While there, UD visited the family brick.

And her father’s brick.

In rain and one hundred degree heat

everything grows. Like lawn mushrooms.

Nir Uriel has been named the Rabbi Esformes Professor in Medicine, the University of Chicago announced last week.

The announcement coincided with another one, from the Department of Justice, about Esformes’ son, who has been arrested for the largest health care fraud case in American history.

The father gets double billing with the son in many press accounts, since Rabbi Esformes established the family nursing home business (rumored to be filthy for every one of the years Esformes has denominated the University of Chicago’s most distinguished medical school faculty) which his son merely expanded to its current scope.

I can understand the respect and esteem of one of America’s most corrupt political bodies.

But is UD‘s old school so hard up that it needs to slap these names on its faculty?

[Senator Tim] Kaine quotes W.B. Yeats a lot … most recently when talking about the Syrian refugee crisis where he pleaded that ISIS was the enemy not the refugees.

… “Yeats wrote [The Second Coming] after World War I, surveying the wreckage … [A]nd he expressed a real concern about the state of society at the time because what he noticed was … ‘the best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity.'”

Trump’s dominance politics, his chickenhawk machismo, remains under threat from avenging female angels — the very same sort of women who, during Argentina’s Trump years, gathered in city parks and publicly shamed the generals.

The latest attack comes from the mother of Christopher Stevens, the envoy killed in Benghazi. In a letter to the New York Times, she writes:

As Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens’s mother, I am writing to object to any mention of his name and death in Benghazi, Libya, by Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party.

I know for certain that Chris would not have wanted his name or memory used in that connection. I hope that there will be an immediate and permanent stop to this opportunistic and cynical use by the campaign.

Stevens’s mother seems to have tired of watching his body picked over by an obscene predator. She asks that it stop.

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But it won’t. Free speech and all.

By and all I mean that a man missing both mind and heart will be unimpeded by this sort of appeal.

On the contrary, this expression of anguish will excite him to new depths of depravity.

But GW’s coach, who happens to be a friend of mine? Abusive? Gimme a break. Total crap. Didn’t happen. And if something maybe did happen, the players are pussies.

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A bunch of jock-buddies of Mike Lonergan promise us up and down that it’s all lies and there’s much more going on at GW but they’re not in a position to share it with you but when the real story comes out you’ll see it’s all crap.

It appalls her, and if you put endowment in her search engine, you’ll find years of UD being appalled.

These endowments are a classic rich-get-richer phenom, in which a hedgie, say, decides the best thing to do with his or her hundreds of millions of dollars is to give them to Harvard, so that Harvard’s endowment can go from $35 billion to $35 billion plus. To make matters worse, schools like Harvard hoard their endowments.

You don’t have to be Peter Singer to know that this is an unconscionable use of money.

Malcolm Gladwell has begun podcasting about how disgusting it is that “the biggest donations go to institutions that already have endowments larger than some countries’ gross domestic products.” Good.

Trump smiling is not a common sight. The scowl is easier to draw. I’ve noticed Trump has put on weight the last 10 years. I hope if he is elected, that trend continues. It’s natural to draw rich and powerful people nice and portly. I’m also hoping the job stress will cause him to lose hair, which will make his combover more pronounced and more fun to draw.

He told [one player], in front of the team, he should transfer to a “transgender league,” multiple players said.

At some universities, basketball coaches just go ahead and call players cunts or fags. At UD‘s GW, the coach allegedly goes that extra mile, lifts his comment above cliche, looks for a fresh way to say it…

Speaking of saying, though… Faced with some pretty persuasive evidence that GW’s got a real angry paranoid at the helm (don’t make his daughter cry), pulling down one of the highest salaries on campus (Don’t know how much. Will guess. Around $500,000? With this and that, could be a lot more.), UD‘s institution is abundantly not talking.

[GW’s Title IX coordinator] did not return an email, and a school spokesman said he was not available to comment. Interim Provost Forrest Maltzman declined to comment through a spokesman. Despite repeated requests, the school made no officials available for interviews. The school declined to answer questions about its inquiry into [Mike] Lonergan, or even acknowledge it, saying it does not comment on personnel issues as a matter of policy.

——

Brian Sereno, the executive director of athletics communications, did not immediately return the [GW] Hatchet’s request for comment.

——

Hokay! Get the message!

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Gets a bit colorful now, and UD knows that her readers are sensitive souls. So – SELF-ABUSE WARNING.

Five current and former players said Lonergan told players [GW Athletic Director Patrick] Nero requested the practice tapes so he could masturbate while viewing them in his office. The players said Lonergan also told them Nero had engaged in a sexual relationship with a member of the team. Players said they found those comments to be shocking and offensive, with no grounding in reality.

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You’re expecting some concluding words of wisdom?

Oh, go ask Bobby Knight and Mike Rice and the rest of them. They’ll tell you what it takes to win.

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Actually, UD does have some words of comfort for GW, as this story rapidly goes viral.

You know you’re one of the big boys when a whacked out scandal about your allegedly whacked out coach hits the mainstream media. You cannot buy the sort of publicity the school is about to get. Think of what that Saturday Night Live thing about Mike Rice did for Rutgers (start at 1:00)…

(Lonergan recently turned down a job offer from the selfsame Rutgers. People there seem to think they, uh, dodged a bullet. A second bullet.)

But okay look let’s take that last bit out of its parenthesis so that UD can share with you the following thought. This country is close to hiring as head coach a man just like Rice and Knight (Knight was in fact invited to speak at the Republican convention) and (allegedly) Lonergan and the scads of other abusive and twisted university coaches UD has followed over the years of this blog.

Every time Donald Trump steps on the brutality gas he wins more votes. Every time coaches step on the brutality gas they win more games.

It is quite obviously the way you win.

Because for every one sadist, there’s apparently one million masochists.

I have no idea what to do about it. Just noting it.

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Here’s a tweet:

Don’t know why coaches and schools refuse comments in these situations.

So yeah it’s odd and dumb to say nothing even as the story goes really really big. UD will tell you, if, like this guy, you don’t know why there’s this initial silence, what’s going on.

Think lots of moving parts. As we speak, an extremely large and complex institution is gathering and consulting with amazing numbers and types of people. Lawyers. Public relations experts. Players. University spokespeople. Administrators. Coaches. Trustees. Boosters. Atlantic 10 people. NCAA people.

You better believe that Lonergan is also lawyering up like mad. People like Lonergan are not in the business of losing. Lonergan is just like the Ur-Lonergan, who says

“We’re going to win so much. You’re going to get tired of winning. you’re going to say, ‘Please Mr. President, I have a headache. Please, don’t win so much. This is getting terrible.’ And I’m going to say, ‘No, we have to make America great again.’ You’re gonna say, ‘Please.’ I said, ‘Nope, nope. We’re gonna keep winning.’

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And all of this is taking place in the typical university context of interim provosts and ever-rotating deans and presidents who have just announced they’re leaving. Yet you need one strong singular voice in crises like these. It’s gonna take a bit of work.

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But wait, UD! Wait!

How did it happen?

Okay, so here’s the drill. Ambitious university is all agog because it’s got a respectable basketball team that brings in fans and revenue and attracts media attention. Sure, they’ve heard reports that suggest the coach may be el mayorly crazed motherfucker, but what coach isn’t? Bobby Knight threw chairs at people and today he’s an elder statesman. Florid complaints start to come in from the players, but it’s just a few malcontents and anyway when they get truly pissed they leave the program. Problem solved.

And now the new amazing contract with all that money, and the wins, and the adulation, have, let’s speculate, made the coach feel his methods are brilliant and he can get away with anything (see Coach Trump). His behavior maybe becomes so bizarre that a critical mass of players finally goes public with the problem.

The university now desperately needs a run and gun game, but because they’ve been in denial all they can do is dribble while Rome burns.

… choices…

First sentence of a great short story in search of an author.

Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, said in a brief statement that “Mr. Trump and the campaign do not agree” that Clinton should be executed for treason.

A German politician has resigned her seat in the Bundestag because she lied – extensively – on her cv.

German publications “Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung” (WAZ) and the “Neue Ruhr Zeitung” (NRZ) reported late on Tuesday that contrary to what her CV said, [Petra] Hinz had never acquired a higher education entrance qualification nor completed university studies in law. The lawyer for the Essen politician also confirmed that Hinz had never taken any legal exams.

In a statement published on the politician’s website, the 54-year-old’s attorney said that “in retrospect, Ms Hinz is unable to discern which reasons … compelled her at the time to lay the foundations for further inaccurate claims about her legal education and activities with the false indication about her high-school diploma.”

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UD thanks Chris.

A rock band is performing in Cleveland, and it drew some conventioneers to its show.

They booed when the band leader talked about gay rights and stuff.

“You can boo all you want, but I’m the motherfucking artist up here,” [the lead singer] told his audience…

[At one point the singer] asked [the crowd:] “Who here believes in science?”

So much booing.

With the revelation of plagiarism, Trump stands to lose the significant support he enjoyed from academics and journalists.

Ryan D. Enos
Political Scientist
Harvard