More on why I resigned (reposted from Facebook)

Apparently, people are getting through all 5000 words of that essay and still wondering just why I resigned the Paterno professorship. So I suppose I should make the implicit explicit.

I believed that as of mid-July, I had to resign the chair as a precondition of speaking out about the Sandusky scandal. I didn't think so before the release of the Freeh Report, which is why I went ahead and wrote my NYTimes op-ed last year as the Paterno chair. But after the release of the Freeh Report, and especially Freeh's press conference, I felt that any attempt on my part to criticize that document, or the NCAA sanctions that followed, or the whole bizarre media circus that somehow transformed the Sandusky scandal into the Paterno scandal would be worse than self-defeating if I tried to comment as the Paterno chair. Not only would my comments be dismissed as self-serving; they would be read as the apologetics of a bought-and-paid-for toady. (I see that my essay is being read that way by some people anyway! Just imagine if I hadn't resigned the chair....)

[Update:  think of it this way-- it would be like an Onion headline:  "Professor Whose Position Was Created and Partly Funded by Paterno Family Somehow Finds Ambiguities in Freeh Report, NCAA Sanctions."]

Ultrasecret Journolist 2.0 strategy for 2012

Everyone,

I think we've all agreed that Obama is a corporate sellout who represents Bush's third term only worse times infinity. So let's do our best this time around to throw the election to Romney, because when the economy plunges into depression and the Tea Party base is completely disaffected, the path will be clear for Bernie Sanders in 2016. You all with me? Cool. Let's get to work.

Step one: push the Cain story via our operatives at Politico. As we established in last week's webinar, Cain is easily the candidate we fear most.

Obscure corner of the Internets

Insert Borges joke here.

Wizbang Weblog Awards!

Really, these are the real Wizbang Weblog Awards for 2008! By clicking on the link, you have already voted for me as your choice for Most Desultory Blogger! Thank you so much!

Not this time

Oh no you don't. You're not blaming this one on the Blog of the Future. I had nothing to do with this.

The Text of Alf Landon's Famous Speech

Delivered on July 4, 1936, at the state fair in Watsamata, Kansas

My fellow Americans. I urge you to vote this November for the re-election of my opponent, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Only he can guide us through the perilous times ahead; I frankly don’t have a clue. I trust President Roosevelt completely, and I believe you should too.

Indeed, the only reason I’m standing before you here today is that the Republican Party needs to go through the motions of opposing FDR. Well, not me. I’m not going to go through the motions at a time like this, when we are plunged into a great global depression and facing the rise of fascism in Europe. So to all of you who say you won’t vote for me this fall, I say this: Hell, I wouldn’t vote for me either.

Now, I know some of you have heard that President Roosevelt is a Socialist and a Jew. Some of you have heard that he was secretly trained by Jews abroad as a child. Some of you have heard that he doesn’t place his hand over his heart during the national anthem. Some of you might even have heard that “Roosevelt” is a foreign-sounding name. But what you’re hearing, my fellow Americans, are simply the death rattles of a party that has no idea whatsoever what to do in response to our fiscal crises at home and our challenges around the world.

Don’t fall for these baseless and scurrilous attacks, my fellow Americans. Don’t give in to narrow parochialisms and hatreds. I believe President Roosevelt said it best when he told us that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Those were the words of courage; those were the words of wisdom; those were the words of a real leader. We are extremely fortunate to have such a man as Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the White House, and I am happy to support re-election to the Presidency of the United States. Thank you, and may God bless America.

All right

So I exaggerate sometimes.