...or is Notre Dame just Penn State with a cross over the door?

Come on sing it with me...

   Fear, fear for old Notre Dame
   Wake up the lawyers, ain't it a shame
   Set a smoke screen from on high 
   Shake down subpeonas from the sky

OK enough of that.  It will surprise no one among my circle of acquaintances that I am not a fan of the Golden Domers of Notre Dame. It started in 1971 when Notre Dame stole Fordham University's head basketball coach, Digger Phelps, after he had led the Rams to credibility and a berth in the NCAA tournament. His twenty year career at ND including a trip to the Final Four only deepened my loathing. Yes, I know it's petty but hey, I'm allowed to hold a dumb, 40 year grudge. Besides, why would Notre Dame care about me? They have enough of their own problems.

The myth that is Notre Dame goes all the way back to 1918 and the coaching career of Knute Rockne. Rockne put Notre Dame on the map at a time when the football aspirations of a small Catholic college in Indiana would have been laughed at by the likes of Alabama, USC and Army. Since that magical time, the students, players, coaches and fans (including a legion of Irishmen who have never even seen South Bend, IN) have been trying to recreate those glory years. The football team has been good for many of those intervening years and great for a few. They were national champs four times in the '40's and early '50's and again in the '60's. Their last great season was 1988 under coach Lou Holtz. However, by then the desire to "bring down the thunder" was starting to bring down the sanctions and tarnish the squeaky clean reputation that ND had worked to maintain.

The Irish hired Holtz from Minnesota in 1986. Shortly thereafter Minnosota was censured by the NCAA for rules violations committed, in part, during Holtz's tenure. Hotlz also earned a two year suspension from bowl games at Notre Dame for hedging the rules during recruiting. While it can be safely assumed that all major college football programs cheat a little where NCAA rules are concerned, not all teams play under the watchful eye of "touchdown Jesus" looming over the south end zone. Notre Dame took great pride in its reputation as a clean

A view from the east side of the Notre Dame Stadium showing (from left to right) the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, the Golden Dome atop the Administration Building, and the Hesburgh Library with the mural of "Touchdown Jesus"

program.  Unfortunately that reputation has taken a few serious dents in the past couple of years and the Irish have responded like every other major institution: misdirect, deny, obfuscate and ignore.

Notre Dame began its rapid journey toward "Penn State-ness" in 2010. A young freshman at St.. Mary's College, across from Notre Dame, reported being raped by a member of the ND football team. She reported the assault to the campus police who, bizarrely, have jurisdiction over a wide variety of crimes. They did... nothing. While Ms. Seeburg awaited some sort of University action, she began receiving threatening calls and emails from other Notre Dame football players warning her to keep her mouth shut. Ten days after the incident, Lizzy Seeburg took her own life.

In 2011 another female student was driven to the hospital by a friend in the aftermath of another rape allegation. Aware of the Lizzy Seeburg story and after she herself received warnings to stay silent, she declined to report the crime to the police. Case closed.

So now we have Notre Dame with one dead coed who can't talk and one too afraid to come forward. Wow! Can't get luckier than that. I mean what's a university to do? We're talking Notre Dame football here. We have our own TV contract. We have a beloved movie about us. Catholic America roots for us all season. What would NBC think if it got out that our football players were raping students? Well, they did exactly what you would would expect. The University threw up its hands and sold a few more foam fingers saying "We're #1".

Then there was the case of Declan Sullivan. On Oct 27, 2010 the football team was at practice on the South Bend campus. It was an especially windy day with gusts up to 51 mph. The usual routine is to have a student volunteer stand in the cage of a scissor-lift and film the practice. Sullivan, a Notre Dame junior was told (some say ordered) to film the practice in spite of the danger from the wind. During practice the lift toppled over and Declan Sullivan was killed. Although the school piously accepted responsibility no charges were ever filed and no disciplinary action was ever taken: not against Head Coach Brian Kelly, not against Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick, not against any assistant coach.  Notre Dame lost a wrongful death suit, wrote a big check and literally buried Declan Sullivan.

But just when the pious Irish thought they had dodged not one but three bullets, along comes Manti Te'o: gifted athlete, beloved American success story but, sleeping with the enigma. The short version of the Te'o story is: sometime during  (for the math-impaired, that's four years ago) Manti Te'o, a wonderfully talented linebacker from Oahu, Hawaii, begins an on-line friendship with a woman identified as Lennay Kekua during his freshman year at Notre Dame.  The relationship migrates to phone calls in 2010 and by 2011 they are an "item". Various attempts at a face-to-face meeting get sidetracked, postponed, and cancelled. In June, 2012 Lennay tells Manti that she has leukemia. In Sept. Te'o grandmother dies and on the same day Lennay loses her fight with cancer.

This heart-breaking story, "All American Athlete from Storied Program Fights Through the Loss of Two Loved Ones" was too good to pass up. It was apparently also too good to check out. The South Bend Tribune ran the details of Te'o's lovelife for months along with details of the young lovers provided by Te'o's relatives. Peter Thamel of Sports Illustrated ran a cover story "The Full Manti" in the October 1st issue, just as ND was hitting its stride on the field. Ms. Kekua's funereal was held on Sept 22 but Notre Dame was playing Michigan State and Manti had promised his love that he would never miss a game because of her.

OK so this soap opera drips on through the football season until Dec 24th when Manti informs his mother, his friends and ESPN that the whole Lennay Kakua story is a cruel hoax. (At least he got the order right.) Notre Dame learns of the prank on Dec. 26 and launches an investigation to "clear" Te'o. It should be noted that no such "investigation" was ever conducted into the rape allegations; at least none that was ever made public. On Jan 16th, three weeks after the university learned of the incident, the sports website Deadspin published the entire story. That evening Notre Dame's Athletic Director, Jack Swarbrick takes to the podium to reveal that the school has exonerated Te'o. It remains unclear exactly who did this to Te'o and what the university exonerated him from.  No crime was committed except maybe felony bad taste.

The point is that Notre Dame waited until after the BCS title game on Jan 7th before allowing any hint of scandal to attach itself to their golden boy. Had Deadspin not broken the story, the university might never have told the world that their star linebacker was a fibber.  Te'o is now colossally embarrassed and for all anyone knows, guilty of little more than fudging the truth where a woman is concerned. Wow, that never happens. Meanwhile Notre Dame will continue to treat football and football players as the most important element of life in South Bend, IN. Well, who can blame them? After all, how much money does the Sociology Dept. generate? Who yells "We're #1" in the Geology lab? So what's a little sexual assault now and then?

...or was I sleeping the day Shame left the country for good?

A good friend of mine sent me an email regarding the announced candidacy of Mark Sanford for Congress from South Carolina. Yes, that would be the same Mark Sanford who:

-disappeared from the State House when he was governor,
-flew to Argentina to do the macarena with a local tootsie not his wife,
-famously told his staff that he was "hiking the Appalachian Trail" thereby coining a new euphemism for, well, you know.

This all happened in 2009 not, I remind you, in 1989 or 1985. So,  four years after Sanford embarrassed his family, bamboozled the citizens of South Carolina and was forced to stand in front of a microphone and confess to following his johnson all the way across the Equator, he is back running for office. Although his transgressions  included using State funds for his dalliance he repaid the treasury and was never prosecuted. He can say with impunity that he was guilty of no more that L'affair de coeur. Whether he can say it with a straight face is another matter. He also had the temerity to finish his term of office. (He was spared impeachment only because the lieutenant governor was a reviled moron who no one wanted to see in the governor's mansion.) Although the time required to rehab a political image varies with the crime and the person (Ted Kennedy killed a woman and still ran for President) it seems that four years is a bit short...even in South Carolina.

And so it would appear that Shame, defined as "the feeling arising from having done something dishonorable, disgraceful or ridiculous" appears to have a shorter life expectancy than a Gillette Pro Glide razor. Disgrace is no impediment to future success. Humiliation is no longer a stumbling block to elected office, celebrity or  even respect. This is difficult to comprehend in the era of You Tube and media saturation. At a time when your every sin can be displayed in an endless loop for audiences everywhere we nonetheless allow politicians and public figures to partake of endless bites of the apple. It would appear that fame is all that matters even if you are famous for making a complete horse's ass of yourself.

Exhibit A has to be Bill Clinton. "President Pants Down" spent all of 1998 providing late-night comics with a warehouse full of material about cigars and interns. He became the first president to be impeached. (He was acquitted by a 55-45 vote in the Senate; hardly a ringing endorsement.) Nevertheless, thirteen years after he left office with America still snickering, Bill is the most beloved public figure in the country. He brought the house down at the DNC in 2012 and is considered a major asset in any potential presidential bid by Hillary. His age and physical limitations will probably ensure that his obsession with female genitalia will be confined to the Internet but with Bill one can never be sure. There may be a naked maiden in the closet as yet uncovered.

Exhibit B is D.C.'s own Marion Barry. The former mayor and current city councilman has more scandals attached to his name than the entire state of Illinois. Barry has a drug conviction and file cabinet full of indictments and subpoenas. He continually forgets to file his taxes and has taken more field sobriety tests than Lindsay Lohan. He has worn out three defendants chairs at the DC County Court and has appeared in front of so many judges he has his own parking space at the courthouse. Nevertheless, the good people of the eighth ward continue to return him to the City Council.

The list goes on. Before being arrested in Las Vegas, O.J. Simpson was invited to address the University of Southern California football team. Eliot Spitzer traded in his designation as          "Client #9" for a TV show on Current TV. Newt Gingrich, undeterred by a history of serial infidelity, ran a mildly successful campaign to be the Republican Presidential candidate in 2012.  This would be unremarkable (we are not a nation of prudes after all) but Gingrich ran a campaign based in part on  "family values". Presumably value #1 was: start interviewing your next wife well before dumping your current one. No one will be surprised when David Petraeus begins his reemergence from the septic tank of infidelity to the cleansing light of TV military expert/analyst on CNN. The over/under is one year.

Honorable mention goes to Tiger Woods. No one actually cared that Tiger was cheating on his wife. It was, however, unthinkable and unforgivable for him to bypass Elin Nordegren in favor of a collection of truck-stop waitresses and cocktail lounge bimbos. Tiger has rehabilitated his reputation and,to some degree his game. He is currently appearing in a new Nike ad with Rory Mcllroy whose only sin thus far is being so God damn likable.

Meanwhile, there are the ongoing tales of Lance Armstrong and Manti Te'o.  Armstrong first: Thankfully Lance was a cyclist which is just a little below soccer player on the who-gives-a-s**t meter of American sporting interest. Hell, cheating to beat the French carries its own sort of heroism.  Also Armstrong has raised millions for cancer through his Lifestrong charity which is like giving Ted Kaczynski a pass for his contribution to increasing Post Office security. Lance will be back in the spotlight fairly quickly because: (1) he has no shame and (2) no one cares what people do on bicycles.

Te'o is different and complicated. His story is unique. How do you evaluate the disgrace level of a guy with an imaginary, dead girlfriend? The only true fact in the "Case of the Fictitious Female" is the reaffirmation that, if you want a doctorate in Shamelessness, Notre Dame is your school. More about these creeps in the next post.

So it can safely be stated that Shame is dead. The time was when having been caught cheating, lying, stealing or philandering your only course was to pack up your stuff and get off the stage. No second chances, no rehabilitation.  Public humiliation was a death sentence. But no more. Today, you can perp-walk directly from the courthouse to Fox News. Your confession in front of the cameras, wife dutifully at your side, is now a screen test for your next gig. In a country with the collective attention-span of a collie, people will forget that you are a lying maggot and remember only your nice smile.  We can only be grateful that California never let Charlie Manson out of jail. He could have written his own ticket as a motiveational speaker on the 700 Club.
Sirhan Sirhan, when you get out, call me.






   

...or will Current TV introduce a Project Runway knock-off featuring five women all covered in black?

Al Gore, former Vice President and former almost ex President, was in the news this week. Al and his partner,  Joel Hyatt (Hyatt was sort of the legal profession's answer to Earl Schibe) have sold their television station Current TV to Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera is based in and financed by the government of Qatar (impress your friend at cocktail parties by correcting their pronunciation of Qatar as "cutter".) In that Vice President Gore has been the world's most visible and vocal advocate for all things green, he has received a fair amount of gas (greenhouse and otherwise) for selling his broadcast baby to oily  oil sheiks. That's a bit like Rupert Murdoch selling Fox News to George Soros.  In a spirit of full disclosure it should be reported that I have tried unsuccessfully to sell isitjustme to Hamas, The Symbionese Liberation Army, Shining Path and the La Familia Drug Cartel for what amounts to the cost of a corned beef sandwich and a cream soda. So far, no takers. Before we take up the morality of the sale a few facts should be examined:


 What exactly is Al Jazeera? No it is not the name of the guy who owns the falafel stand on Broadway and 52nd St. That's Sal Jazeera. Al Jazeera is a broadcast network based in Doha, Qatar. It is unique in that it is owned by neither News Corp or Disney. Originally the broadcasts were in Arabic but 2006 they launched Al Jazeera English.They are, given that part of the world, reasonably independent. They have been praised by the Index on Censorship for their free exchange of information. Their coverage of the war in Afghanistan and the Egyptian uprising were far superior to Western media. They show the world through the eyes of someone other than Bill O'Reilly or Mickey Mouse. Naturally because they present the world from the point of view of the Middle East they are reviled on Fox where Arab always equals terrorist.

As for Current TV, it was launched in 2002 as the brainchild of Al Gore and Joel Hyatt. Naturally, Mr. Gore presented his offering as an independent news source without bias or agenda. Clearly, the decidedly liberal Mr. Gore who had advocated for left-wing causes for practically all of his life, could expect to be taken at his word...or not. Nothing much happened at Current until two "reporters" from the network were arrested in North Korea for following their GPS device across the border from China. Although it was never made clear what the two planned to do in this frozen armpit of the world. the Koreans made a big deal out of putting them on trial. America sent Mr. "clean-up on aisle four" himself Bill Clinton to secure their release. In that he was returning from his Fortress of Solitude anyway,  it was on the way.

In 2011, Gore and Hyatt decided to shake things up. They reformatted the programming, paid for a new logo and hired Keith Olbermann to anchor their prime-time news hour; a move akin to hiring Sasquatch to cut the Hope diamond. Olbermann, fresh from his marathon hissy-fits at MSNBC, was a train wreck from day one. He complained about everything: his driver, his sets, the coffee in the studio, the type size on his office door. Keith's crabbiness was as unprofessional as it was constant. True, he garnered a few more viewers (people smart enough to realize they had Current TV on their satellite and then find it) but the gains were minuscule. March 2012 saw the end of Project Olbermann.  Ratings suffered but hey, you can't fall off the floor. At present Current is pulling ratings numbers commensurate with the number of people who are lobbying for a mosque in Vatican City.

Selling Current TV to the oil sheiks of Qatar is a little like selling the cancer wing of your hospital to American Tobacco.  (BTW  rumors that the Supreme Court tried to prevent Al Gore from selling Current TV have proved unfounded.) There is nothing wrong with Al Jazeera. True, the list of potential advertisers might be shortened (liquor, beer, Victoria Secret and anything fun) but every rose has its thorns. The issue is that Al and Co. look like they sold out; like if Jimmy Buffet moved to New York to run a hedge fund. For Al to take oil money makes him look like an unprincipled, greedy capitalist stooge...like the Koch Brothers' illegitimate cousin.  If we wanted to watch an American business person sell his soul to the highest bidder for nothing more than a few bucks and a little bit of instant gratification, we could watch the replay of the Republican Presidential Contest. At least that got ratings.

...or is the debate on guns nothing more than a circular firing squad?

OK so I'm guessing that if your friend complains that they are overweight your first thought isn't to treat them to an all-expense paid trip to Baskin Robbins. If your neighbor's house catches fire you don't arrive with a five-gallon gift basket from Exxon Mobil. So please, for the love of God explain to me why the cure for the atrocity of gun carnage in America is ...more guns.

The statistics border on the ridiculous:

 The U.S. has 5% of the world's population and 50% (that's 5-0%) of the world's guns.

290 million guns loose in the U.S., that's a gun-to-person ratio of 84% . The next largest country is Yemen at 54%.

31,000 dead each year, 11,000 of which are homicides.  That's 30 times higher than France or Australia.

Now we're told that arming teachers is the path to safety in schools.

It's easy to blame Wayne Lapierre and the survivalist crazies at the NRA but they are just a symptom, like diarrhea is a symptom of dysentery. The real problem is the American gun culture and the concomitant fear that grows from it. A substantial portion of your fellow countrymen are, for some reason, afraid of being disarmed. The idea is as impractical as the notion that we can round up all of our illegal aliens and deposit them in their home countries. However, no gun owner is rational about owning guns.

When Barack Obama was elected there was an immediate shortage of ammunition  and a brisk business at gun shows where background checks are not required. I agree with the gun lobby in that I imagine the President would like to see a lot fewer guns available in America but, until recently he had never said so. The idea that "the black liberal is coming for your guns" is a ghost story that gun-crazies tell to their kids. Even without the NRA this sickness about the necessity to be armed has pervaded our culture and poisoned our land.

Somehow, this perversion can be traced to a deep, visceral distrust of the federal government. Young men who have served in the military, saluted the flag, profess to be patriots, accepted GI benefits, pay taxes and vote; still view the fed as some evil destroyer of their personal liberty. They gladly accept government farm subsidies as their right but complain when a Spanish property owner gets emergency room care.  They have created a disconnect between the Country and its elected and appointed leaders. They see Washington as infested with liberals who coddle minorities, kiss the asses of America's enemies and dream up new ways to strip "real Americans" of their rights.

The EPA tells these men that they can't pollute the groundwater. The Army Corp of Engineers tells them that they can't drain a swamp or dam a stream. The IRS demands its pound of flesh whether they  have the money or not. The Dept of Agriculture won't let them grow certain crops and the Dept of the Interior lets Indians build casinos all over the country. Whites will soon be a minority and all the signs in Wal Mart are in Spanish. "Well, by God there's one thing those commie, ACLU-loving, Christmas-hating atheists in Washington can't have and that's my gun."

Maybe I'm wrong but how else can you explain the increase in gun purchases after Sandy Hook and Aurora, Colo, and the Gabby Gifford shooting? What else accounts for the thousands of rounds that many Americans store in their basement? Why the run on high-capacity magazines after the recent election? Gun love is a sickness and one peculiar to America. Hell, I'm the biggest know-it-all in the East and I haven't a clue as to what to do about this. In my lifetime I've seen Israelis and Egyptians work out a treaty that's lasted 34 years; I've seen Protestants and Catholics disarm in Northern Ireland; I've even seen Bears fans marry Packer fans. Maybe we can change but, whatever the answer is, I know it isn't more guns.

...or has Fox begun 2013 where it was in 2012...in the sewer of misinformation?

Happy New Year to all.

You will be delighted to learn that 2013 is the first year since 1987 to have four different numbers. Seriously, who notices this stuff? Well, aside from bloggers with too much time on their hands.

But enough of the trivial.

In my own way I love Fox News. They provide focus. Much in the same way that the New York Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys and the Boston Celtics provide an opportunity to really root against something. Any time those teams take the field their opponent is guaranteed an avid new group of fans. No one cheers for the Kansas City Chiefs unless the Cowboys are in town. Toronto barely knows it has a basketball team but when Boston takes the court, Toronto even forgets about the Leafs.

Like those sports teams, Fox can always be counted upon to provide a certain clarity. They are the gold standard of misinformation...the beacon of darkness in an otherwise enlightened world.   Face it, you can't spell "full of excrement" without  F O X.

Normally, Fox contents itself with garden variety rubbish: "Obamacare is the government take-over of the healthcare industry" "Liberals are waging a war on Christmas" "Obama is a socialist" "Obama is coming for your guns" "ACORN stole our election".  They trot out the blond brigade of Laura Ingram, Greta Van Sustern, Gretchen Carlson and the bulimic bombshell, Ann Coulter to remind America of the evils of political compromise and all things Democrat. To their credit, the babes of Fox continually find new lyrics to the same old song.  To avoid being accused of making stuff up, Fox can usually find some discredited political operative to "prove" the latest Obama/Democratic atrocity and confirm what their audience already believes; namely that Liberals are un-American scum.

This pseudo-journalism was never more in evidence than last week when  Greta Van Sustern interviewed John Bolton former Bush ambassador to the UN.  Bush/Cheney showed their cynical contempt for the United Nations by appointing Bolton in August, 2005. It would have been kinder to just send a bag of burning manure to UN headquarters. Oh wait, they did. Bolton, without the slightest vestige of proof or information of any kind, opined that the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton faked her fall and concussion at her home to avoid testifying before the Congress about Benghazi. Ms. Clinton was expected to appear before a Senate  committee last week but was forced to cancel when a dizzy spell due to dehydration caused a fall resulting in a concussion and subsequent blood clot. For John Bolton to suggest that this was a ruse to avoid testifying about Benghazi is contemptible and disgraceful. Furthermore Greta knew exactly what he was going to say which makes her complicit.

For Bolton to suggest that Secretary Clinton was dodging the Senate committee is the worst form of slander. For one thing, Ms. Clinton has already accepted full responsibility for the security lapses in Benghazi which claimed four American lives. She will appear before the committee next month after she recovers. Perhaps Mr. Bolton is suggesting that the staff at New York Presbyterian Hospital was in on the conspiracy.

This sort of shabby reporting is Fox's stock and trade. They will backtrack on the story, suggesting that John Bolton made the statement and not one of Fox's talking heads. Roger Ailes, the grand poobha at Fox knows that the retraction will never match the coverage of the original story. Fox will mumble something about everyone being entitled to his or her opinion and move on to the next sham-wow.  Hillary Clinton's people at State will spend the next week denying a story that was never a story. Mr. Bolton will retreat to the Dick Cheney Academy of Despicable Public Conduct, there to convene around the cauldron with Karl Rove (still muttering about Ohio), Don Rumsfeld, and the master himself, Richard "call me 'Dick'. everyone does" Cheney.  There they will ponder why their toxic political stew is only marketed on one network.