She wonders why some people consider this a strange prediction.

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

They’re a little slow down south. They’ll get with the program.

“What difference does [the ban] make,” said … proud father Nicola Sparti, 24, who described his occupation as “a little bit of this, a little bit of that.” (“Flees from Carabinieri on a motorbike,” read a recent newspaper article about him.) “One day the godfather’s there and the next he’s gone. But a father is forever.”

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

When it comes to Catholicism, Sicily does a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

‘[T]he current fashion [is] a performance, a kind of, yes, virtue signaling… Upon what authority are [Bright Sheng’s denouncers] allowed such primacy of influence in how we speak, think and teach in our times?’

… an obsession with fundraising and money and a lack of oversight that has led repeatedly to scandal, from a drug-using medical school dean to wealthy parents cheating the admissions process.”

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As UD expected, they’re being WAY ageist. But … whatever works…

“They have decided to charge an 83-year-old woman,” whines ex-dean Marilyn Flynn’s lawyer. Tell it to this dude. Apparently you can be charged for crimes you committed even if you’re a coot.

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Nice side story, by the way, about the glories of online education, about which UD has written for a long time:

“Flynn [thought she] had found what seemed to be a lucrative line of revenue from online degree programs.

At first, the agreement with a company called 2U worked so well that Flynn was doing testimonials for investors, but eventually it became an albatross. USC was saddled with pricey downtown office leases and salaries for a raft of new teachers for the virtual program, and the university had to split the tuition money with 2U. The economics demanded constant growth and enrollment ballooned until USC was the largest social work program in the country. Student quality declined, rankings fell and an enormous hole opened in the social work school’s operating budget.

The school would ultimately be forced to lay off nearly 30 staff and slash spending… [The] school’s existence was threatened…”

Lack of oversight? Like Kwaaaaazy. Like has anyone noticed how Strega Nona over there in social work is cooking up an awful lot of pasta? Yeah looks weird but we’re kind of busy with our deadhead med school dean and the alcoholic football coach…

Datz how you get there… Datz how you get pretty much everywhere USC has been in the last ten or so years.

I’ve been worried sick they wouldn’t break fifty billion.

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

Truly, these are the times that try men’s souls.

Brodsky Museum, St Petersburg

A life of poetic intensity

Circled by Belomorkanal smoke

And, near the Arctic, by fast-cooled chifir tea —

We want these old apartments to evoke

The depth of this, deeper than poetry,

Deeper than your bitter words that spoke

The nothingness of time and history.

That is: The bathroom stink you tried to cloak,

Sharing the bowl with two other families.

The desk display of poets who provoked

You into verse: Auden, Frost… A messy

Desk, a mid-modern aesthetic baroque

Of books and bottles and a cup of tea.

Asleep for years, these dusty rooms stoke

Unembittered hearts — too young for ennui —

Who press against the doorway to soak

In the atmosphere.  They pay the entry fee

And immediately want to stroke

The same cracked imperial walls that he

Lived sandwiched between, bitter and broke

But not broken.

And big rich Norway couldn’t find a way to put him in prison for a long time? Is it Norway’s policy to wait until radicalized career criminals kill five people and injure three others to jail them? How long will he stay incarcerated this time? Six months?

The University of Southern California is colossally corrupt. It’s corrupt almost everywhere: In its athletics program (I’d name names, but there are too many); in its med school (Puliafito; Varma; Tyndall); in its admissions system (Varsity Blues); on its board of trustees (Barrack), and now in its school of social work. (Click on my first link for details on all of these instances.) It has succeeded in attaining Yeshiva University levels of corruption.

You have to pay close attention to understand the massive social work school corruption – here’s a good, detailed description of it – but know that the person allegedly engineering the scheme was the dean of the school, a woman desperately greedy for money after she apparently mismanaged the school to a huge deficit. She and the local politician she bribed in exchange for lucrative contracts are currently under federal indictment.

And here’s the real beauty of it, given USC’s perennial, and, most recently, one billion dollar, problem with sexual harassment: The dean arranged the quick hiring onto her faculty of the politician’s son – even got the entirely unqualified dude a professorship! – although the guy only needed a job because he was about to be charged with sexual harassment at his current job.

The politician is “a graduate of the university, from which he received a doctorate in social ethics,” and yes, you cannot make this shit up.

I said here that Jon Gruden’s the stupidest person in the world. That was before I met Brandon Fellows, echt Trumpian.

I come to praise Michelangelo’s David, not bury him.

Rather than submerging his naughty bits in a… shaft, Dubai should apply its local modesty icon- the hijab – to his middle section.

[Consider] the Raiders’ decision in 2018 at [Jon] Gruden’s behest to sign Richie Incognito, a player known to have a past of bullying, racism, and homophobia. Gruden would go on to call Incognito a “leader on this football team” when he was signed to an extension in 2019.

Yeah well people all over are unloading on the self-email-outed-ex-coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, but who knew these two steroidal psychos were on the same team? UD didn’t know, and UD‘s been blogging about batshit Incognito since his intellectual sojourn at the University of Nebraska.

[Gruden] found space on his roster for Richie Incognito, a confirmed bully who was suspended for intimidating a Black former Dolphins teammate with racial slurs.

It warms the cockles of her heart to know Gruden and Incognito were… together… at the end…

She sees them embrace in a manly farewell, and hears Incognito’s final words to his bro — “And now nothing remains for me but to assure you in the most animated language of the violence of my affection.”

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AWKward. Defenders of Gruden are falling all over themselves to point out the double standard of happily allowing squads of criminals and maniacs (see above) into the NFL but booting out a guy who writes disgusting emails. Dudes have a point, but in making the point they are offering the world a high-profile, complete list of all the dangerous shits who Americans worship because they play football. Not sure Gruden’s defenders want to publicize precisely how deep that problem goes. Might make people want to do something about it.

‘[T]he two-round [presidential election] system compels much of the electorate to vote in the runoffs against candidates — and not for someone of their liking.

“In the second round, the point is who is more repulsive,” [an observer] said.’

Yeah where the FUCK do they get off…..

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The ironies in this downfall are as crude as Gruden himself, but let’s just get it said: He’s always calling everybody else a dumb prick; but what do you call someone who loses $100 million in salary because he’s too stupid to know you don’t write anything controversial in an email? Who else is that stupid?

It doesn’t take a genius to understand the social function of university fraternities in America: They exist to shape the character of postmodern capitalism’s most successful predators. The in-group viciousness you learn at Sigma Alpha Epsilon – with special attention to homicidal acts against losers – leaves you in a state of hyper-readiness for Goldman Sachs.

The best and strongest denunciation of the cowardly idiocy currently in action at the highest levels of the University of Michigan (background here) comes from – wait for it – the campus chapter of International Youth and Students for Social Equality at the University of Michigan, a Trotskyist group.

[Bright Sheng’s student/destroyer,] who evidently knows nothing about the play, its history, or Olivier’s career and intentions in his 1965 performance, has thus far been fully supported by the university in the baseless claim that Sheng’s showing of the film and the film itself were “racist.”… In a statement to the Michigan Daily, composition Professor Evan Chambers—who is replacing Sheng in the course—wrote, “To show the film now, especially without substantial framing, content advisory and a focus on its inherent racism is in itself a racist act, regardless of the professor’s intentions.” Chambers presents absolutely no evidence to support such an outrageous claim. The public is apparently simply expected to take his word for it… The whole incident is foul and shameful. For all the hand-wringing about students “needing context” and “trigger-warnings” about the play, there is virtually no discussion of the actual work or film adaptation…

Surprised to find the sharpest attack coming from the left? Don’t be. There’s a long history among traditional lefties of disgust with Foucauldian bullshit and its current “identity” emanations. See Richard Rorty’s contrast between the reformist left and the cultural left.

You don’t have to be anywhere in particular on the ideological spectrum to recognize the vicious unpersoning of Bright Sheng as fully reactionary, in the worst traditions of the most perverted forms of Orwellian “revolution.”