A normal guy

Now that the politically correct hand flappers at Brown have run around College Hill doing their Butterfly McQueen impersonations, confusing liberalism with fascism, abetted by an administration with the PR sense of Idi Amin (locking the press and public out of an on-campus meeting on free speech), perhaps it's time to say something nice about the Brown Daily Herald after the David Horowitz slavery reparation ad contretemps.

Just a few weeks back, P&J were lying on the floor of a favored South County watering hole during a Friendly Sons of St. Patrick celebration, half-eaten corned beef sandwiches on our chests and pints of Guinness in our hands, enjoying a poetry recital (aka "Celtic rap") by none other than the top dog at the state police, Colonel Ed Culhane. Within this bastion of literati, we were tipped that the BDH runs a column, called "A normal point of view," featuring some conservative slants written by student Travis Rowley. Travis is the son of former high-ranking statie Jim Rowley, a friend of P&J's, and also a starting wide receiver on Brown's football team -- hardly the background of such former BDH editors as the Urinal's M. Chuckie Bakst.

We tracked down a couple of Travis's columns, one on the student demonstrations held during the Dubya Bush inaugural in Washington, and another on the aggressive tactics of Brown's Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transsexual Association (LGBTA), and found them to not only be well-written and well-reasoned, but pretty funny to boot. Let's face it, you can't help but get a chuckle out of this one line from the LGBTA piece: "While eating lunch one day last week I had a disturbing thing happen to me. I slid my tray over to make room for a friend, and much to my surprise I was suddenly staring at one of the [Brown cafeteria's] famous [LGBTA] table slips with a picture of two men having anal sex in a shower. Needless to say, I couldn't finish that second hotdog."

Travis explained to P&J why he got involved with the BDH: "I did this basically because I had a feeling that, despite the overwhelming Ivy liberal attitude on campus, the silent majority still shared my conservative views. I feel that the loud liberal voice on campus hardly ever gets any opposition, and as a result, their beliefs become accepted by many, and the liberals are reaffirmed that their views are correct." Given recent developments surrounding the BDH's handling of the Horowitz ad, Rowley seems to have hit the nail on the head.

Travis, a junior, appears to have not only a good future at the BDH, but perhaps also the Other Paper -- with whose editors he seems to share a certain libertarian philosophy, although thankfully not those as hard-right and hard-headed as "Faux Phil" Terzian or Francis "Statistics Boy" Mancini -- and we wouldn't be surprised if he turns up there one day. Kudos to the BDH editors for giving their fellow student's non-liberal views regular space in the paper, despite the fact Travis's "normal view" isn't always politically correct. Perhaps that BDH view of free speech is something that people should also consider before they start trashing entire editions of the paper.

(A final note: P&J recall times when our column appeared to magically disappear en masse from the State House in certain editions of the old NewPaper. Coincidentally, these just happened to be issues in which we made unfavorable comments about then-House Speaker Joe "Prince of Darkness" DeAngelis. Perhaps those responsible for trashing the Horowitz edition of the BDH might like to consider the company they were keeping.)

Cabinets all around

Reader Julie Lancaster, writing to P&J about an issue involving dredge spoils dumping at Conimicut Point, concludes by chastising us for our ad hominem attacks on Governor Bigfoot and the DOT's "Banquet Bill" Ankner: "And guys, the fat jokes about Almond and Ankner are a little much. Both of you aren't svelte model boys either. Are the big boys at Capitol Hill getting in front of you at the buffet table and leaving none for you?"

Well, Julie, you're lucky we stopped with just the Missing Linc and Banquet Bill. It's a mystery to us that Bigfoot can even hold a cabinet meeting when he has to squeeze not only himself and Ankner into a room, but also big girl Christy Ferguson, head of the department of human services, and the administration's head ramrod, Big Bob Carl, to boot. Vaseline the door jambs and suspend other, more normal-sized department heads, like education commissioner Peter McWalters and health director Patricia Nolan, from the chandelier? Never mind all the room the buffet tables must take up. Chow down, Julie.

The awful truth

It's amazing how much acrimony a person can kick up simply by noting the obvious. This was the case last week, when URI President Bob Carothers pointed out something that has been so painfully obvious to objective observers for so long that (we guess) the people in Sports Biz Inc. were shocked by the stark reality of it all. This is (to put it far more bluntly and undiplomatically than President Carothers ever would) that the culture of college sports is a vast wasteland of the greasiest palms this side of Halitosis Hall, a land where cultural values begin and end with images of dead presidents.

The target for Carothers' comments was the "Amateur"Athletic Union and its year-round programs. At first, he merely questioned the value of AAU programs, putting his finger firmly on the main problem -- the lack of connection between big-time college sports and a little thing called "education." Pardon our naivete, but P&J have always considered the latter to be the primary mission of places like the University of Rhode Island.

Fact is, the very mission of the AAU is, in many ways, antithetical to the concept of college education. The union cultivates talented young athletes to succeed in the athletic arena. In case you haven't noticed, the educational requirements of whichever schools these young people attend are, all too often, a huge inconvenience. They're implicitly there to play basketball or football, not attend classes or actually receive an education. More power to those being exploited for their athletic skills who still manage to pursue an education. They have far more to overcome than the average student.

This foolishness has been going on for so long now that most of us can't even see the colossal hypocrisy of college athletics. Here's a true story: A high school friend of Jorge's was 6'5", 230 pounds, an All State football player with, judging from his physical attributes, unlimited potential. He also was a highly intelligent and motivated student. He received a full football scholarship from Syracuse University (this was in the mid-'60s, when Syracuse was a college football power).

The coach at the time was the legendary Ben Schwarzwalder. Jorge's friend played freshman ball, but was constantly warned by Schwarzwalder and his staff that he was getting too involved in campus anti-war politics, and they discouraged him from taking his academic obligations too seriously (don't enroll in so many courses! What are you doing majoring in history instead of phys ed?). When push came to shove, Jorge's friend left Syracuse and enrolled at a non-big time football school where he didn't have to forgo his education.

The conflict between big-time college athletics and education has been so clear, for so long, that the situation amounts to a cruel joke. We give President Carothers credit for trying to find a middle ground to reform an ethically challenged and morally brain-dead college athletic establishment. Unfortunately, it's a quixotic challenge: the outlook for change is dim because of too much money, too much power, and too much denial.

(Note: Phillipe is an employee of URI. This item was entirely written by Jorge, a URI graduate.)

The awful truth, Washington style

By the way, the same dynamic of money, power, and denial explains why the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill faces less than cheery prospects. We suspect the legislation will get so watered down that the primary sponsors will feel obligated to remove their names before re-dubbing it the Moe-Larry-Curly bill. Before we get carried away with talk about equal opportunity, justice, freedom, self-determination and all those other lovely things, it's valuable to remember that the primary purpose of the "land of the free and the home of the brave" is to be a scam for the wealthy. All other values are secondary and conditional on paying obeisance to the first.

Sweating it out

P&J got a tip from the pretty Ms. P about Nike's refusal to sew the word "sweatshop" into their new Zoom XC USA sneakers, under the "swoosh" logo, for one Jonah Peretti, as his "personal iD" -- a customer come-on being offered for $50.

If you have ever wanted to read a perfect example of corporate bullshit exposed, go to the Urban Legends and Folklore site at urbanlegends.about.com/science/urbanlegends/library/weekly/aa022101a.htm, and see what happens when the detestable exploiters of the poor at Nike have their bluffed called.

Have a nice day on the course, Tiger.

Mr. and Mrs. Crucible, 2001

The Clinton administration may be out of office, but God bless 'em, the leading players continue to entertain the living shit out of us. Of course, if you're going to be that entertaining, you've got to get paid (cash money), although who knew that the old slush fund at Salem State College in Massachusetts had the requisite $100,000 to satisfy Big Bill.

While it was pretty amazing for Clinton, no doubt in a moment of temporary insanity, to compare his troubles with the Salem witch trials, still better was a report from New York on the recent doings of Ms. Monica Lewinsky. For reasons more difficult to divine than Salem State's decision to surrender one hundred grand, the Manhattan public relations firm of Rogers & Cowan hired Monica to give a talk to the company.

Unable to learn the subject of Monica's address (cigar etiquette for beginners?), your superior correspondents were amazed to discover that, according to a few disgruntled staff members, Monica went well beyond Bill's witch allusion, likening her plight to the Jews who were persecuted and exterminated during the Holocaust.

Well, Monica may be Jewish, but it's a long way from Beverly Hills to Buchenwald.

Send flaming bon mots, pu-pu platters, and Pultizer-worthy tips to p&j[a]phx.com.

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