College Republicans

Since I work at UT, I get to enjoy the regular antics of the most oppressed group of people on the planet, the College Republicans. I sometimes get the feeling I can never crack open the student newspaper The Daily Texan without reading irate letters about how oppressing it is not to completely dominate all dialogue on campus. The huge controversy this week is that the university had the nerve to invite Eric Schlosser to speak on campus. Specifically, they felt it was wrong to give speaking time to anyone who criticized the all-American institution of fast food. They were going to stage a dramatic walk-out, but realizing that no one would really care I guess, they instead decided to hand out fast food coupons to attendees.
I've read Fast Food Nation and it's hardly the anti-capitalist diatribe that it's painted to be. It's an honest criticism of fast food coupled with consumer-driven suggestions on how to improve the quality of life and eating in this country. It also galls me how disingenous it is to pretend that fast food companies are suffering under an onslaught of oppression because universities allow speakers to criticize them. They want fair time, but fast food companies have much, much, much more airtime and support than any critics. They get commericials, billboards, and a Presidential administration that is willing to lie on their behalf and tell the World Health Organization that fast food is part of a healthy diet.
But what really toasts me is that one of the underpinnings of the supposed philosophy of the Republican Party is that people need to take "responsibility" for their actions. But it's a very narrow and corporate-serving view of what "responsibility" is. The whole fast food debate is a perfect example of the lopsided responsibility burden. For instance, the obese people suing the fast food chains are ridiculed for not being responsible for their health, but not many people are pointing out that fast food chains are making a huge profit ruining Americans' health and not taking a bit of responsibility for it.
It seems to me also that companies in a supposedly free market should be open to the same criticism that anyone else is and that they have a responsibility to deal with it. (Assuming it's true and if it's not then you have a libel case. Which isn't the case here, because his book speaks truth, a point that got lost in the whole "fairness" whine. Anyway, McDonald's will sue if it has a chance in hell of winning.) Instead of taking responsibility for their abuses, they are pulling political power to distract and distort the truth. And sucked into their huge whirlwind of finger-pointing and excuse-making is a bunch of College Republicans handing out free coupons as a distraction.
One would think that if you believed in the free market and individual responsibility, you wouldn't give your labor away for free to help bail out a company who can't take responsibility for itself.