… is that the attention of the first-string press (to put this in terms that people at FSU might be able to understand) has now decisively been drawn to all of this nation’s jockshops. The heavy hitters (still trying to keep this comprehensible to the folks down there) of American journalism, the elite squad of long-form writing — they’ve all assumed a very tight huddle right on top of schools like Florida State, and they’re peering intently down at them.
What you have to understand is that backwaters like FSU traditionally get covered only by the local booster wins-and-losses press. If anything having to do with their corruption manages to get published, it’s going to be written up by the local cynical wags as the big ol’ joke corruption is in Florida. Think Carl Hiaasen. That’s the prose model.
But now you’ve got these guys in New York takin a fine-tooth comb to the way we been doin things down these parts for a long time. Take for instance this paragraph in a New York Times article one of UD’s readers, John, just sent her:
The Tallahassee police said officers have discretion in deciding when to press charges and issue citations. They provided The Times with seven other cases in which someone hit a car and left the scene but were not charged with hit and run. A review of those cases, however, found that none was comparable in severity or circumstances to the Oct. 5 crash. Four involved cars bumping into each other in parking lots, one caused no damage at all, and the other two were very minor; in no case did a driver abandon a wrecked vehicle in the middle of the night and flee the scene after totaling someone else’s car. Notably, most of the seven crash reports contained far more narrative detail about what happened than the report on the Oct. 5 accident.
That pesky Oct. 5 accident! Happened to involve some of our Most Valuable Players, sure, and, sure, they fled the scene, but no one was hurt and, you know, they’re just kids. Yes, yes, driving on a suspended license, overdue fees from an earlier speeding ticket, whatever. Who said it’s any of your business?
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UPDATE: Don’t wanna say I told you so about ol’ FSU, but a reader sends me the response of the FSU fans to the New York Times article.
Before I tell you what they did, recall the reaction of Penn State fans to the Sandusky scandal. Do you remember? When Penn State finally fired the man who helped make it possible for Jerry Sandusky to do what he did for so long, the fans rioted. As Gawker put it in a headline: Thousands of Students Riot Over Firing of Child Rapist’s Protector.
FSU fans launched a Twitter block. They flagged the article as spam. They made it so you can’t read it.