I know you don’t think so. I know you’re content to think of that state rarely … as a vague jewel set off to the left of the left coast…

But if you type Hawaii Athletics into this blog’s search engine, you’ll be shaken out of your vagueness.

Hawaii is after all a startlingly corrupt state, so you’d expect its university system to be a mess. And it is; it is a mess. But within that mess, athletics is a doubleplusgood mess. The people of Hawaii just bailed it out of its thirteen million dollar debt so as to clear the way for more astounding debt accumulation…

How do they do it? Well, no one goes to their games. So that would mean no ticket sales. And then there’s constant expensive mischief. Not just stuff that hits the national news, like the Stevie Wonder concert scam; we’re also talking NCAA rules violations and having to pay for internal investigations, etc., etc.

Hawaii’s athletic director, by the way, sure knows how to make a public statement. He “acknowledges” the latest NCAA investigation (this one’s of the basketball team) and ends this way:

Thank you for your understanding, respect and your continued support of University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Athletics. GO BOWS!

GO BOWS! We love ya guys, and this is just the time to say it! In deep shit with the NCAA again: Huzzah!

A touch of Iran. Right here in the US of A.

La Kid and Ed Fitzgerald
(Irish boyfriend; La Kid
moves to Galway soon)

exhausted and sunburnt on the
New York City subway after a
long day showing Ed NYC.

… method.

Tragedy in Texas as a brand new taxpayer funded sixty million dollar high school football stadium which “rivals college facilities in grandeur” is shut down because of structural flaws.

It’s impossible to know when the local lads will be able to concuss themselves grandeurly, since we’re talking years of complex litigation plus massive repair payments, some of which will almost certainly have to come from taxpayers.

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Not that UD is really worried about whether local taxpayers will pay millions more to fix the stadium. Of course they will. Either you’re willing to pay through the nose to watch your kid get the shit kicked out of him or you’re not. In Texas they’re willing.

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UD thanks JND.

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More in the God Hates Football thread.

… Doctor Who.

In my film and philosophy class, for example, I have to insist that students put their devices away while watching movies that don’t immediately engage their senses with explosions, sex or gag lines. At first they see this as some old guy’s failure to grasp their skill at multitasking, but eventually most relearn how to give themselves to an emotional and intellectual experience, one that is deeply engaging partly because it does not pander to their most superficial habits of attention.

UD‘s getting whiplash trying to follow this one. It’s incredibly postmodern.

But I’m sure the courts will sort it out.

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

Meanwhile, though, and purely for comparison purposes:

Jonathan Hart.

Jacko and Sainfort.

He’s Number Two, so he tries harder. Haverford’s back-up choice after a small group of students and professors hounded out Robert Birgereau as commencement speaker was William Bowen, who has been president of Princeton and the Mellon Foundation. Ol’ Bill got up there at the event and let it rip.

He directly addressed the people who demanded that Birgereau apologize for calling out the police during an Occupy protest at Berkeley, and that he meet nine conditions that they set in order for him to be able to come to Haverford, including “publicly apologizing, supporting reparations for victims, and writing a letter to Haverford students explaining his position on the events and ‘what you learned from them.'” Quoth Bowen in his speech to Haverford graduates:

“I am disappointed that those who wanted to criticize Birgeneau’s handling of events at Berkeley chose to send him such an intemperate list of demands… In my view, they should have encouraged him to come and engage in a genuine discussion, not to come, tail between his legs, to respond to an indictment that a self-chosen jury had reached without hearing counter-arguments.”

Actually, the real story here is how Haverford blindsided the Nine Conditions people. Did they even have time to find out that Bowen is a “Trustee on the Board of the Trust Committee that oversees the Rockefeller family trusts”? Even if they had time to find this out, did they have time to set forth a series of conditions (‘Write a letter to Haverford students explaining your position on robber barons and what you have learned from consorting with them.’) Bowen needed to meet before he could appear at Haverford?

Jill Abramson has elected not to attend commencement ceremonies at Brandeis University, where she would’ve received an honorary degree this weekend…

… Brandeis previously canceled plans to award an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a women’s rights activist who frequently criticized Islam.

Dear me. Between various cancellations and regrets, Brandeis seems headed for an all-male commencement.

… at the University of Michigan.

… softcore.

In the matter of Christine Lagarde
Take notice, heads up, et regarde:
The College of Smith
(To get right to the pith)
Has been hoist by its very petard.

True, when Brown University students (and others) called foul on Ruth Simmons’ activities on the board of Goldman Sachs (under her watch, “the company which invented the $68.5 million CEO bonus”) she totally refused to engage her critics. As the writer I quote in my headline suggests, she’s used to the muffled rooms of America’s top corporate suites; why should she descend from those to the larger democratic community of dissent?

… Oh, whoops. The writer is referring not to Ruth Simmons, who to this day has said nothing about the Blankfein Bonuses she rubber-stamped, but to muffled, fearful Christine Lagarde, a dame who’s got absolutely nothing to say. Go to YouTube and search her name. Nothing.

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Now that Christine Lagarde has decided that Smith College is too silly for words, quite a number of faculty are expressing their embarrassment.

My prior post about the curious business of choosing a capitalist tool (Smith has chosen to replace Lagarde with “snowed by Lloyd” Simmons) over one of the world’s most powerful and admired women is here.

… on all counts of fraud. He’s a former football coach at the University of Georgia.