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.”

“[T]he violence … is more than mildly sickening in its scale, its graphic presentation and its calculated gratuitousness. Well before the hero, Gi-hun (Lee), was playing the titular game in the final episode with a steak knife sticking through his hand, I’d had enough. Apologists can argue that the combination of businesslike dispatch and cartoonish exaggeration in the killing has aesthetic and thematic resonance, but nothing onscreen supports that take. There is little dread and even less emotion, just the logistical satisfaction of the body count…

[S]tylistic panache and mordant wit [allow some directors] to make outré violence feel like an organic element in their stories. In “Squid Game,” it’s just empty, bloody calories.”

Yet another example of the absolute refusal to name the primary reason Wyoming consistently tops national suicide rankings: All them surefire, convenient, guns lying around absolutely everywhere. This editorial in the Casper Star Tribune offers a full plate of cliches and a plea for better education. You betcha, partner.

“USC and its athletic department spent much of the past few years embroiled in various stupid scandals... USC was one focus of the Justice Department’s men’s basketball corruption case that went public in 2017, and the program finally got hit with NCAA probation earlier this year as a result. In 2019, USC was on the front page of the New York Times (and not the sports section) for its central role in the Varsity Blues scandal, wherein rich parents fabricated and bribed their kids’ way into elite schools. [USC] administrators [have been] dealing with racketeering and corruption cases and NCAA investigations… [O]utside legal disputes stemming from USC’s 2000s NCAA problems weren’t entirely wrapped up until the end of July. This July.”

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“USC had to fire back-to-back coaches in the middle of the season. Find another major program so badly directed that it’s had to do that.

And then USC had to do it again this year, something no other major program has even had to contemplate. Think of the degree of mismanagement that requires. From an incredibly immature Lane Kiffin to an incredibly intemperate Steve Sarkisian to an incredibly incompetent Clay Helton, they turned the keys of one of college football’s historic top three programs to an over-their-head trio of not-ready-for-prime-time players.”

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The second writer, who calls USC’s program “dead,” doesn’t even mention the very special Sarkisian/Puliafito/Nikias magic, about which UD wrote a few years ago. Surely he doesn’t mean to leave out of his autopsy the very top of USC’s leadership!

“Wealth is not necessarily accumulated at the expense of public interest and the needy.”

I guess this is what he means.

At least 173 shots fired in 3-hour span in St. Paul, injuring 7, but that was way back in May, and it doesn’t count because it was three separate incidents; whereas last night in St Paul, in one single incident at a bar, multiple shooters fired – and man, I don’t know, they’re not giving out estimates yet, but the shooters killed one person and injured fourteen and apparently the bambambam just went on and on so I’m thinking

multiple shooters

crowded venue

protracted gunfight, chaos

so okay let’s say conservatively that’s 400-500 shots and maybe many more. Not as many as the Vegas shooter – that was a thousand bullets – but he did massive planning and amassed a vast arsenal in his hotel room. It’s not fair to compare the bullet count in St Paul, which was a spontaneous massacre, to Stephen Paddock’s military-precision atrocity; but on the other hand, especially given its unplanned nature, the St Paul shootout is impressive.

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Less impressive, though I guess striking in a way, is St Paul’s sheriff predicting the shooting at the Truck Park bar the night before it happened.

“Quite the gathering here at the Truck Park,” [Bob] Fletcher said on his livestream. “Holy mackerel. This is a lot of folks. We’ve never had any shots fired right here. I hope we never do, but this volume at some point it’s gonna happen, right?”

His 16 year old daughter “shot herself with her dad’s handgun in their living room. The gun was kept on the mantle and her father usually took it to bed with him, but had not that night.”

Excellent protection.

Whether it’s rape, dirty recruitment, or assault, Boulder has long been front and center — and they’re keeping the beating-the-shit-out-of-everyone thing going with hotly recruited hometown hero Carson Lee, who titles his Twitter page with Isaiah 41:10, which in his case would seem to go something like yea, I will repeatedly pummel thee with the immense right hand of mine immense arm.

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According to the affidavit, the man said Lee punched him about 30 times. Doctors later said the man suffered a fractured skull and internal brain bleeding.

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Only nineteen and blessed with spectacular tackling skills – thirty blows resulting in the sort of brain injury you only see inflicted at the very highest levels of university football. Thirty shows commitment. It shows follow-through. It shows star quality.

UD fully expects Colorado to hold tight to Mad Dog Lee even if he’s found guilty; but on the off chance the school decides to let him go, we can all sit back and enjoy the spectacle of increasingly mindless, vicious university football factories taking their chance, one after another, on the guy. Eventually maybe he’ll hit the jackpot and turn into Richie Incognito.

… for whom 74 is the new 44.

See this post for background on PM Babis, undone by what came flying out of Pandora’s box. For indeed he has lost an election that was his to win, simply because he seems to be a grasping lying motherfucker.

But God never closes a door without opening a window. Babis’ consolation prize is his $22 million Château Bigdick or Bigaud or something which here’s the entrance and I hear tell it’s got the pool and the palms and everything a bounced Czech might need to make him feel a mite better.

And indeed I have covered some of the most obnoxious; but let us consider more pleasant things. Curtis Institute, the school that educated the unearthly Yuja Wang, just got an anonymous $20 million donation.

Anonymous: How about that? And given so that the world can be more musical. How about that.

Professor Bright Sheng leaves one Cultural Revolution and enters another.

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BOYCOTT WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO

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BOYCOTT KEVIN SCOTT