Field of Hypocrites
By Myron Pauli
There exists throughout America a species of busybody who decides morality and behavior for the rest of us. Sometimes it is just silly things like a yellow ribbon to “support the troops” (does that protect against IED’s?), or a pink ribbon for breast cancer (as if I need to be reminded of breast cancer). I guess if shoving your head in a toilet bowl makes you feel better about the Holocaust, go to it!
Of course, the current rage is to “pile on” the notorious Jerry Sandusky child abuse case, where we need to “make a statement” via some collective punishment. Maybe we can drop a nuke on Sandusky? Or change the ice cream brand to “Ben and Hortense’s”? Or rename “Pennsylvania” as “Lesotho”? Into this collective mentality steps this cartel of hypocrisy known as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
Now, you might take a step back and ask why state governments need to run colleges when private universities do fairly well. Thomas Jefferson thought that some public education would make us enlightened and freer, not knowing that most universities would be run by neo-Marxist academicians. While some colleges stick to learning (such as Caltech, which lost 300 basketball games in a row), others run semi-professional football and basketball teams. I guess colleges could also operate breweries, pencil factories, and whorehouses – the latter of which is, arguably, in line with the rest of what goes on there!
Hence the neo-Marxists wind-up sending hulking semi-literate Neanderthals to bash each other with weekly concussions for subsistence “scholarship” under the pretense that they are “students.” Should one of these exploited gladiators hock a T-shirt for $50, they get pounced upon for violating the “rules” that they have no say in! This, we are told, maintains the “integrity” of the process.
But even on non-athletes, the Universities are hardly better. With severe shortage of scientists in the labor force, they could hire paid “staff” to do the grunt work of searching for the Higgs Boson – but instead, they train “graduate students” for subsistence to work 100 hour weeks soldering connections to scintillation counters, for the same reason that Simon Legree employed slaves on the plantation – cheap labor. [IM: Myron, slavery, which was economically inefficient, was purported to be “free” labor.] The fact that there are going to be ZERO jobs in experimental particle physics in 2030 is of no concern to the professors.
Back to the NCAA. They have decided to follow the dictum of Orwell: “Those who control the past control the future,” by ex post facto declaring victories of Penn State to now be losses – which, undoubtedly, will also erase child abuse!
Why not award the ersatz victories to Caltech?! This has to rank with the claim that the late Kim Jong Il of South Korea golfed a 34 in 18 holes including 11 holes-in-one. Undoubtedly this constitutes another victory for both morality and academic integrity.
They also decided to limit the amount of “scholarships” that the taxpayers of Lesotho (formerly known as Pennsylvania) can give to muscle-laden ghetto kids to bash their brains in.
However, in fairness, the NCAA is allowing the “scholars” to transfer to other Bowl-bound semi-professional franchises (sometimes called “Universities”). Hallelujah, justice is served! Ten years from now, most of those former “scholars” will be serving fries with that “justice” on torn cartilages, suffering migraine headaches.
**
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism.