Mo Diplomas, No Problems.

It is all too infrequent that an author's hypocrisy is a matter of public record, so this was an opportunity I had to seize.

"College athletes shouldn't be paid" by Douglas M. Gottlieb.

At first blush, this doesn't seem to be all that ridiculous. A man with an insider's perspective can give us some great insider knowledge about what's going on in the inner-workings of the NCAA, where record profits just seem to disappear. So this post on ESPN's Insider page might be worth reading. (If you can't tell, I despise the over-use of the term insider at ESPN).

While there is a sudden clamoring for universities to pay their players, I feel otherwise based on my time as a student athlete and even after I left campus.

Hold up there, sparky! Which campus are you talking about? I thought I remembered that you went to a few different schools.

Oklahoma State welcomed me after my issues at Notre Dame. I don't think OSU would have accepted me from junior college, if not for my athletic prowess.

OK, so that's Notre Dame, then JuCo, then OK State? Man Notre Dame is kind of a storied program, you were starting as a freshman, and your team showed some promise. Why did you leave?

Oh! Now I remember! You were accused of stealing your roommate's credit cards and charging $900 to them! And then you were expelled.

Why would you do such a thing? Was money hard to come by while you were a student athlete? Why would you play if you weren't getting any benefits?

While college players are not paid directly, they receive a tremendous amount of benefits that aid them during, and after, their time on campus.

Oh.

It starts with "comped" campus visits in high school and continues with tutoring, preferred class registration, choice housing arrangements and, of course, the ability to walk away with a degree and without an ounce of debt to your name.

Sure, that's a lot of benefits. I guess that paid for food and clothes, too? No? How about trips to the movies or drinks or Tamagachis or bandaids or a mattress pad or ANYTHING YOU NEED TO BUY WITH ANY FORM OF CURRENCY?!

Oh, you get none of that? Makes sense that somebody (anybody) might steal credit cards or sell jerseys and memorabilia to get a tradeable commodity for the purchase of other goods. In fact, that could probably be easily predicted by the entire compendium of human existence.

I am not claiming that athletes don't get a bunch of benefits, but when the March Madness alone brings in $613 million in revenue, you could give a kid some gas money (for the car that a booster bought him, of course).

While we're on the topic, what other sorts of benefits do college athletes get?

When you play big-time basketball or football, people want to hire you. You are a known commodity and, like the colleges, businesses too would like to profit from your presence -- and compensate you in kind.

Sure. If you can read and write. Say, you know where gobs of college athletes come from? Areas of destitution where roughly 50% of students graduate from high school and those who do graduate will, on average, perform at an 8th grade level.

But let's say you come from the inner city, you get into college on the back of astounding athletic ability and you stick it out for four years. Gottlieb is right that you'll have a degree that you more than likely wouldn't have attained otherwise (assuming of course that your ticket to college didn't itself pull you out of all those valuable classes and the degree you're now holding wasn't actually just a token of time served but an actual, meaningful symbol of your earned academic prowess over your time at the university).

But then he keeps going...

We so massively undervalue a college degree -- which can lead to increased earning potential in the professional world -- and overestimate the value of a couple of hundred dollars per month while in college, which may end up getting taxed anyway.

First, college degrees are dropping in value, because, compared to 50 years ago, a much much higher percentage of Americans are graduating from college. Many think that we may be at the peak of a higher education bubble.

And again, the same fatal flaw as before: Your degree, regardless of its value, is a deferred benefit. That doesn't get you shit in the here and now. And, though there are plenty of loans available, that means you're not leaving debt free as Gottlieb and others so often claim.

But it all comes to a head for me with this point:

The payoff is in the end, after school, much like the future doctors, scientists and businessmen and women with whom you attend school. College is about sacrificing, learning and growing as a person. The reward for all students is the memories and experiences gained in the short term and benefiting from them in the long run.

Yeah, college seems like a real sacrifice for most students. What with the partying and the indiscriminate sex and the long hours of sleeping and the nothing-that-resembles-the-working-world. I would HATE to do college for the rest of my life. Talk about a drag!

And in what fucking way is the (imagined) illiterate-but-monstrous back-up defensive tackle from rural Mississippi on a Big XII football team the same as an aspiring brain surgeon from Westchester, NY?! Are you out of your goddamned mind, Gottlieb?!

Sure, there will be a payoff if you're one of the elite athletes in college athletics. But if you're not - - or worse, if you were an elite athlete who rode that into college and you get injured - - you better unlace your cleats and grab hold of your ankles, because when the NCAA is done milking you for every penny, the rest of your Eat Shit And Choke Life is going to make you remember where you came from.

Unless of course you take the easy way out and steal credit cards.

I'm better at Christianity than you

Leviticus doesn’t care if you gay marry. Well, that guy might, but he doesn’t matter. The important thing to know is that Jesus doesn’t care. Seriously, it wouldn’t bother Him at all. He even said it. I swear, it’s in the Bible. Fine, I’ll prove it.

Jesus was, by all accounts, a pretty good guy. It’s really a shame that the 2000ish years after He died have been filled with dumbasses and shitheads perverting everything He said. Like, the Crusades. Does anyone think that Jesus would have approved of that? Going by what He taught, I’m going to guess not. But that’s not the point. I’m going to tell you the religious dogmatic justification for gay marriage.

First, I guess we should know what biblical passage douchebags base their opposition. The most quoted source is Leviticus 18:22. It says, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is abomination.” I’m using the King James Version of the Bible, here and throughout this post, because it seems pretty well respected. Anyway, for those of you not familiar with Leviticus, it’s basically of book of God giving a bunch of rules to Moses that I guess weren’t important enough to be included in the Ten Commandments. That’s essentially the whole book, just God telling Moses what the Jews could and couldn’t do. One rule says that a priest must marry a virgin (I’m pretty sure a priest wrote the book), another says that you can’t eat animals like hare, coney (never heard of it, but it’s probably delicious), or pigs.

Clearly people have been pretty selective in deciding what rules of Leviticus to follow. That’s because, and I absolutely believe this, most really religious people are awful hypocrites; it starts with the Pope and extends downwards through Catholicism, and just rampages through protestant and evangelical denominations. These people seem to have forgotten the disdain Jesus had for hypocrites. But just because people that don’t want to allow gay marriage love eating bacon doesn’t mean that Leviticus doesn’t matter. Leviticus doesn’t matter because Jesus said it doesn’t.

I don’t understand why people are so willing to go back to Leviticus when there are other sources, specifically the Gospels. Well, I do, it’s because the Gospels don’t give them the answers they want. Matthew 22 deals with all the laws in Leviticus. Jesus is being questioned by a bunch of Pharisees and Sadducees, and these guys are pretty big assholes. After Jesus annihilates the Sadducees, an uppity Pharisee tries to trick Him. He asks Jesus what the most important law is. Jesus answers, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. “ (22:37-39). Nothing about not marrying another man, nothing about not eating pork, nothing about priests marrying virgins. Why? Because all of these rules are ridiculous. Seriously. If you want to get married, or have gotten married, who are you to stop someone else? I’m not saying that this invalidates the 10 Commandments or any of that nonsense. They’re consistent with this. Don’t kill anyone, because you wouldn’t want anyone to kill you. The same goes for stealing from them, or lying to them.

Jesus just wanted people to stop being dicks. No one remembers that. John 11 says that Jesus wept when He heard that Lazarus was dead. He must be bawling over the current state of the Church.

Brief Thoughts

I’m done my brief, 4600 words. I’m pretty sure that my guy is gonna win. Whatever. On to more important things.

The Governor of Texas is in way over his head. Secession? Really? That worked out so well the first time, didn’t it. Honestly, I’m excited about it too, and really hope they go through with it. First of all, I think America would be a better place without the Lone Star State. Too many evangelicals there. Second, and most importantly, if Texas secedes, I’m pretty sure there would be a zombie outbreak. In fact, I’m certain of it. If Texas leaves the Union again, Andrew Jackson will rise from the dead an lead an army of zombies on a rampage all the way to the Rio Grande, not stopping until he hangs or eats the brains of every secessionist down there, starting with Rick Perry.

A couple days ago a statement was made public warning about right wing extremists. This, naturally, made the right wing extremists flip out. But, uh, the more they flip out, the closer they get to doing the things that the government was warning about. Facist-leaning Republicans seem to struggle with irony. And common sense.

Oh, and they don’t really have a sense of humor either. Fox News has a really bitchy article up about how CNN and MSNBC weren’t respectful enough of their contrived tax day protest. Evidently when Sean Hannity and whoever else came up with their idiotic tea party idea, they didn’t consult any high school sophomores, who would have exposed the obvious flaw. So CNN and MSNBC did their duty as proud American institutions and made the obligatory teabagging jokes. I think that some guy named David Shuster wins the prize for most awesome mockery of Fox News and this whole endeavor, saying, "Teabagging day for the right wing and they are going nuts for it, " followed by "They want to give President Obama a strong tongue-lashing and lick government spending." You think that Fox News would catch on to the mockery, and maybe adapt, but they haven’t. In the middle of the article there is an invitation to join the forums and comment about this whole debacle. The link reads, “Click here to join the discussion on teabagging.” I swear I didn’t make any of this up.

Even Ann Coulter weighed in on this teabagging discussion, acting every bit as sanctimonious as Fox News, but with more jokes about Barney Frank. As an aside, can someone explain to me why I read Ann Coulter’s web site? I thought I was better than that. But even though I read her regularly, I can’t remember I got all the way through one of her postings; it seems every week there’s a paragraph that makes my head hurt so much I need to jump over to youtube and watch Bobby Orr highlights until the pain goes away. This week the line was, “Obama's biggest shortcoming is that he believes the things believed by all Democrats, which have had devastating consequences every time they are put into effect.” What the hell? Was Clinton’s Presidency so devastating? Certainly it wasn’t as bad as Bush’s time in office (pick whichever Bush you prefer, neither was any good). Seriously, how does she get away with making such absurd claims.

Getting back to this whole secession thing, just because it baffles me, and it’s still a big deal, people are now polling Texans about a couple of the issues here. I’m like to interpret these numbers for you. 31% of Texas voters say their state has the right to secede. From this, it stands to reason that 31% of Texas voters are mildly retarded. This figure may be low, however, because I sincerely doubt that most Texans know what the word “secede” means. 18% of Texas voters say that they would vote to leave the Union; these are more likely than not the same people that were trumpeting the phrase “’Merica! Love it or leave it!” over the last eight years. Clearly these Texans don’t love America, which must make them terrorists. You’re either with us or against us.

If Dmitry Medvedev were an American, he would vote Republican, live in Texas, watch Fox News, and probably have a lifesize cutout of Bill O’Reilly in his bedroom. But he’s not, he’s a Russian. And he’s warning NATO not to run any war games in Georgia. So, if I follow his logic, it’s ok to invade Georgia and kill a shit ton of people there, but having a military exercise in the country is way out of line. Weird.

One more Republican I don’t like (can you tell that there aren’t any stories about outer space or dinosaurs) is Norm Coleman, the guy who lost the Minnesota Senate race to Al Franken, but won’t go away. Seriously, this guy, when it seemed like he was winning, said that Franken should concede so Minnesota could be properly represented. (He really did say something like this, I just don’t feel like looking up where; if you don’t believe me look it up for yourself.) Naturally, he’s now losing, has been for months, but won’t concede. He’s pretty much burned up all his state court options, and now he’s gonna introduce a suit in federal court. I don’t think he’ll win, because, quite simply, fewer people voted for him than voted for Franken, but if it gets to the Supreme Court all bets are off; Franken could win by thousands of votes in Minnesota, but when he loses by one in Washington (and he will), he’ll be screwed.

Finally, I’m going to just briefly throw out my two cents on the debate about LeBron James that is raging over at our sister-blog, www.dauerism.wordpress.com. The Yankee hat thing doesn’t bother me, and I don’t care about all this talk about him eventually going to the Knicks. LeBron actually seems like a pretty good guy. But when his career and Dwayne Wade’s career are both over, I really want to be able to look back and say that, yeah, James was a much more talented player, but he’s no Dwayne Wade, and then point to the five NBA championships that Wade has won and the zero that James has. That would just be amusing.

Update: Biggest homophobe prize still up for grabs

Thanks to this late entry by Utah State Senator Chris Buttars:

(Concerning the "radical gay movement"): "They're probably the greatest threat to America going down I know of."

Right. People having consensual sex in the privacy of their own homes is going to bring us all down. That and not the failing economy.

And the coup-de-grace of the article:

Now, in the interview, senator Buttars also talks about a certain type of reported gay sexual activity which he claims is taking place.

But ABC 4 does not consider that appropriate for its news content.

Gotta wonder what that is, don't you?! And how would Buttars know about it? Hmmmm...

Happy Tim Tebow Day!

Just a couple weird, unrelated things I wanted to talk about briefly.

First, we briefly touched on a case in Torts today, Riviello v. Waldron. The casebook describes the facts of the case like this: “ Waldron, employed as a cook at the Pot Belly Pub, a Bronx bar and grill, was talking to a customer and flipping an open knife. This accidentally struck the customer in the eye.” What the hell? How could that possible happen? I’ve thrown all sorts of things in the air, and I’ve never even come close to blinding anyone. And I’m not even especially coordinated. I can’t see how this guy managed to toss a knife into a customer’s eye.

Papua New Guinea brings us this next piece of absurdity: a group of vigilante assholes burned a woman at the stake for, among other crimes, sorcery. Apparently this isn’t even a one time occurrence, but is gaining prevalence in the area. And, like this case, most of these witch-hunts are incited by AIDS. Why do third world countries struggle with this so much? Stop having sex with monkees!

And then, of course, there’s this asshole who didn’t put Rickey Henderson on his Hall of Fame Ballot. I absolutely hate that some people refuse to vote for certain first-ballot HOFers just because people like Hank Aaron or Willy Mays weren’t inducted unanimously. That’s not their responsibility; this self-appointed guardianship is crap. And to make it even worse, this same dumbass voted for Jim Rice. And Matt Williams! He did vote for Tim Raines, who does deserve to be in, but I don’t understand how you can vote for Raines and not Henderson. And seriously, Matt Williams? He’s the only guy so far to vote for him. What the hell?

Amen I say to you...

I’m starting to think that maybe some people may have missed the point of what Jesus was all about. This article is a pretty clear case of that. Apparently this divorced woman, Rebecca Hancock, is dating another guy, and her church, the Grace Community Church, isn’t too happy about it. So they’re going to do what any responsible, tax-exempt organization would do: publicly shame the woman because Jesus wants them to.

Unless this woman ends her relationship with whoever this guy is, her sins will be announced to the congregation. Evidently, this happens fairly frequently. The church is defending its actions by saying they are merely doing what Jesus instructed them, cherry-picking a bible verse, Matthew 18:17, which says, in part, “tell it unto the church.” (KJV)

I looked up Matthew 18:17, because, well, it seemed inconsistent with Jesus’ whole message. My understanding of Jesus’ teachings is essentially “don’t be an asshole, even if you think you can get away with it.” This church has gotten something else out of it all. Well, judging by the rest of Matthew 18, not to mention the rest of the Gospels, I’m pretty sure my reading comprehension skills are better than theirs.

Matthew 18 is a pretty long chapter, and has a lot of moral commands in it. It opens with Jesus answering the question of who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. The answer, as I’m sure most of you remember from CCD, is he who humbles himself like a child. Jesus goes on to say that whoever accepts the child accepts him, and that those who offend a child would be better off drowning. Now, this might be a stretch, but when I read this I interpret child to be representative of anyone who can’t really defend herself, like Ms. Hancock. Jesus is basically saying here, and throughout the Bible, that by looking out for those who cannot look out for themselves you are doing His work, and if you’re not doing this you’re fucked.

Eventually Matthew writes the line that this church is basing their assholery on. But if you read it in context, you can see that they’re really manipulating Jesus’ words. Matthew 18:15 says, “Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault…” It then goes on to say to talk to him with two or three witnesses, and if that doesn’t work to “tell it unto the church.” I think the key part of this is “against thee.” This woman has done nothing against the church, they’re just a bunch of self-righteous dickbags. I think that the more appropriate verse for the church to base its actions off is John 8:7, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

Seriously people, if you want to be an asshole, fine, I’m not going to try to stop you. Just don’t use the words of people that are better than you to rationalize it.