When to the sweet silent thought of Sessions
He summons up remembrance of things past,
He finds himself caught up in indiscretions
In answer to the questions Franken asked.
Now does he drown an eye, unused to flow,
For Russian friends with whom he used to play,
And weep afresh what he pretended not to know,
And moan the absence of his vieux Sergey.
Now can he grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
Which he new pays as if not paid before.
But all of this might be excused
If he be granted his recuse.

Texas Christian University’s most militant Disciples of Christ are to be found on its football team, where select players routinely fan out among the non-football-playing student population on campus and beat the shit out of them.

The bloodied president of the team’s booster club, The Flagellants, recently issued a statement: “For the greater glory of God.”

The greatest privilege of all is being able to shut out offensive ideas.

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

Freedom and safety both require a level of risk and a careful balance. Unhappily a free society is simply not compatible with never-ending, numbing comfort. A bubble is its own kind of cage.

The world of professionalized university sports is super-seamy. It’s like a Fellini film with the surreality edited out and the depravity left in.

As UD often notes on this blog, none of us minds the even greater depravity of truly professional sports, where bloodshed doping and cheating are part of the spectacle. In the professional game, these are perennial, structural, cultural elements, like soccer riots in Brazil.

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

But a lot of people retain a misty flimsy sense that a university… as opposed to a thirteen billion dollar professional league… that a university president… as opposed to an NFL commissioner…

So you get this… discomfort, when people are again and again made to realize that the NCAA is the NFL with less revenue (one billion v thirteen), and that major university athletic programs are … well, remove the word university.

Since everyone knows what a joke any academic component of most big-time university sports programs is likely to be, all it takes is for the tiniest shoe to drop for a ton of shit to hit the fan.

Take what’s been going on for a year now at the University of Missouri, where one – count ’em! one! – measly athletic academic tutor suddenly alleged that the whole tutoring of athletes thing was, you know …

Now Ms Kumar, like many of the people willing to profit off of the dungheap that is major university athletics, is not, on careful consideration, as pure as the driven snow. Her rap sheet’s up there in my headline. Yet her little peep about the program has a vast expensive arsenal of UM attorneys, investigators, and all the rest training its guns over the program with as much dispatch and authority as the Chapel Hill arsenal.

Yet while that fighting force roots out corruption, there’s still Ms Kumar, waiting with waning patience on the sidelines for her reward. One way or another she intends to make a lot of money – maybe a whistleblower settlement, maybe an exclusive magazine interview, whatever, but the point here is to pay off her debts.

Yolanda Kumar, the tutor at the epicenter of the Missouri athletic department’s joint investigation with the NCAA into alleged academic fraud, touched off a social-media firestorm Friday afternoon by offering to sell [names of campus wrongdoers] in exchange for about $3,000.

So add blackmail to the sordid landscape of higher education in the American heartland.

But this is nothing new for the University of Missouri.

Start one minute in.

This is the same thing UD saw this morning as she walked home along the CSX tracks from the Garrett Park post office.

An all-Herzog train!

… the rest of the illustrious Exeter crew.

… joke.

“This is our biggest rival and our most serious game of the whole season and instead of being able to come together as a school, we will be amidst the joys and heartbreaks of rush,” explains a University of Mississippi student petition demanding the rescheduling of fraternity/sorority recruitment week because it conflicts with a football game.

Shortly after the petition began circulating, senior broadcast journalism major Walter Lyle shared his views on the issue.

Lyle listed ‘things on campus you SHOULD be signing a petition against:

confederate symbolism
sexual harassment
sexual assault
homophobic slurs
racial slurs
domestic violence
drug abuse
literally anything else’

LOL.

If you’re a much older suitor, it’s not a good idea to use your proximity to death as a come-on.

According to [a UCLA sexual misconduct] investigation, [Professor Eric] Gans contended his advances were welcome, but [Pamela] Thomason said the evidence shows the graduate student repeatedly tried to get Gans to cease unwelcome attention.

“The evidence reflects that Gans exerted psychological pressure on (the student) to submit, including references to his own mortality and to how she changed his life,” Thomason said in the report.

I’m going to be dead in a few months anyway so why not fuck me seems to UD one of the less auspicious approaches.

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

Ever wonder exactly what public relations consultants do?

They keep people from giving interviews and saying things like this.

Gans alleges that the whole situation was a setup by the student’s adviser and the department chair — “who are both women, by the way,” he said — believing that some of his colleagues were jealous of the “extremely attractive, sexy girl” he had as a student and of his academic prowess.

… killing people.

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

From the indictment.

Around May 2013, the indictment alleges [hospice owner] Bradley Harris texted [a staff member] to take over one patient’s care [from another staff member]. “I told this chick if she would just give her 1 ml of Ativan and turn her she would die,” the indictment alleges Harris wrote.

Harris sent another text, saying, “[expletive] woman is still alive … I need some boots on the ground.”

Stuart stayed in contact with Harris, while she gave medicine to the patient. The indictment stated he then sent a text about the need to medicate in order to justify continuous care: “We have very strict guidelines that we must be providing skilled nursing interventions at least ever[y] hour to stay in there.”

After the patient died, Stuart texted Harris, and he responded, “Nice work.”

Baylor University football just keeps the hits coming. Year after year.

Comment thread on an article about a sexual assault at Drake University.

A complicated case of he said – she said. Unfortunately, when a man reports sexual assault the claim is rarely taken seriously. (On a side note, the caption on the Drake photo says Magnolia trees. Magnolia trees do not grow this far north. Those are redbuds!)
Like · Reply · Feb 23, 2017 6:53am

Years ago I had two magnolia trees on a residential property in Beaverdale. At least I thought they were magnolia trees!
Like · Reply · 1 · Feb 23, 2017 9:24am

I found an article in the Iowa Gardener Magazine from 2014: “There are a wide variety of magnolias that can be grown in the Upper Midwest. Many of the deciduous magnolias perform well in our climate and range from smaller to larger trees.”
Like · Reply · 1 · Feb 23, 2017 11:06am

… and Blotto God …

If your university worships football, then Johnny Manziel and Richie Incognito and Jameis Winston and so many others in the pantheon shock and appall you again and again as they spit on the divinity you have granted them and leave your school as lost as the nation of North Korea will be, should The Dear Leader ever be called home.

The latest scene of disillusion and devastation is the University of Oklahoma, whose quarterback is a drunk who gets in fights with cops and then, when they try to arrest him, flees. A local scribe puts this football-god violence in the context of all the other such violence in the program and concludes it’s a real shame and something should definitely be done about it.

These are tough days for Sooner football. Not as tough as the final days of the Switzer Era when guns and drugs and woes abounded, and yet, the release of the Joe Mixon video and the revelation that Dede Westbrook was twice arrested for domestic violence before arriving in Norman has stained the program.

Stained? Woe unto thee, scribes and Pharisees! Be careful, when thou liest safe and soft, lest thou forget Baylor.

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

UD thanks two of her readers for the Jameis Winston link.

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

The tweets are coming in.

Positive for Oklahoma fans is at least Baker Mayfield wasn’t charged with punching any women.

All in good time my little pretty; all in good time.

Since Mr. Trump took office in January, immigration authorities have engaged in several high-profile actions against immigrants. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday that the president wanted to “take the shackles off” of agents who had, under President Barack Obama, been under orders to focus only on serious criminals.

Kim “Knock Them Right in the Face” Mulkey.