Chelsea and the Secret Service v. Oxford

This is just *too* precious.

So I guess in addition to being super well-connected, you have to be a
*mindless simp* to do international relations at Oxford as an American.

What a waste.

Kendall
--
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 10 2001

Chelsea joins the hecklers at rally

BY GLEN OWEN, EDUCATION CORRESPONDENT

CHELSEA CLINTON was among a group of American students which disrupted an
anti-war meeting in Oxford, it was revealed last night.
Frustrated at anti-American feeling, the daughter of the former President
arrived at the 500-strong meeting in Oxford Town Hall with a dozen friends
who heckled speakers.

Miss Clinton, a postgraduate student in international relations at
University College, Oxford, her father's alma mater, has confessed that she
is feeling isolated and threatened by the mood she has detected at the
university. She found it difficult encountering "anti-American feeling" from
peace demonstrators.

As soon as last Thursday's meeting, organised by the Oxford Stop the War
Coalition, began, members of her mostly American group shouted patriotic
slogans from the back. Speakers were prevented from continuing after other
young Americans approached them and unfurled a Stars and Stripes flag.

Chris Harman, editor of Socialist Worker, said: "When the group turned up I
thought, oh no, we're going to have some rugby-type fracas, but luckily it
was nothing like that." The flag-bearers were eventually sent back to their
seats by a 76-year-old American woman called Barbara, an Oxford resident.

Katy Beinart, a student CND member who spoke at the meeting, said that Miss
Clinton had arrived "making a lot of noise".

When John Haylett, editor of the Morning Star, began to argue that the media
had failed to consider the effects of the bombing on Afghan civilians, Miss
Clinton and her friends called out that he should remember the victims of
the terrorist attacks on New York. Mr Haylett responded that such meetings
were the only way to put an alternative viewpoint to that portrayed in the
media.

Miss Clinton left with her Secret Service bodyguards shortly afterwards,
stopping to buy a copy of the Morning Star from a vendor, and making "yet
more noise", according to Ms Beinart. "It was a shame that Chelsea Clinton
felt the need to interrupt a peaceful discussion with what I felt were
inappropriate comments," she said.

Speakers at the meeting, including the MP Jeremy Corbyn, said yesterday that
Miss Clinton took their comments too personally.