If you want to understand the University of Tennessee, one of America’s most depraved locations, watch this clip from An Officer and a Gentleman.
To understand why UT protects accused rapists, hires scummy coaches who arrive on campus trailing their scummy pasts like bright streamers, puts its athletic program in 200 million dollars of debt, and in every conceivable way craps on the word university, you have to understand that for UT there is nothing else besides field games. It has nowhere else to go. It’s got nothing else. Take away ball games and you’ve got a big gaping hole that owes money to every crooked coach in America.
Why, UD has wondered for years, do the citizens of Tennessee keep paying for this? True, they live in what has long been one of the most corrupt states in America.… So maybe they’ve given up. Maybe they don’t care that the money they work for doesn’t educate their kids but keeps dirty coaches in the lifestyles to which they have become accustomed. In a sane world, Tennessee’s residents would have generated a popular tax revolt or two. Instead, UD envisions them – much like the depressed vodka-swilling citizens of the former Soviet Union – motionless in their houses with the tv on to some shitty UT game, knocking back bourbon.
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UD thanks John.
April 14th, 2016 at 5:29PM
UD, no need to invoke the Soviet Union to find analogies for UT fans. Your description of TN inertia is unfortunately apparent on many Indian reservations, especially those in the northern Mid-west. My cousin taught briefly at Pine Ridge some years back. I guess that’s what happens when you mix despair with bureaucratic hostility…
April 14th, 2016 at 5:59PM
charlie: It’s probably because of my Polish husband that I reach for vodka/communism analogies. But of course you’re right.
April 14th, 2016 at 6:01PM
I didn’t know that about Mr. UD….
April 14th, 2016 at 11:28PM
Despair . . . bureaucratic hostility . . . inertia . . . vodka-swilling . . . knocking back bourbon . . . Soviet. How’d you guess my Ohio ZIP code?
BTW-Tennessee, I think, is also the home of Hickok45, a You Tube guy who’s an articulate spokesman for America’s unique gun culture. Civic empowerment, a good relic of Northern English-Scots cantankerousness and distrust of government, historical and cultural artifacts, etc.
April 15th, 2016 at 12:53AM
Hey Jack, let me recommend something for you to read. It’s “Insurgent Workers: Studies in the Origins of Industrial Unionism.” The publisher is the UCLA Press and it’ll be very hard to find, but worth the effort. The book is a study of union insurgency during the 1930s. The part that is fascinating, imo, is what workers in Southern states were willing to do and endure, and the punishment they meted out to authority, including corp management, to get collective bargaining and industrial safety. When you see that legacy of getting off your ass and doing some god damn thing, then you have to wonder what hell has happened…
April 15th, 2016 at 7:13AM
Charlie, thanks. A very good boss I had told me, “Respect the people who work for you. If you can’t respect them–fake it. They’re the only people you have.”
April 15th, 2016 at 8:15AM
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/14/university-of-california-davis-paid-consultants-2011-protests
April 16th, 2016 at 8:51AM
Thanks dmf, very much appreciate it….
April 16th, 2016 at 8:58AM
Jack/OH, your quote is what my dad said to me. “I guess I’ve got to get along with you. You’re the only kid I’ve got.”