of academic freedom under assault in the age of Bush.

Academic freedom is all well and good. But making up a story about anyone in the domestic intelligence apparatus being interested in a student who checks out a discredited tome by a long dead Marxist loon just doesn’t pass the smell test.

Here’s a DHS spokesperson:

Kirk Whitworth, a spokesman for the DHS—the U.S. cabinet department that oversees the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the Secret Service, and Citizenship and Immigration Services, among others—said in the December 21 Standard-Times that the story seemed unlikely. “We’re aware of the claims,” he said. “However, the scenario sounds unlikely because investigations are based on violation of law, not on the books and individual[s who] might check [them] out from the library.”

And Goldstein nails it:

Of course, when lying liars lie about what they are lying about, the only thing that suffers is TRUTH! And whether the facts of this particular story turn out to be true or not, one thing is certain: somewhere, right now, DISSENT IS BEING CHILLED.

Fake but accurate, you know. So please—take the denial with a grain of salt.

Liberals just are not happy unless they are under attack for their beliefs. It is a pathological manifestation of a gigantic need for attention that causes them to mount the battlements, waving the bloody shirt screaming at the top of their lungs “LOOK AT ME! I AM SUFFERING FOR MY BELIEFS”

The Christ complex these loons have is insulting to them, I know. So instead, let’s substitute the actions of 12 year old little girls who constantly play the martyr over the trials and tribulations in their lives.

Liberals are teenage drama queens in disguise. The difference being they aren’t half as cute.

UPDATE - WITH A GREAT BIG BULLET

My apologies to the professors for accusing them of carrying out a hoax. As it turns out, it was in fact the student who made the whole thing up:

The UMass Dartmouth student who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security agents over his request for “The Little Red Book” by Mao Zedong has admitted to making up the entire story.

The 22-year-old student tearfully admitted he made the story up to his history professor, Dr. Brian Glyn Williams, and his parents, after being confronted with the inconsistencies in his account.

Had the student stuck to his original story, it might never have been proved false.
But on Thursday, when the student told his tale in the office of UMass Dartmouth professor Dr. Robert Pontbriand to Dr. Williams, Dr. Pontbriand, university spokesman John Hoey and The Standard-Times, the student added new details.

The agents had returned, the student said, just last night. The two agents, the student, his parents and the student’s uncle all signed confidentiality agreements, he claimed, to put an end to the matter.

But when Dr. Williams went to the student’s home yesterday and relayed that part of the story to his parents, it was the first time they had heard it. The story began to unravel, and the student, faced with the truth, broke down and cried.

Now watch the left criticize Bush for making the kid cry.