Parlor Spider...Step In, Little Fly

Insightful thoughts and/or rants from atop the soapbox from one who wishes to share the "right" opinion with everyone.

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Gee Whiz!

It constantly amazes me that people who live in this age of the 24/7, everything-is-always-out-there news cycle can't keep their private thoughts (and/or appendages) to themselves. The adult world constantly upbraids the younger generation for sexting, recording assaults/bullying then posting such things for the world to see, but I have to say...this phenomenon is not merely relegated to the _my-frontal-lobe-is-incompletely-developed set. Plenty of adults have fallen prey to this type of ignorance (or arrogance, if you prefer). Sending penis pictures to women has brought scorn on recognizable people from professional athletes to politicians, all of whom might be thought of by some as role models for our children. Just because you CAN use immediate technology to do something naughty or dumb doesn't make it a good idea. It's the same as calling your ex-boss "Satan," even in the heat of the bitter SEC football rivalry. We tend to castigate such people and shame them for not setting a better example, but, in fact, there are few penalties for such actions. Even spending $70,000 to vett prospective candidates to be the athletics director at, say, Rutgers University prove that harmful words that we spew are there forever.
I think Gordon Gee might be the best (or worst?) example of someone who is so arrogantly confident in his personal power that he cannot be sanctioned. Just this week comes the news that, in the midst of all the college (read: "professional) football conference realignment of the last year, the subjects of Notre Dame and the Southeast Conference came under discussion. Gee, in his role as the president of Ohio State University (I refuse to use "THE" in front as all the too-smug grads do), had the following comments, first, about Notre Dame:
"You cannot trust those damned Catholics. The priests are holy on Sunday and holy hell the rest of the week."
On the SEC when apprised that someone from that conference had challenged the moniker "Big 10" when, in fact, there are 14 schools in the conference:
"When they begin to read and write, then they can figure out what we're doing."
Yes, he said those things and got raucous laughter from his audience...not so much from the "damn Catholics" or folks associated with the SEC, winners of most of the last few BCS championships.
Will Gee be sanctioned at OSU? By whom? He is the president of the university. His is the power...I suppose the redeeming part of this is that very few of our children want to be university presidents when they grow up.

1 Comments:

At 3:55 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I did laugh a little at the Holy on Sunday/Holy Hell the rest of the week. Even if it wasn't RIGHT to say, he at least did it in a witty way.

 

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