Category: Sardonic Side

College athletics — ok, big time, revenue-producing, basketball and football programs — are no strangers to scandal. Foremost among them: oxymoronic “student-athletes” and their rap sheet, thuggish, criminal behavior.

But even for the win-at-all-costs crowd, what’s going on at Baylor University is a new low on the sordid scale. The Waco, Texas-based university can’t find one of its players, 6-foot-10 forward Patrick Donnehy, and it increasingly looks as if he has been murdered. The investigation remains centered on Baylor players, including the euphemistic “person of interest.”

So what’s a head coach to do? If you’re the ironically named Dave Bliss of Baylor, you forge on. That means, among other things, resumption of the recruiting game. A campus youth basketball camp was recently held as scheduled. “We feel we have to move forward,” explained Bliss.

What must be a helluva lot harder to explain to recruits — and their parents — is the nature of a program that wishes it were merely reeling from bogus SAT scores or boosters gone wild. What do you say when your program is in the midst of a nationally publicized homicide investigation?

“Well, Mrs. Jones, “we’ve tried to do everything in the appropriate manner and now we have to move on. But please put this unfortunate incident into context. As of mid-June we had 11 players here at Baylor University under scholarship. Ten of them were not murdered. That’s better than 91%. And I checked again last night. Everyone is accounted for.”

Here’s a word not typically associated with art: appropriate.

It’s at the core of a flap over aborted plans to display work by a respected Tampa artist in the Orlando City Hall. Tampa City Council member Linda Saul-Sena, who likes the work of the artist in question, Jeff Whipple, calls it censorship.

While it’s fair to question Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer’s Kinkadeian taste in art, that’s not the point. The issue is who, other than the artist, is entitled to make the call as to what is appropriate for a given venue?

Former Orlando Mayor Glenda Hood had no problem with Whipple’s work, and she made the decision to exhibit his 25-year retrospective. Presumably, some Mapplethorpe pieces, for example, might not have passed muster. City Hall is a public place, but it’s not to be confused with a museum. Remember the St. Petersburg experience with Jim Crow-era art in its City Hall? It was acceptable for the longest time.

Mayor Dyer may be a philistine, but his input should have standing.

He objected, for example, to Whipple’s self-portrait of the artist with a phone cord wrapped around his neck. And he didn’t much care for a painting that depicts a man with one leg sliced off holding a coffee mug and drill and a woman with bleeding legs holding a coffee mug and a power saw. He either didn’t get the social commentary or, having gotten it, still didn’t deem it appropriate for City Hall.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, Whipple said that the content of art to be shown in a public place “shouldn’t be an issue for someone who’s not an art professional to make a decision about.”

Well, former Mayor Hood made one.

Liberia’s cease-fire is typically described as “fragile.” That’s like saying the United Nations can be, well, disputatious. The return of the abyss seems but another atrocity away.

Liberia has been a mess for a long time, but nothing matches the carnage-filled regime of President Charles Taylor. In the aftermath of Taylor’s coup against Samuel Doe in 1989, virtually the entire population of 3.3 million has been displaced and hundreds of thousands have been killed — often brutally. Taylor has been indicted for war crimes by a special U.N. court.

Now, as the U.S. explores the possibility of sending in troops as part of an international peacekeeping — or peace-establishing — force, Taylor has indicated an interest in stepping down — AFTER the arrival of peacekeepers. Details are yet to be fleshed out, and subplot scenarios abound.

Taylor, who was trained in the guerrilla camps of Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, is a certifiably dishonorable man. He’s earned that rep the old-fashioned way: he’s been accused of trafficking in weapons and diamonds, conscripting child soldiers and backing rebels known for raping and hacking off the limbs of civilians. He is not to be trusted — or believed.

So, suppose he doesn’t go gently into that Nigerian night for some asylum? What if a bunch of henchmen follow suit? What if Liberia starts to look ominously like Somalia, the sequel? What if the “Q” word — quagmire — looks increasingly applicable to Liberia?

Now suppose the U.S. reissues another — Iraqiesque — deck of most-wanted playing cards? Taylor would obviously be the prize catch. Would Taylor be the Ace of Spades?

How politically incorrect would that be?

It’s something we’re all forced to think about. In the event of a catastrophic attack on Washington, what is the line of succession to the president?

Even civics-challenged Americans know that Vice President Dick Cheney is next in line to President George W. Bush. But beyond that?

Arguably, the next most “presidential” person — in experience, demeanor, national reputation and international renown — is Secretary of State Colin Powell. Only he, not unlike Powell predecessor Alexander “I’m in charge here” Haig, is not next in the line of succession.

Powell’s behind Denny Hastert and Ted Stevens. The former is the Speaker of the House; the latter, the Senate President Pro Tempore.

And if you figured Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was right behind Powell, you figured wrong. It’s John Snow. The Treasury Secretary. Yes, THAT John Snow.

But there is change afoot. There is legislation approved in the Senate and pending in the House, that would elevate the Homeland Security Secretary — Tom Ridge — from 18th to the 8th spot.

He would be right in front of Gayle Norton and Ann Veneman. They are the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture, respectively.

Sleep well.

Call it “Japanese Internment Policy, The Sequel.” In effect, the American Civil Liberties Union does. To America’s citadel of all things liberal, the post-9/11 period is all about America’s designated “enemy combatant” detainees and all the governmental gumshoeing and snooping entailed in making life miserable for any Mohammed Atta wannabes.

For the ACLU, John Ashcroft is a scary amalgam of Heinrich Himmler, Benito Mussolini, J.Edgar Hoover, Josef Stalin, Bull Connor, Richard Nixon and Pat Buchanan. And maybe Vlad the Impaler, Francisco Franco and G. Gordon Liddy too. To America’s fortress of all things left, the attorney general is the poster pol for intimidation, intolerance, arbitrariness, xenophobia, domestic spying and garden variety strong-arm tactics.

And as for the USA Patriot Act, it’s tantamount to the legalized jackbooting of the U.S. Constitution.

“You don’t need to be a ‘card-carrying’ ACLU member to know that our government’s response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th has created the greatest crisis for civil liberties in our history,” wrote Howard L. Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida. Those words were part of his message to those gathered recently in St. Petersburg for the ACLU of Florida-sponsored (24th annual) Nelson Poynter Civil Liberties Award dinner.

But there is an upside for the ACLU.

Its Florida membership now stands at 17,600. Two years ago it was 13,000. That’s a hike of 35 percent in just two years.

How’s that for irony? The Patriot Act as recruiting tool.

There are a lot of understandable reasons why a lot of folks — namely, parents, students and teachers — don’t like FCATs. There are even understandable ways of complaining and lobbying.

But one is not the method chosen earlier this year by Pinellas School Board member Mary Russell. She boycotted the FCAT by keeping her kids home on test day.

Now here’s one that makes even less sense.

Minority activists in Miami are calling for a boycott of Florida attractions and industries — such as Walt Disney World, Florida citrus, Zephyrhills bottled water and even the Florida Turnpike — if Gov. Jeb Bush doesn’t call off the FCATs.

The reason, they say, is that a disproportionate number of the 43,000 third-graders and 13,000 12th graders who didn’t pass are minorities. Moreover, more than a third are from Miami-Dade.

The message they say they’re sending is: “This is the only way to get the governor’s attention. Something’s wrong when African-American students are up to three times as likely to fail as their white counterparts. Hispanics are about twice as likely to fail. It’s yet another barrier for minorities struggling to get an education.”

The message they are sending is: “Whatever standards you declare, they don’t apply to us. They apply to white students and even Asian students who don’t speak English natively. Hey, it’s easier not to drive on the Florida Turnpike and not buy Zephyrhills bottled water than to get your kids to apply ‘Just Do It’ to academics.”

The message they should be sending is: “Like most everyone else, we find fault with the FCATs. But we’re going to take it on as a challenge. We’re going to expect success out of our kids rather than demand that the rules be changed. But what we will demand is that parents be accountable and schools provide all the extra means necessary to help get our kids up to speed.

“In 1998 23 percent of black fourth graders were reading at grade level. This year it’s 41 percent. For Hispanic students the numbers have gone from 38 percent to 51 percent. It can be done. We expect — and demand — success — not excuse-mongering and self-fulfilling prophecies for failure.”

And, by the way, what in the world does the Florida Turnpike have to do with FCAT success — other than being a metaphor for rerouting failure?

Interesting footnote to that absurd Orlando case of the Muslim woman wanting to wear her veil for her Florida driver’s license photo.

The judge ruled against her, but Sultaana Freeman, it turns out, had revealed much more of herself previously for an I.D. photo. This one she didn’t appeal. It was for a 1998 mug shot prompted by her arrest — and conviction — in Illinois for aggravated battery on a child in her foster care.

Another footnote, as revealed in that mug shot: Freeman’s eyes are definitely her best feature.

Give it up for Fr. Len Plazewski, who worked some topical humor into his homily two Sundays ago at Christ The King Catholic Church’s 9:00 a.m. Mass.

He acknowledged that, although not an avid horse-racing fan, he had been rooting religiously for everybody’s favorite gelding, Funny Cide, to win Belmont and thus the Triple Crown. Had Funny Cide won, deadpanned Fr. Plazewski, it might have been an omen that it “would be a banner year for celibacy.”

I suppose we’re to be taken aback by, if not disapprove of, former President Bill Clinton’s $9.5 million haul last year on the international rubber-chicken circuit. He was paid as much as $400,000 a pop on his global speaking tour. Not included: travel and lodging reimbursements.

But whatever you think, if anything, of Clinton, put it into perspective. He’s a former president; he knows stuff; he has a unique perspective; and he’s hardly immune to marketplace forces. It’s part of the free enterprise, capitalist system we say we venerate.

If you want to quibble, however, then have at Greg Vaughn. Vaughn will make $9.5 million this year NOT to play for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. That’s the obscene upshot of releasing a Major League Baseball player with a guaranteed contract.

At least Clinton has to show up.

They’re not panhandlers — but to some passersby they are no less annoying. They are the well-dressed and tressed Scientology recruiters who have been working Seventh Avenue. They are part of a higher profile, beefed-up presence that has been heralding The Scientology Life Improvement Center. The Center recently opened on Eighth Avenue across from Gameworks.

The issue is legally murky. Tampa already has an ordinance that prohibits people from repeatedly asking for money. The Scientologists aren’t doing that. They’re offering free personality tests — but often confuse “no” for “tell me more as I continue walking briskly.” As a “religious” organization it has protection, although not absolute.

It’s enough to get the city rummaging through its codes to see if anything currently on the books addresses “pain-in-the-ass geeks bothering people.”

In the meantime, this unsolicited, ad hoc advice:

For Scientologists:

*Equip your recruiters with two-for-one drink coupons redeemable at any neighboring bar.

*Defuse the complaints with rotating celebrity recruiters — starting with Tom Cruise.

For the city of Tampa:

*Ask Warren Sapp to sign up for a personality test.