Confessions of a Republican Journalist: College, Part II

When I was an awkward 13-year-old with frizzy hair, teeth in need of braces and pimples the size of Alabama, a teacher told me not to fear -- age 18, she said, would be my “it” year. So in the first semester of college, having grown past those aesthetic disasters and presented with a "class optional" educational situation unlike high school, I figured it was catch-up time. I’d had one steady boyfriend for my junior year in high school, dated odds and ends my senior year, and was ready to go when I stepped onto a college campus with thousands of men. Fittingly, the first guy I dated there was in campus Republicans and a prominent figure in school politics. His name was "Paul." (Names changed to exercise at least one ounce of discretion.)

Paul had a tiny, old Alfa Romeo convertible that was fun to ride in but left my hair looking like Cousin It. He talked about little else but school politics. Things between us cooled after sharing one rain-soaked kiss -- oh, and after a friend and I hosed his car interior with Silly String -- and my attentions turned to one of the Greek senators on the student council, "Alfie."

Alfie was president of the largest fraternity on campus that anchored Greek row with a big Victorian-style house. One night he invited me to a party at the house; I took my friend Jackie along for my very first (and not last, unfortunately) fraternity party. The three of us sat on a roof perch and watched Alfie's brothers pass out on the lawn; when one did, the others would try to revive him with the garden hose. What fun!

Alfie was laid-back and didn’t really care for the drama of school politics. After the three of us ran out for some drinks and munchies, I dropped him back off at the house at a time when nearly everyone was passed out on the lawn. (Frame of reference: Cal State campus. No one learning anything.) As soon as Jackie alighted from the back seat, Alfie leaned over in the passenger seat and kissed me on the cheek. “Call me next time it rains,” he said, alluding to the Paul story that had slipped out in earlier conversation.

My mind began to turn. Should I have been spending hours in meetings, arguing with lefties who just liked to argue about how many days there were in a week? Or should I be having some fun? This was college. How long was I going to be 18? (Though in California, the options are endless.)

Members of the campus Republicans got suspicious when I served as Alfie’s proxy at a student council meeting. I don’t even know if he was truly busy or just wanted to have fun stirring the pot by sending me in his stead. Either way, it was stirred. The conservatives accused me of sharing party secrets -- to an independent Greek senator who couldn’t care less, no less -- over rounds of miniature golf. Alfie didn’t learn any deep, dark party secrets, but did learn I could easily whack a ball off the miniature golf range and into nearby traffic.

When high school friends Susan, Jackie and I joined the campus Republican group, we were called the “young guns” for our deep commitment to GOP values and brazen ability to joyfully annoy the campus lefties at the drop of a hat. In fact, I was given the 1993 “Hardcore Award,” a paper medal adorned with foil stars and rimmed in red glitter that is taped in a scrapbook today. But when I decided to date a neutral -- not even an “enemy” -- I became persona non grata with the campus GOP crowd. I think that stubbornness they found so appealing when I’d first walked into the club also dictated that I wouldn’t let them push me around when they tried to tell me who I could and couldn’t date. Sure, I only went out with Alfie for a couple more months, but I’m glad I stood my ground. Imagine how they would have freaked when I dated the Marxist (as mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, Feb. 11, 2005 -- check out that seamless self-promotion!).

A couple of years later, I considered joining the military to work in intelligence, and took the ASVAB test. I got a 96 percent, which prompted test-takers around me to ask, “Dude, are you gonna, like, work on nuclear subs?” Then it set in how long a three-year commitment was, especially at that age. Didn't do it. Soon I was at school full-time and working full-time, with an apartment of my own off campus (a.k.a. heaven).

But my professors were insane: one tried to argue that "natural-born citizen" as defined as a presidential qualification meant that the person had to be born head-first instead of the breech position. In the women's studies requirement class, the professor assigned a final paper on which theory of feminism we agreed with most. I said "none" -- and wrote a paper describing "conservative feminism," the belief that a woman could achieve anything and was strong enough to do so without insulting crutches from the government such as affirmative action. I got a "C." Liberal profs could easily tank grades.

I needed an outlet. And I quickly found my calling.

The campus paper was advertising for columnists -- $10 per piece. And it was a grand opportunity for me to spout off my mouth.

As my pieces rolled off the presses, denouncing everything from political correctness to euthanasia and attempts to hike the minimum wage, I began to really see what I was up against, as the microcosm of the lefties in the student council from my first semester became apparent across campus.

In 1996, a pickup crammed with illegal immigrants was flying through Riverside County, being pursued for 80 miles at speeds of up to 90 mph as the truck’s occupants threw cans and pieces of camper shell at law enforcement vehicles. Twice the pickup tried to ram civilian vehicles that got in its way, and all was captured for TV by news helicopters. The pickup finally stopped, the immigrants spilled out into the nearby brush, and officers used their batons to detain two fighting suspects. One of the people who had been beaten filed a $10 million lawsuit claiming violation of international torture laws, though the hospital said she’d suffered only a bruised shoulder.

I made a few main points in my column: a) that people need to learn the whole story before passing judgment on the case, and not just go by what was captured by TV helicopters, b) that the illegal immigrant shouldn’t be able to profit off the American system after just breaking about a dozen laws, and c) that everyone was missing -- or conveniently ignoring -- the violence of the chase and how many lives were endangered.

“The government of Mexico is outraged at how we treated their citizens,” I wrote. “Well, if they treated their citizens a little better, maybe they wouldn’t be swimming across the Rio Grande.”

Oh, the ensuing mail! A torrent of progressive thought. And people didn’t just write letters, they wrote essays calling me “Mexophobic” (good thing half my friends didn’t know that!), “ignorant,” “racist,” “prejudiced,” “rude,” the list goes on. “We would like to thank Ms. Johnson for increasing the racial tension and prejudice on a racially diverse campus,” one letter said. This on a campus where there were black-only and Latino-only fraternities and sororities; did they honestly think my column caused such divisiveness?

It was a reflex of a Cal State system that achingly tried to be so politically correct that it encouraged rather militant leftist groups -- one Latino group advocated the forceful “taking back” of California for Mexico -- and left dissenting opinions out in the cold. This I knew well -- I was, after all, the only conservative columnist on campus for a time.

“You know, Bridget, I really agree with you, but I couldn’t tell my friends that because they’d kill me,” a Hispanic girl said to me after the immigrant-beating column.

How sad. This was supposedly an enlightened public university campus supposedly committed to open thought and freedom of expression.

Years later, I went back to look at that column. The reaction had left me thinking it was so radical, so out there, but an objective reading long after the fact made me seriously wonder what all the fuss was about. It was no worse than any modern column addressing the issue of immigration, but I’d been led to believe in college that it was on par with the Marquis de Sade’s scribblings.

I found another column I wrote noting that a professor had handed out a political-correctness primer that warned students not to exhibit any “classism” toward each other. I was shocked that they actually thought that rich students who might pick on poor students would even attend CSU in the first place. Cal State was Maybelline as compared to the Estee Lauder of the University of California system, or the Chanel of Stanford or USC.

From day one of the columnist job, I saved all mail received -- hate mail especially. I developed the philosophy that it didn’t matter if they loved or hated me as long as they read me. (Quite akin to a Howard Stern philosophy, actually.) One fax was from a congressional aide who said he’d been “impressed” by my editorials; today he's a state assemblyman.

Suffice to say the lessons I learned in college probably weren’t the ones the deans and professors at my Cal State had hoped to impart. I learned to voice my opinion if I feel it’s the right thing, regardless of whether I face verbal ambush for the choice. I learned to save all hate mail, because you never know if you’ll need it again someday for a blog. And I learned that eating Taco Bell at 3 a.m. really can induce dragon heartburn.

But most of all, I learned that your destiny can be something you never considered. Journalism had grabbed me by the throat through a measly $10-a-week column, and it was about to drag me into the great unknown.