  NO PATRIOT IN WHOVILLE? Regarding the urlLink controversy around 9/11 anniversary events organized by urlLink UC Berkeley ... First of all, I'm amused that the "national media", as the Patriot puts it, essentially means "Matt Drudge".
Yeah, that's some real integrity there. The reporting the Patriot has done, whether they admit it or not, has a political agenda. The thing is, their reporting produced two consequences, one was certainly intentional, but the other was not only unintended, but also serves to cheapen something that's supposed to be sacred. The intentional part involves an ongoing narrative mythology that conservatives across the country have been trying to perpetrate for twenty years, being that the total ideological atmosphere of most American universities, including the students, faculty etc, has taken a dramatic turn to the left. The right creates a bogus inferiority complex in universities just as they do in the media. I could go on, but this is a short-attention-span blog, so we'll move on. The unintended consequence? I suppose it's well within the "character" of a publication called the Patriot to sell out to that grand American value: materialism! Whatever you may think of the Berkeley student government's prior decisions, the Patriot 's agenda puts the focus even more squarely upon colors and materials (the flag, representations of red/white/blue, etc), and as a result, so much less upon the staggering amount of humanity that was lost in those horrible atrocities.
For example, a video montage of the lost firefighters and cops with Bruce Springsteen's "Into the Fire" as the soundtrack would spark a Patriot writer to stand up and shriek "Where are the f****** flags?!? " The country as an abstract concept didn't die; three thousand people, however, did, and that is at the center of what memorializing 9/11 is about.
This is a pathetic and immature mindset, and Chancellor Berdahl was right to say the things he did. In Dr Seuss' "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", the citizens of Whoville knew that the spirit of Christmas was in their hearts and minds, and not encapsulated in material items. If only the Patriot could learn that much about patriotism . 
