SACRAMENTO, CA - It was a national story just before Christmas but the nuances and implications are too rich to ignore. So here’s the playback, with commentary.

Just before Christmas, Sacramento State University invited as commencement speaker one Janis Besler Heaphy, the publisher of the Sacramento Bee. This paper is the only daily in California’s capital and a kind of Democratic Party newsletter with classifieds and a sports section. Unsatisfied with this news monopoly at her disposal, Heaphy proceeded to assail her captive audience with a baleful, incoherent, and partisan harangue about the civil liberties sins of the Bush Administration.

She also urged the students to criticize the government and to let their views be known. This they proceeded to do, by booing the speaker. Heaphy abandoned her eight-minute speech, which was really an elongated bumper sticker, after five minutes and did not take questions. National media played up the booing as a sign of growing intolerance for different points of view, but Heaphy wasn’t talking to the press, perhaps because she owns one.

Bee columnist Daniel Weintraub wrote a piece chastising the hecklers, who would have been called protesters if they booed, say, Oliver North. Weintraub charged that political correctness had now become the province of conservatives. Actually the left has prevented conservative speakers such as Linda Chavez from even appearing on campus at ad hoc events. This was a commencement address, which is different. The Bee also slanted, even falsified, the story to please the boss.

The students had not booed the speaker, the paper’s account said. Rather, it was just a few of the parents. Actually it was the students and their parents, just about all of them, who booed. The Bee’s ombudsman rushed to the rescue, managing to include a comment that the booing of Heaphy was reminiscent of, yes, the rise of Nazi Germany. It was doubtless inevitable that this affair should include the familiar reductio ad Hitlerium argument, but it didn’t end there. A Bee sportswriter even attacked the students for their display of diversity. Perhaps something will appear in the Real Estate section.

The Heaphy episode shows how insulated from reality some prominent people can be. Public speaking, after all, is a risky business. The exploitation of a college commencement ceremony for a political harangue shows that powerful women can be as tasteless and arrogant as powerful men. The speaker’s response also confirms that women can be as spineless as men. If anything, the booing of Heaphy showed that dissent and free speech are alive and well. And the bogus way Heaphy’s paper spun the story showed how tame and pliable the press can be, especially when it holds a monopoly in California’s capital.

Cal State Sacramento president Donald Gerth, who presided over the event, defended Heaphy, derided the students, and tendered the notion that only a small group had booed. This makes sense because Mr. Gerth, as it happens, knows all about political correctness. As an official of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), he has sought to impose politically correct doctrines, particularly on religious schools, using the loss of accreditation as a threat. This is the kind of leadership and reporting Californians have come to expect. Some competition would be welcome.