… involves Scathing Online Schoolmarm complaining about headlines.

Take this one, from an opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle about Michael Pollan and others like him with controversial ideas about the food industry, and the way some universities don’t want these people invited to give talks on campus:

FRANK TALK ABOUT FOOD SOMETIMES QUASHED

Point One: Shouldn’t this at least be FRANK TALK ABOUT FOOD SOMETIMES SQUASHED? Then you get frank and squash, two foods.

Point Two: We could be yet more clever and write FRANK SPEAKERS SOMETIMES BEANED.

Point Three: More rad: FRANK… ‘N FRIES.

Sprinkled. Scathing Online Schoolmarm says this is interesting writing. Not sure I would have chosen sprinkled.

Fairy dust is sprinkled. Refreshing spring rains are sprinkled. Little dead squirrel bodies are… what? Lying around campus? Popping up around campus?… Nah…

But anyway. San Jose State University has a problem:

In the past, San Jose State University had a humane way to deal with pesky squirrels—they trapped and released them, according to Pat Lopes Harris, SJSU’s director of media relations. However, budget cuts recently forced the school to turn to more lethal methods when they no longer had the staff to check the traps. The result? Corpses strewn around the campus. [Strewn is just right. Did the writer use sprinkle because she’d already used strewn?] That practice is about to come to an end. After years of routinely poisoning their population of bushy-tailed tree- and burrow-dwellers, the school administration is reportedly “looking into” humane alternatives to industrial strength rat poison as a form of squirrel population control. The campus has had a rampant ground-squirrel infestation for years now, with the little guys chewing away at landscaping and upturning lawns and building foundations. Since the grounds crew began baiting their fluffy nemeses in 2007 [Fluffy nemeses is wild.], it has become a common sight to see little dead squirrel bodies sprinkled around campus in the morning. According to the Spartan Daily, the SJSU student newspaper, the choice method of termination is currently anticoagulants, which “essentially cause the animal victim to bleed to death throughout a period of a few days to a week.” Dead or dying rodents flailing on the ground then become prey for predators like falcons and hawks, which in turn get poisoned.

In the immortal words of UD‘s own fluffy nemesis, La Kid: Yuck.

The University of West Georgia student newspaper did the best it could when a secretary in the music department hanged herself last Wednesday, “during class hours in the Humanities building.”

Since the death occurred in a very public place on campus, it was a news story and had to be reported that way. “The Humanities building was announced as an official crime scene, and everyone was evacuated from the building while classes were in session.” The police needed to make sure she wasn’t murdered.

She was thirty years old. A diabetic, she’d been told by her doctors that parts of her limbs would have to be amputated.

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Her friends speak of her with eloquent simplicity. “[I] spent all day thinking about her as she was when we were younger.”

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It’s a good article, finding a balance between reporting how she died and evoking the person she was. Yet many on the comment thread are upset and offended; for them, the act was private, and reporting on it only increases her family’s anguish.

SOS absolutely knows what they mean; and yet she agrees with the dissenting commenters:

I’m glad the article was written because before the rumored reason for her death was due to a love affair gone bad. This seems much more appropriate.

If she wanted her suicide to remain private, she would have chosen a more secluded location. The West Georgian reports news that relates to the campus, and it is doing its job.

SOS doffs her hat to the editorial staff of the University of Virginia newspaper. Their response to GQ having ranked the school 25th Douchiest is lovely.

And the comments! Even lovelier.

(The school University Diaries has dubbed the worst university in America, the University of Georgia, comes in 13th.)

Scathing Online Schoolmarm will leave to a psychiatrist the close analysis of this language.

Preliminarily, however, what strikes one is the linkage between the moribund verbal formulations throughout, and the inability / unwillingness to grasp reality. Note the final sentence. Note the recommendation of John Calipari as a role model.

SOS attaches to this post a warning: Reading this opinion piece from start to finish is not for everyone. There will be people who cannot continue with it all the way to the end. We recall what Freud told us:

No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human beast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm has wrestled with these demons for years.

She’s not denying that this piece of writing, and writing like it, scathes the scather. But she’s compelled to struggle with it.

What SOS is saying is that if you have no pressing need to go there, you shouldn’t feel bad if you decide to stay away.

… in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune from the president of hopelessly conflicted University of Minnesota. He had to say something; the newspaper’s been all over the many ongoing conflict of interest scandals in the UM medical school.

What he’s produced, though, is too lacking in content for SOS to take hold of anything from it for discussion purposes. The piece makes no reference to particular COI cases — a basic requirement under the circumstances.

If you’re in the mood for meaningless reassurance and groundless self-congratulation, go to it.

University of Manchester professor Annmarie Surprenant, who seems not to read her students’ exams before grading them (background here), has issued a statement in response to press reports about this behavior, now under investigation by her university.

Here tis.

I am quite politically incorrect, outspoken and have never adhered to the oft-repeated and probably excellent advice to ‘watch your back’, because I believe watching one’s back will never move us forward.

This makes me an easy target for a certain type of person. Half-truths, false accusations and malicious gossip readily ruin one’s reputation in the eyes of that certain type of person. But in the end it is your work that stands.

No student has ever been inaccurately or unfairly graded by me, and that stands. [Every exam paper has been double-graded and] diligently and accurately annotated and marked.

While not as bad as Columbia University’s Madonna Constantine, whose corner cutting involved plagiarizing her students’ work, or Bonnie Ashley, Annmarie Surprenant’s statement is quite, quite bad. SOS will now tell you why.

When you’ve been accused of something so bad that it makes the papers, you have a couple of choices. If you’re guilty, and you probably are, you can confess to the behavior, or something short of the behavior but bad nonetheless, and offer a reason or two maybe… The most important thing, though, after acknowledging some fault and expressing willingness to cooperate with investigators, is to shut up.

Bonnie and Madonna, as you see if you’ve clicked on their names, gassed on and on and on. Wrote volumes.

Why shouldn’t you pen your confessions at this point?

Well, because you got into the deep shit you’re in because you’re kind of an idiot, kind of an unpleasant whacked out individual. Specifically, what got you into trouble is a sense of your exemption from the rules other people follow, coupled with a pinch of paranoia. THE MORE YOU WRITE, THE MORE EVERYONE WILL SEE THIS. Your prose will give you away. You’re the sort of person who should never be allowed to testify on your own behalf. The best thing for you to do is shut up.

Annmarie begins her statement with a big fat pat on the back for being so great. She is bold, bold, free as the wind, standing firm at the fierce crosswinds of human progress. And we all know that in repressive countries like England people who go against convention are beaten down. The world is full of evil envious gossipers who will try to destroy your work by destroying you….

Yet Annmarie herself almost destroyed her life’s work a few years ago, by repeatedly lying on grant applications about having earned an MD.

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Surprenant ends with a belligerent insistence on her total innocence.

Like the other two writers I’ve mentioned, Surprenant has broken the cardinal SOS rule to control your emotions. Especially when you’ve been accused of something, you’ve got to stay cool. Why? Because we all learn, from dealing with children, that the guiltier you are of something, the louder your insistence that you’re not guilty is likely to be.

And again – most damning of all – what’s lacking in this statement is any expression of willingness — you could even make it eagerness — to cooperate with investigators.

I’m distressed by the accusation that I’ve been negligent in my grading. I look forward to working with the university investigating committee.

Something like that. Short, calm. Acknowledge you’re upset, by all means. That’s honest. But then stop talking about how you feel and get down to business. Don’t tell me you’re being pilloried for being such a gifted person.

It bothers SOS when writers work hard on their articles or papers and blow off their headline.

Your headline is like a hostess welcoming you into her restaurant. (La Kid’s hostessing this summer at a local ‘thesdan eatery, so SOS has that on her mind.) Does she make you feel welcome? Do you positively want to go in ?

So here’s an Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer’s headline for his Pitino piece:

SEX IN A RESTAURANT, A JOB IN JEOPARDY

Dullsville. Spice it up.

SEX AT A TABLE, FUTURE UNSTABLE

SEX AT A DIVE, WILL HE SURVIVE?

SEX ON A PLATE, PITINOGATE

SEX AND GRUB, THERE’S THE RUB

SEX IN TRATTORIA, SIC TRANSIT GLORIA

… lurks in the unlikeliest places.

Found this toward the end of the comment thread for a New York Times debate on whether direct to consumer television commercials for prescription drugs is a good idea.

(Answer, according to virtually all debaters and commenters:

Are you effing kidding?):

An erection pill called Ta Da? Ta Da! I’m now a vacuous, bourgeois, self-entitled cretin chasing his menopausal, morbidly obese spouse around our stucco McMansion with a raging erection – Ta Da! the American Dream!

There’s more where that came from. The whole thing’s worth reading.

***************

Results of the debate here.

A fine specimen of writing. A rather long piece, but you keep reading. Not just because the story’s great, but because the mood of the piece feels so real: Stoic, somewhat amused, almost forgiving.

You know how exciting this is for me.

Let me catch my breath.

OK:

So, here’s Use Number One, perfectly fine, correct, as upright and respectable as Ryan O’Neal’s parenting skills:

Is it possible that there is something in the Orthodox community in general and the haredi community in particular that creates fertile ground for this type of fraud? I’ve too often witnessed, here and in Israel, a perverse notion that we few who feel bound by the laws of God are free to flout the laws of man.

Here’s Use Number Two:

There is much to be said about the culture of a haredi community where, as Mark Charendoff, the president of the Jewish Funders Network, points out in a Jewish Week opinion piece , there seems to exist “a perverse notion that we few who feel bound by the laws of God are free to flaunt the laws of man.”

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Mysterious and beautiful are the ways of usage error.

He’s even quoting the first guy!

Scathing Online Schoolmarm reads the Mark Dreier letter.

Sentenced to twenty years in prison for theft of hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, Dreier “used money obtained from the scheme to support a lavish lifestyle, including purchasing two beach-front homes in the Hamptons valued at about $12.5 million, a $10.4 million Manhattan apartment, a $18.3 million yacht, a 2007 Aston Martin DB9 Volante, [and] more than $30 million in art work … ‘He abused his clients for seven solid years in every way imaginable,’ said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Streeter at the hearing.”

But he could write. And he wrote a long letter to the judge before sentencing. Let’s take a look at some of it.

And let’s think about what he wants this letter to do. Clearly, he wants a lighter sentence as a result of sharing with the judge his humanity, his motives, his anguish and guilt.

He says at the beginning, “I am writing to give some context to what I did… to try to explain how a person with my background and advantages came to do the unconscionable. Perhaps in learning how I made these terrible decisions which have ruined my life, others may avoid such mistakes. [This is] a warning to others not to follow in my path.”

Dreier indeed had every advantage, growing up in a loving, affluent home and attending the excellent schools in this post’s title. So one is curious to know how a person to whom so much had been given was able to take so much away.

Although he got the wondrous jobs you’d assume, “I was achieving less satisfaction and recognition than I expected. Colleagues of mine and certainly clients of mine were doing much better financially and seemingly enjoying more status. By my mid-forties I felt crushed by a sense of underachievement.”

Well, he’s honest. And he does write well. He tells us quite clearly that although filthy rich and located at the pinnacle of success in New York City, it wasn’t enough. As long as one other person seemed to have more money or status (That ‘seemingly’ is interesting, isn’t it? It acknowledges the pesky, abstract nature of status. By definition, you can never really know, can you, whether other people are enjoying more?), he was crushed.

Again, you have to admire the honesty. But how sympathetic can you be to someone who honestly tells you that his greed is cosmic, infinite, transtellar, surpassing the imaginings of humankind and deity? Sympathy implies the ability to perceive and feel at least a little of the reality of someone else’s emotions, experiences… What he has done is so extreme, so grotesquely bad, that the idea of his mea culpa serving to stop others from the same behavior doesn’t really get off the ground.

“[I felt] overwhelmed by debt, by a disappointing career, by a failed marriage… And so, incomprehensibly, I started stealing.” But it’s not incomprehensible, even if it is impossible to sympathize with it. If we assume a totally amoral, grasping human being, eaten up inside at the thought of any person with more money or status, the crime is perfectly comprehensible. If your bottomless greed sends you into debt despite your earning an enormous salary; if you don’t care about destroying people; and if you care cosmically about being rich and showing off your goods, then you will certainly steal.

“I lost my perspective and my moral grounding; and really, in a sense, I just lost my mind.” We have no indication of any moral grounding ever in this man’s life – he provides none in the letter – so we cannot go with him here. Bernard Madoff’s parents were both crooks; he understood morality, but never cared for it, and probably didn’t know many people who did. It might be the same situation here. Everything points to an amoral, grasping person from the ground up.

And Dreier certainly never lost his mind. He carried out his crimes with brilliant forethought for seven years, and stopped only when the police hauled him in. There’s nothing crazy about stealing from people if you want their money and don’t care about the law, morality, or the destruction of other human beings. “I just wasn’t in control of myself.” But he was. He may have lost control of his scheme as it became more and more complex. But he himself was always – as was Bernard Madoff – under control. Still is. Writes one hell of a letter.

“In some sense, being caught was a relief.” Now we’re starting to have problems with honesty. Not only that, but as the letter winds down the self-dramatization everyone who knows him describes as part of his spectacular narcissism emerges in a damaging way. His final paragraphs are self-pitying, though meant to be poignant. “I have lost all my friends. I have lost my law license, my law firm, and all that I ever owned. I have seen my family suffer the unimaginable.”  Like ‘incomprehensibly’ earlier, this just doesn’t work. Smart guy like this – he certainly imagined this outcome. He  didn’t care. He doesn’t care about people. He cares about money and status.

This is from the letter’s final paragraph: “I don’t know what gives some men the strength of character to lead virtuous lives for all of their lives, and what causes others, such as myself, to lose their way.”

The rhetoric is bracing but unreal. No one leads an entirely virtuous life; it doesn’t really take that much effort to lead the sort of pretty much moral life most of us manage to lead. It takes effort – unless you’re a career criminal – to spend seven years consciously destroying hundreds of lives.  

SOS suspects that this man did not lose his way, because his way was always degeneracy and covetousness — to get biblical about it. SOS indeed suspects that he took some pleasure at the thought of his evil, of what he was getting away with, of how he was making fools of people.

This letter, well-written as it is, would have been better had Dreier admitted that he is by nature and upbringing a thief, that he rather enjoyed his long run, and that the best he can offer at this point is to say that he’ll maybe spend some time in his cell giving thought to that.

Straw man plus just the sort of bland vapid reassurance you’d expect from a certain sort of doctor. This is ultimately arrogant writing that thinks you’re stupid. Don’t be taken in by it.

It’s written by the chair of the University of Minnesota psychiatry department, a locus of conflict of interest.

Let’s take a look.

Much has been written over the past few years about the relationship between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry. So I would like to disclose the following right now: I have worked with multiple companies over the years on sponsored research and as a consultant, and I continue to do so. During this time I have published a number of papers regarding this work — including some pertinent negative results concerning the drugs these companies make. [Dull but okay writing. He needs to provide at least one link to a study he’s been involved in, funded by a pertinent drug company, that arrived at seriously negative results. This is the first instance of bland reassurance in an opinion piece rife with it.]

A recent Pioneer Press report noted I have received less money from industry in the last year. Why? Because nothing is more important to me than the reputation of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota Medical School, and I am concerned that the media portrayal of all physician-industry relationships as bad could affect public perception. [This is just weird. Wacky. Where’s the logic? We need hard numbers first of all — the sort of thing notoriously missing from conflict of interest forms psychiatry professors give their universities — if, of course, they give their universities the forms at all. Quite a number of them don’t seem to bother with the paperwork. Many of those who do fudge the numbers like hell. This writer needs to talk to us about that… But as to the logic: Why should his caring so much about his school’s rep mean he’s received less money? And I mean — we need to know if it’s five or five thousand or five hundred thousand less, don’t we? And here comes the straw man: Absolutely no one believes, argues, or writes that all of these relationships are bad. Set up a straw man and knock him down. How powerful.]

What the media stories do not mention are the advances that have been made because of these relationships, which are managed carefully by institutions such as the University of Minnesota, where the Institutional Review Board approves all studies for human subjects and the Sponsored Projects Administration negotiates all contracts with industry. [He thinks you’re stupid, doesn’t he? Doesn’t he know that you know that things aren’t managed carefully at all? That this is an ongoing national scandal? You know what he’s doing? He’s saying There there little woman. There there little man. It’s all fine. You don’t need to understand — you don’t have the capacity to understand — the details and complexities here. Trust me.]

Physician-researchers need to partner with industry to develop new treatments. It is the system we have in place. The National Institutes of Mental Health do not fund development of new compounds in psychiatry; their focus is on funding basic science and mechanisms of action after approval. [Sure. True. No one has a problem with this. Get to the point.]

When it comes to clinical research to improve and develop medicines and bring them to market, it is industry that funds that work. And the research to develop new drugs is very expensive, costing $800 million and even up to $1 billion to get a drug discovered and available for patients. [How much improved are the improved meds you’re talking about? Isn’t one of the big points here that professors with financial interests in new, more expensive, but by no means better pills, are pushing those, thereby contributing to the health costs crisis? When do you plan to say something about this?]

When I consider the field of psychiatry, the advances made because of new medicines — studied in research institutions and developed by pharmaceutical companies — have been enormous and life-changing. Before we had effective medications, one out of two hospital beds was taken by a mentally ill patient. We no longer warehouse psychotic patients and drug them with opiates to “manage” them. Now, we have better ways. Better medications. [Who says? Do you think I’m dumb? Do you think I’m not aware of studies showing that many, many psychiatric meds are no more effective than placebos?]

Because of the partnerships between physicians and industry and the medications that have resulted from these relationships, many psychiatric patients were able to leave institutions. Now, because of the advances in psychiatric medicine, patients in our department — who are mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and friends — can be treated as outpatients. Many have jobs, support families and contribute to society. [Bland, bland, prose to match Dr. Pangloss’s happyface. At this point in reading, you should be telling this writer to eat shit.]

Are the psychiatric drugs we have now perfect? No. All drugs have side effects, and the drugs I prescribe my patients are no different. [Why don’t you talk not merely about side effects but effectiveness? Relative effectiveness of new, expensive and old, inexpensive? Why don’t you talk about all the people who shouldn’t be taking these strong-side-effect, expensive drugs in the first place? About the fact that the pills are being over-prescribed unconscionably by you and your colleagues? Where is all that?] The leading edge of our research now focuses on predicting which medications, which compounds, will be effective for our patients. The goal remains to help people live independently, or with the fewest restraints on their freedom. In our department, we develop programs that integrate efficacious medications with effective psychosocial treatments. [Gag me. You’re letting Mister Doctor use pompous big words — efficacious?? — and how’s that different from effective?? Oh. It ain’t — you’re letting him do that in order to make you think he’s a big ol’ authority and all that you shouldn’t question. Tell him one more time to eat shit.] There are always new discoveries to be made, and it is truly unfortunate that the public is hearing only one side of the story from the media.

Do physician-industry relationships need to be managed? Absolutely. Has the increased scrutiny in the past couple of years resulted in constructive changes? Yes. But the answer is not to break these ties completely. My patients of the future are counting on them. [Pompous, self-righteous, self-serving. Why did the paper publish it? Because of who the writer is. But the writer is lazy and cynical and he thinks you’re stupid.]

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SOS thanks a reader for emailing this article to her.

… always appreciates fine writing. Here’s some. Let’s see how John Kass of the Chicago Tribune does his thing.

If there were any doubts that Illinois is the diseased poster child of political corruption, those doubts are long gone. [Such a fresh, strong opening sentence, in the context of such an absurdly over the top story of statewide corruption, that SOS laughed out loud. Great start.]

Friday’s story in the Tribune exposes a widening pattern of corruption at the University of Illinois. This time, with the trading of law school admission for patronage-style jobs. [Sentence fragment! Yes, the second sentence isn’t a sentence. But that’s okay, right? The guy’s pissed, and his clipped approach fits his anger.]

So any doubts about where this state stands should be erased. What remains is the smell. [Maybe he’s heading into a bit too much figurative language — poster child, disease, smell. We might ask him to polish this by finding one metaphor — stench would certainly do it — and sticking with it.]

The state stinks, from Rich Daley’s City Hall to Springfield, and now all that’s left, for taxpayers, is the smell and the stain. [Smell, stain, stink — I guess we’re basically into liquid doodoo here. And that’s fine. If the shit fits, wear it.] Corruption and patronage, once thought to be [Drop to be.] the exclusive province of greasy politicians, now reach into the law school of the state’s premier public university. [Not sure about greasy, though greasy-palmed is I guess the referent. If you wanted to stay with flowing manure, you might say malodorous or something.]

Friday’s story details how University Chancellor Richard Herman forced the university’s law school to accept an unqualified student. That student had the backing of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The student’s relative dropped wads of campaign money on ex-Gov. Dead Meat. [Laughed again on dead meat. Though again, if you wanted to keep the primary metaphor you might say ex-Gov. Fertilizer.]

In exchange for corrupting his law school’s admissions policy, Herman wanted to get jobs for five of his law school graduates. University officials considered the law grads so far at bottom of their class that they needed political clout to get a decent salary at a good law firm. If that wasn’t possible, the U. of I. was willing to place them in government jobs.

“Yeah, I’m betting the Governorship will be open,” Heidi M. Hurd, then dean of the university’s College of Law, wrote in an e-mail to Herman on April 29, 2006, perhaps joking that Blagojevich’s time in public life was coming to an end.

What followed in her e-mail was worse.

“Other jobs in Government are fine, since kids who don’t pass the bar and can’t think are close enough for government work,” Hurd wrote. In another e-mail to other U. of I. officials, Hurd wrote:

“FYI: The deal is supposed to be that WE get to pick the students — and they are supposed to be bottom-of-the-class students who face a hell of a time passing the Bar and otherwise getting jobs!”

That’s law school the Chicago Way. If they can’t pass the bar on the first or second try, they’re qualified to become mayor.

The latest e-mails from Herman, Hurd and other U. of I. officials were released Thursday. The Tribune had asked for all such e-mails in April. But these somehow were forgotten, until U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald issued subpoenas. Then, magically, that which was lost was found. A miracle!

Did the U. of I. search by the light of Batman’s beacon, Diogenes’ lantern or some other powerful lamp of truth? [Once again, funny. Remember: Writing is all about control. If you’re angry, don’t spew. Find some other way to convey your rage. Humor is a fantastic way.]

Thomas Hardy, spokesman for the University and a former Tribune colleague whom I know and respect, dismisses my skepticism and deserves his say.

“We’ve made a good-faith effort to respond to the Tribune’s Freedom of Information requests, and others,” Hardy said. “Some documents were not produced that apparently should have been. We don’t know right now the reason for that, but the fact of the matter is that in collecting documents and doing interviews for the Quinn commission, we’ve come across these new e-mails and made them publicly available.”

Within days, perhaps sooner, you’ll hear a few thudding sounds, like lonely bowling balls tossed down a dark alley, and you’ll realize you’re listening to the political heads of Chancellor Herman and his crew rolling into history. [Well, we’ve switched figures bigtime, and I’m not sure how fresh and lovely the bowling ball thing is. I mean, not that shit’s fresh and lovely qua metaphor, but somehow people always like it. And yes — He could rewrite with an eye to maintaining his dominant metaphor by saying That sucking sound you hear is the head of Chancellor Herman being flushed down the toilet of history.]

But don’t make the mistake of thinking that lopping a few heads and burning the stumps will clean things up.

Not in the state where our boss Democrats in the state legislature — guys like state Senate President John Cullerton (D-DeLeo) — are still slapping themselves on the back for stopping the Illinois Reform Commission led by former assistant U.S. Atty. Patrick Collins.

Not in the state where Mayor Daley can pretend not to know that his nephew received $68 million in city pension money to invest, and then, without telling his taxpayers, puts them on the hook for likely cost overruns in his 2016 Olympic dream.

Not in the state where — just before the patronage abuse trial of Daley’s top aides a few years ago — mayoral mouthpiece David Axelrod, now the media wizard for President Barack Obama, defended political patronage by arguing it is the grease that helps government run smoothly. [Yeah, ye olde start every paragraph with the same words — Not in the state… Fine. Works well here.]

Think about your taxes. And all the fine students denied admission to the U. of I., though they have the grades.

Think of the clout that’s been reported by this newspaper. Consider the thousands of excellent, hardworking students at the U. of I. who’ve been dishonored by the corruption of adults who are [Drop who are.] supposed to protect them.

If you’ve read carefully here and elsewhere, you know about corrupt politicians, corrupt cops, corrupt businesses. But the last line of defense for the corrupt are kinky judges.

How do you get such judges? You begin in law school, with university officials establishing corrupt practices, leveraging unqualified lawyers into jobs.

Lawyers become judges, don’t they? [Terrific conclusion, in which he clarifies the food chain by which judges become just as corrupt as everyone else in Illinois government.]

… about a local instance of the national scandal involving university presidents and corporate boards.

He says it pretty well, too. But of course Scathing Online Schoolmarm awards a demerit here and there…

One of the major reasons for paying a university president in South Dakota a $320,000 salary is because it takes a lot of money to hire a great talent with the right skills, credentials and experience to serve as president. [Avoid the wordiness, the use of “is,” and the repetition of president by rewriting in a more direct and simple way: We pay the president of South Dakota State University a lot of money — $320,000 a year — because we want a talented person with the right credentials.]

If the state paid a salary of [drop a salary of] less than $50,000, you’d expect that [drop that] a person of great stature and ability with full-time responsibilities would [drop would and write to] need to seek other income sources [Double dash after sources — He’s about to introduce a strong point. Give it some drama.] such as an additional salary of $195,000 plus a one-time stock-option payoff of almost $200,000 to sit on the board of directors of a multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation. But that’s not the case. [But that’s not the case is confusing. What does the writer mean? Rewrite.]

Monsanto’s gain is South Dakota State University’s loss. This $400,000 payoff creates a perceived conflict of interest not only for the university president but also for the quality of the research results coming from SDSU.

How are the results of research investments at SDSU to be taken seriously when one of Monsanto’s competitors can point to the university president’s $400,000 purse from the corporation and declare the research is skewed? If the perception is tainted, why would benefactors invest in the research services of SDSU or any other South Dakota university if it appears our university presidents can be bought and it becomes tolerated? [Drop and it becomes tolerated. Bought‘s your strong word.] What message does this send to students and parents faced with ever increasing tuition and fee increases? What message does this send to our SDSU research teams?

Personally, I like SDSU President David Chicoine and consider him a good friend. [Drop personally.] I strongly supported and campaigned for him to come to SDSU [Drop strongly.]. When he was hired, I felt SDSU had made a major leap forward in its growth as a prestigious institution. [had grown in prestige. Always try to tighten.]

The job is full time, requiring the full devotion of talents and energies of the president. [The job requires the president’s full time and energy.]  If a $320,000 salary isn’t enough to keep Chicoine on the job at SDSU, it should be negotiated so that we can retain a great talent whose full-time energies are devoted to SDSU. [This is the kicker. If SOS had been writing this, she’d have made this the first sentence. I like its threat to throw the guy out. That’s exactly what a politician should say.]

If Chicoine has spare time [Drop spare.] to promote the interests of [Drop the interests of.] a multinational corporation, he should refuse the pay other than to cover his expenses for travel, food and lodging. Service to academia should not appear as an opportunity to cut a fat hog at the expense of the university’s future. [SOS LOVES cut a fat hog! As a ‘thesdan, she doesn’t encounter phrases like cut a fat hog on a daily basis… In fact she’s never heard cut a fat hog… It’s the very opposite of a cliché– bright, new, and prompting pellucid images of bestial greed.  Bravo.]

As a leading national land-grant research university known for its excellent nonbiased research, we [Demerit goes here.  Are WE a land-grant university?] must do all we can to keep SDSU’s credibility intact. What message does this send to other university presidents? What message are we sending to corporate America?

We should not turn this debate into nitpicking about conflicts of interest. If Chicoine received a salary of $1,000 a year to sit on Monsanto’s board, there probably would be no discussion. That clearly is not the case here.

The state Board of Regents needs to resolve this matter immediately. If the board does not act, this issue will be presented to the South Dakota Legislature for a more permanent solution that will address it fairly and reasonably.  [Drop the address it fairly hoohah and end with the threat to can his ass.]