Rabbi Yosef Shloush, who chairs an organization of settlement rabbis that invited [Yona] Metzger to speak, was quoted by the Walla news site as saying Metzger was invited over two months ago and that, at the time, “he was [only] suspected [of bribery].”

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You cannot make this shit up.

Preparing to talk about John Cheever tomorrow, I take a look at his Paris Review interview.

This is no reflection on Hollywood, but it’s just that I seemed to have a suicide complex there. I don’t like the freeways, for one thing. Also, the pools are too hot . . . 85 degrees, and when I was last there, in late January, in the stores they were selling yarmulkes for dogs — my God! I went to a dinner and across the room a woman lost her balance and fell down. Her husband shouted over to her, “When I told you to bring your crutches, you wouldn’t listen to me.” That line couldn’t be better!

[A poem drawn from words and phrases in this essay, in the New Yorker.]

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Survival Condo Project

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear disaster slapping with loud sounds on the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

… to a university with a hedge fund down the street.

Insanely rich obsessively money-hoarding Harvard (closing in on $40 billion) is jest ’bout fit to burst with all that dough; and some folks – I mean, hah hah, jest some folks, but, still, some folks – been saying that they got themselves so “fat, rich, and stupid” (says here) that they jest don’t know what all to do with it (ain’t like there’s a world of pain out there they might give some of it to or whatever!) so they been handing it out like candy to anyone who happens to work at the investment fund…

And well that plus other shit that tends to attach to the ownership by one university – one anything – of forty billion dollars seems to have embarrassed Harvard to the point where they’re kind of trying to make it all go away by outsourcing their investment activity.

Now UD‘s here to tell you that Harvard’s gonna be disappointed if it thinks that a non-profit which hoards obscene wealth except for what it hands out in twenty-million-dollar a year salaries to its investment managers will be less noticeable to journalists and alumni and the tax-paying public after it moves this activity off campus. UD wants you to know that Harvard’s greed and depravity – and the absurd lengths to which it goes to maintain this greed and depravity – will continue to be front and center, wherever it locates itself.

They flew him in just so he could give a little homily at a new prayer room in the UM hospital, and Israel’s chief rabbi duly poured on the donor-schmaltz (“You and your mother are doing a lot of good, and your father in heaven is so proud of you today.”). Now he’s giving homilies from his jail cell, where this career criminal (the police have been after him since 2005) has finally been imprisoned.

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

And… I gotta say! This is the most a-fucking-mazing university page I’ve ever seen! And it’s still up on Georgetown University’s site, and all they have to do is update it with the information that he’s in jail now!

I’m quoting this in full. I am not making this up.

Yona Metzger is the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, making him one of the country’s two chief rabbis along with Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar. In June 2013 he suspended himself from official duties while under investigation for money laundering. Metzger was born in Haifa, Israel in 1953 and was ordained a rabbi after serving in the Israeli Defense Forces as a chaplain. He was appointed to the Chief Rabbinate in 2003; his appointment was controversial, as he is the only chief rabbi to have been appointed without prior experience as a rabbinical judge. Metzger has also faced allegations of sexual abuse and extortion, though formal charges were never filed. Metzger has followed in the steps of his predecessor Yisrael Meir Lau by pursuing dialogue with other religions. He has met with Muslim and Hindu leaders, the Dalai Lama, and Pope Benedict XVI during the latter’s visit to Israel.

Fuckin’ A! We want this paragon in our Berkley Center for Religion Peace & World Affairs and you know what fuck you if you think just cuz he takes charitable donations meant for suffering people and stashes them in his sister’s house we should let him go. NO. Here’s his revised faculty page and did we say fuck you?

Yona Metzger is the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, making him one of the country’s two chief rabbis along with Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar. In June 2013 he suspended himself from official duties while under investigation for money laundering. Metzger was born in Haifa, Israel in 1953 and was ordained a rabbi after serving in the Israeli Defense Forces as a chaplain. He was appointed to the Chief Rabbinate in 2003; his appointment was controversial, as he is the only chief rabbi to have been appointed without prior experience as a rabbinical judge. Metzger has also faced allegations of sexual abuse and extortion, though formal charges were never filed. Metzger has followed in the steps of his predecessor Yisrael Meir Lau by pursuing dialogue with other religions. He has met with Muslim and Hindu leaders, the Dalai Lama, and Pope Benedict XVI during the latter’s visit to Israel. Metzger just entered prison for 3 1/2 years for fraud, breach of trust and tax offenses. But watch this page – he’ll get out early (holy man) and will be able to resume his affiliation with the Center. Meanwhile, you can visit with him here, as he talks about the importance of being charitable.

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The larger spiritual context:

In practice, the office of chief rabbi has become the grand prize in a corrupt system of political spoils. Indeed, as his successor and that of his Sephardi colleague were being chosen, incumbent Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger was already under house arrest on charges of bribery and corruption…. For decades the haredim have benefited from the fact that their singular priority—funding for the network of institutions that enable their self-enclosed lifestyle—was so narrow that they could negotiate their way into almost any government coalition. The installation of Yona Metzger as Ashkenazi chief rabbi in 2003 was a perfect expression of their cynicism and contempt for the institutions of the state: He was a rabbinic nonentity with questionable ethics, but he was an entirely reliable cutout. (Earlier in his career, Metzger had agreed to be disqualified from serving as a municipal rabbi in order to forestall disciplinary charges; when he was put up for chief rabbi, he argued that he’d never been disqualified from serving the whole country, which showed chutzpah even by Israeli standards.)

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Here’s El Supremo with his bestie Glenn Beck, bemoaning the “bad public relations” from which Israel suffers.

A slow but steady slippage in live attendance [at football games] doesn’t mean a precipitous slide is ahead for college football. Lucrative television broadcast contracts are a much more important source of revenue; strong TV ratings, which haven’t seen a similar decline, not ticket sales drive those contracts.

Venture capital, as UD has noted before on this blog, should be looking into animatronic-college-student startups: Firms that produce in bulk twenty-ish rah-rah student bodies that can quickly be shipped and distributed throughout empty stadium seating areas. Clients would be in charge of campus-specific ornamentation (local beer brews, hats with the name of the relevant school on them, team face paint); the firm would be hired to plausibly replicate and animate hundreds of generic fans.

Allowing laptops, as UD often says, is academic malpractice.

Professors who continue to allow laptop use fall into the following categories.

1. I could give a shit. It’s easier for me to do virtually nothing up there if students are sedated with their fun screens. To make matters perfect, I use old text-heavy PowerPoints and drone and dribble over them. Eventually my teaching will resemble my deep calm when sleeping off benders, and my classroom will be a morgue.

2. I hate and fear humanity, especially students. I look forward to the day when all of them will be hidden from me behind their screens.

That’s about it.

Just days after the three Oregon players were released from hospitalization due to overexertion during workouts, there’s more bad news for Willie Taggart’s Ducks program.

According to the school, co-offensive coordinator and tight ends coach David Reaves was arrested and charged with driving under the influence in Eugene on Saturday night.

You’ll love the details, including Reaves’ history with hostess programs and impermissible contacts and all.

What does ol’ UD tell you over and over again? Football programs really raise the tone.

… these are all not merely commendable gestures, but will, in certain American university classroom settings, count as credit-bearing assignments.

Over the course of writing this blog, UD has chronicled the many ways professors accomplish two things: Get multiple people to help the professors in their far-flung personal commitments and endeavors; and avoid reading student papers/exams.

It’s win-win, really. You get a captive audience to do your bidding, whatever it may be, and you give yourself a break in terms of academic labor. For the student it’s win-win too – just cough up the good-cause donation, or knock on a district door or two, or endure that initial little pinch as the Red Cross pokes you… and presto! No need to write your final paper (automatic A) or take the final exam (again, automatic A).

UD herself has wondered if she could interest her students in washing her dog. UD’s dog is water-phobic, and the only way UD has been able to wash her is to capture her in her little fenced-in yard and race after her all over the yard while squirting the garden hose at her. The dog runs madly about, and UD runs madly about. Once the dog’s all wet, UD must attempt to hold her still while applying dog shampoo, and then it’s another runabout for rinsing. If, in exchange for not having to write their final paper or take their final exam, one or two of my students would wash my dog…

But no, no. In all the cases UD has mentioned, professors paid a price for these transactions. The latest instance, at the University of Central Florida, involves a psych prof who just a couple years ago was getting praised for doing shit like hypnotizing his entire class, but who’s now catching hell because he’ll drop all sorts of class requirements for students who give their money to a charity poker game. (Maybe the hypnosis was part of the deal: You put them under and then … When I snap my fingers you will awaken and give all your money to Saint Jude’s Hospital…)

Such a classy idea. On top of taking their money (their parents’ money… our tax money…) in tuition, you take more of their money in exchange for making their university tuition meaningless. At least the University of North Carolina’s athletes were on scholarship when the university arranged for them to have meaningless classes.

But anyway. Someone called an ethics hotline on the dude and he’s out on his ass and will have to find a whole new universe of suckers.

La Kid takes part in

Ireland’s Women’s March.
Happening now.

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As for the local march,
here’s a representative headline.

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UD‘s cousin Karen (actress
and director), on her way
to the DC march this AM.

The long tradition of university football players wearing immediately identifiable clothes, or driving cars with immediately identifiable parking permits, during the course of their robberies is burnished once again in the case of the University of Oklahoma’s Parrish Cobb.

Here’s UD‘s favorite headline:

Oklahoma cornerback Parrish Cobb, burned for 2 Noah Brown TDs, charged in 3 robberies

You wanna get the important stuff out there first, and only after that get around to his off-field activities…

Some nice comments at Deadspin:

(spring practice)

Stoops: Is there any video?

Cobb: I don’t think so.

Stoops: Well take an extra lap. Wait, we’re in a new era. Make it two.

She’s just to his left.

First thing: As my morning train to campus pulled out of Metro Center, a man’s voice reached us from the platform. GO TRUMP!

Walking to my first class: A middle-aged couple in full Trump regalia (enormous Trump hats, red white and blue clothing with Trump written on it) strides by, excited and happy.

Walking from my second class: At one of the campus intersections, a green vintage car rolls slowly along with Trump’s name in big letters on most of its surfaces. It is softly tooting its horn.

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I’m a little early for my second class, so Ashley (Fulbright student from China) and I sit on a bench and chat. One of my colleagues comes by and says with dread What are you doing tomorrow?

Staying home in Garrett Park. I’m thinking of taking up knitting.

I feel as though I should be there, at an opposition rally or whatever… I asked [another colleague of ours] what he’s doing tomorrow. He said Hiding under the bed.

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Gatherings up and down the Foggy Bottom Metro platform that evening of Bikers for Trump — skinny sunburned guys with long blond hair and arm tattoos and skinny jeans with key chains and handkerchiefs spilling out of them. Mucho legible clothing with gun, patriotic, and Trump-love messages.

I’m not gonna do that thing where I say They started as monasteries and other religious-type entities and look how far they’ve fallen! I’m not gonna say universities – much less American universities – must continue to represent a higher, purer, realm of activity than, say, Myrtle Beach Bike Week.

No, no, let it rip. Let sex-scandal-soaked University of Minnesota produce as a finalist for regent a football player with exposure issues. Let UMN’s current regents grumble about having been left out of the hiring and compensation decisions around their incoming multimillionaire football coach (background on him here). Let the probable upcoming scandal and massive buyout of this guy’s contract also weigh heavily on the pointless dithering trustees. Fine. Fine.

Go ahead and make universities places where highly paid employees routinely injure students so badly they have to be hospitalized. Where brainwork means concussions. Football players with exposure issues are part of the grand legacy of American universities, as are sadistic-training hospitalizations. As are – at some of our highest profile schools – child rape, gang rape, and woman battering.

But consider this:

I don’t want to scare you, but more and more people are talking about a fundamental change in the higher education of this country. More and more people are talking about a minor league for football.

And American universities had better watch out, or it’s ave atque vale Richie Incognito, Johnny Manziel, and Peyton Manning. These guys are not merely the heroes of schools like Nebraska and Tennessee – they’re the trustees of the future. Their ethos is the school ethos. All the money and the passion and the very identity of the university follow them. What happens when American teenagers are able to go directly into a minor league system and bypass the university?

UD‘s friend David Ridpath is all excited.

For anyone that loves football at all levels and wants college football in a more educational setting along with providing more talent for the NFL, it is simply a no brainer.

A lot of people are excited. But if you’re a university, ask yourself: What happens to the trillion dollars you’ve already invested in new stadiums and all that shit? You’re already looking at seriously declining attendance at the games, and serious resistance to paying vaster and vaster student athletic fees. Much more fundamentally, you are football. Nebraska, Penn State, a hundred others – What happens when a few grade-conscious pussies tiptoe out on the field for you? As Mrs Dalloway put it – the death of the soul…

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UD thanks Charlie.

… but not a plagiarist to run communications.

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I’ll tell you ol’ UD‘s take on it.

Crowley was a veteran, all over the place, slaphappy plagiarist. So are a lot of people. What’s scandalous here is the woman’s assumption that even after having taken the job of one of the country’s highest-profile writers, she could continue to get away with it. She didn’t even fucking disclose!

And you know why not?

Because virtually everyone in this administration, starting at the top, flagrantly plays the angles. She figured she could too.

(Carson? He apologized. He’s more high-profile, having run for prez. And being a plagiarist doesn’t have obvious and immediate implications for running housing.)