… or bans on women driving, England seems to have woken up to the fact that it’s a democracy. It is actively fighting back. Last year it beat back the segregationists, and now it seems to have beaten back the woman-annihilating wahhabis. Or rather the haredim.

Bad, bad, school. Don’t you ever do that again. And we mean it this time.

Tennessee! And of course there’s the University of Texas too. The two schools are linked in today’s news stories because like virtually all sports factories, they’re both corrupt as hell. No one cares. Some random professor complains about some player in her class and, you know, people start sniffing around, but nothing comes of it. Coaches leave for similar salaries at slightly more sordid schools (but they’re all sordid); players disappear into obscure junior colleges.

Tennessee also had coach Donnie Tyndall, just the sort of appointment for which that august institution is known:

During [a] single season leading the Volunteers, reports surfaced that Tyndall was involved in a messy NCAA violation situation at his previous school, Southern Mississippi, and while that’s never good, it was triply bad for both Tyndall and Tennessee.

That’s because Tyndall already had been found to have committed NCAA violations at Morehead State a few years earlier. And also because Tennessee had been forced to fire the popular Bruce Pearl after the NCAA slammed him for violations as coach of the Vols…

And, you may ask, what is Donnie Tyndall up to now that he’s an ex-coach of the Vols? Managing a pro wrestling match Saturday. If that doesn’t secure sideshow status for Tennessee basketball, I don’t know what does.

The article says nothing about the Vols players, a number of whom, when doing armed robbery one night, wore clothing with University of Tennessee written all over it, giving witnesses a real leg up in identifying them.

Back in November 2014, in The Independent, Michael Calvin noted Sepp Blatter’s honorary degree from De Montfort University. The award’s citation reads in part: “He is forthright, visionary, ethical …”

And before you smirk – here are some other honorary degree recipients:

Bernie Madoff.

Lance Armstrong.

Jamie Dimon.

Delhi’s law minister didn’t fake his law degree; his law school simply can’t remember him.

If UD had never started this blog, she would never have come to know the Wharton School, one of America’s most curious institutions. Though Donald Trump is by far its highest-profile graduate, Wharton (as you know if you read this blog) is the dominant source for this country’s insider traders in particular and fraudsters in general.

B-School boys do dither on a regular basis about the amorality many of their schools champion – I mean, as regular as each breaking story about another Raj Rajaratnam… Some of these guys even notice that a major function of schools like Wharton is to bring conspirators together. Guys who as lads were maladjusted malefactors find at Wharton (type WHARTON in my search engine for all of my posts about the school) a warm inviting community of people just like themselves with whom to mastermind billion-dollar larcenies. When the Justice Department starts saying unkind things about one or another Wharton grad, their school buddies come out with eloquent character references.

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

Still, how unfair to say Donald Trump isn’t reflective! He founded a university.

Laura Kipnis is apparently willing to spend the rest of her life trying to talk sense to her inquisitors. Color UD impressed.

When does a bikers’ club become a gang? When does a college fraternity become a gang? When does a football team become a gang? This blog has covered the Waco shootout, the Michael Deng killing, the Vanderbilt rapes, the San Diego State fraternity drug markets, etc., etc. These activities sure look to her like organized gang activity, subject to gang-specific enhanced legal penalties.

The Penn State frat in question here (Penn State! It can really afford more sagas of sordid men.), already in trouble for all kinds of shit, is accused of

obtaining some of its funding by converting the pre-paid food plans of its pledges and confiscating and selling their prescription drugs. These funds were then used to pay for countless socials, presocials and parties at the fraternity house at which underage students were plied with alcohol and, in some cases, with drugs to facilitate sexual assault and abuse.

Yiiich.

Members’ members? Or just members?

A Northwestern University student, reflecting on the Laura Kipnis fiasco, targets groupthink. He’s absolutely right.

A woman casts off her burqa
as she escapes ISIS.

Details here.

… Memory Lane.

… here. None of it’s quite good enough to be included in the body of this post. But you might see something you like.

The London Review of Books publishes, in its June 4 issue, a rivulet of consciousness by the poet Craig Raine. “Gatwick” expresses the thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season (speaking of which, read this if you want a good poem about being a dried up old guy), and readers are not only grossed out by this dirty old man poem, but they rightly note that in any case it’s a very bad poem. (Nothing wrong with its subject matter, by the way. Great prose as well as poetry has been written about being horny.)

The poet’s passport control agent at the airport tells him she studied his poetry. He writes:

We are close. We are both grinning.
We have come
together by a miracle.
Two sinners simultaneously sinning.
In passport control. No shame.

Miracle? Sinning? Where in this grubby meandering poem is there anything to justify language like that? Nor does it come across as ironic, as it might in, say, T.S. Eliot. It’s just there, lazily wanting to lift the meaning of the encounter, and of the poem, to someplace higher than the merely horny.

Rather than just complain about the LRB printing this poem, one reader wrote a limerick about it.

There once was a poet who went
To very great lengths to invent
An excuse for his boner
Which shamed its poor owner
And turned his shorts into a tent.

Now that’s great poetry.

Retirement Home.