If everybody's crooked, is wrong all right?

Garland Robinette, in most every way, has been the face -- or, more precisely, the voice -- of post-Katrina New Orleans.

And for being too representative in one important way, the WWL radio host -- who before that was a TV-news fixture in the Crescent City from the time I was in elementary school to well past when I married and moved away from Louisiana -- ought to be fired.

No matter who you are or how good you are at what you do, sometimes you do something for which there's no excuse -- or at least no good excuse. And for Robinette, who's been around the block more than once as a journalist, covering Louisiana scoundrels grand and petty, there's just no excuse for not knowing a massive conflict of interest when it presented itself.

Indeed, there's just no way a longtime radio and TV reporter and anchor could not have known what he was doing was, shall we say, both ethically challenged and fatally toxic to both his and his employer's credibility. There's just no way.

WHAT did he do? Here's what the Times-Picayune says he did:

WWL talk radio host Garland Robinette received $250,000 from the owner of the River Birch Landfill in October 2007, after Robinette routinely used his show to criticize the reopening of the rival Old Gentilly Landfill to dispose of Hurricane Katrina debris, his attorney confirmed. Federal authorities investigating River Birch flagged the monetary transfer and interviewed Robinette several times late last year, said Robinette's attorney Dane Ciolino, who said the money was a loan.

"They asked him a lot of questions, and he has cooperated fully," Ciolino said Friday. "He has been told that he is not a subject or target of the investigation."

Embattled River Birch owner Fred Heebe loaned Robinette the money through a company Heebe owns, Ciolino said.

"Fred Heebe is a personal friend of Garland's" he said, "and it was a personal loan."

Ciolino said the loan was to be repaid once Robinette and his wife sold a vacant lot they own in St. Tammany Parish. He said he believed Robinette, an avid painter, used the money to build an art studio.

Ciolino said he did not know whether Robinette has repaid the loan or whether he has been paying interest.

The disclosure involving one of New Orleans' most prominent media figures is the latest development in the 20-month investigation of River Birch, which allegedly paid $460,000 in bribes to a former state official to lobby for closing Old Gentilly.

The loan was made during the post-Katrina landfill wars as Heebe and his associates sought to shutter the Old Gentilly Landfill and the new Chef Menteur Landfill to increase River Birch's share of more than $175 million in disposal fees for at least 38 million cubic yards of hurricane debris.

From mid-2006 through mid-2007, Robinette frequently raised environmental concerns about disposing of debris at Old Gentilly and the new Chef Menteur Landfill in eastern New Orleans on his "Think Tank" talk show.

THIS WEEK, Robinette took to the WWL airwaves to defend himself:

"I can look my wife and my daughter in the eye and tell you the public I have done absolutely nothing wrong," Robinette said.

Entercom Corp., WWL's Pennsylvania-based owner, backed Robinette, saying

company officials "do not expect this matter to affect Garland's status with WWL."

From 2006 until at least May 2007, Robinette frequently raised environmental concerns on his show about disposing of hurricane debris at Old Gentilly, a former city dump in eastern New Orleans that reopened two months after Katrina.

The payment to Robinette, first reported Saturday in The Times-Picayune, came as Heebe and his associates were trying to shut down the Old Gentilly Landfill and the Chef Menteur Landfill -- both of which were opened in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to deal with the huge volume of trash.

Robinette said his coverage of the landfill issue was not influenced by the money from Heebe.

"My opinions are not and have not ever been for sale. I would never dishonor your trust nor my family's," he said.

HE CAN LOOK his wife and daughter in the eye and tell us he's "done nothing wrong"? No joke?

If Robinette believes that -- really believes that in his heart and mind -- he obviously operates within the context of a depraved worldview, likely formed by the corrosive forces of an depraved civic culture, one with a completely deviant view of such concepts as "right," "wrong" and "normal." (This also applies to Robinette's corporate boss, Entercom, which is blind -- as American corporations are wont to be -- to everything but the bottom line.)

Dat's Loosiana for you!

That's a place where "on the make" and "on the take" are such a part of "normal" civic life as to be unexceptional -- and unprosecuted if not for the U.S. Justice Department. There you have a society where businessmen are giving, officials are taking and -- now -- at least one prominent figure in the mass media is "borrowing."

While talking up his friend and creditor's shady interests by running down the "competition."

THIS is what passes for "absolutely nothing wrong" in the mind of a man who emerged as one of New Orleans' preeminent post-Katrina crusaders for what he'd have us believe was "truth, justice and the American Way." Now he's a man making himself into a different, yet much more familiar, face of "the Big Easy" -- the ethically pockmarked face of an American banana republic.

Answer me this: In the Gret Stet, what institution can the public really trust?

That Garland Robinette now has added to the long, deafening silence that accompanies that question is reason enough to "kill his mic" . . . and his long broadcasting career with it.

Realignment, as seen on Twitter

Click on picture for higher resolution

Wow! The inside dope on college athletics you can find on the Internets!

Happy Labor Day

Pete Seeger



Arlo Guthrie

3 Chords & the Truth: Workin' for a livin'

Everybody likes the day off, but nobody cares about why we have one.

That's the American approach to holidays -- and long weekends -- and its rise corresponds with our decline as a nation.

Boy, that just puts you in a cheery mood to listen to 3 Chords & the Truth, doesn't it? Sorry about that, Chief.

But it's true.

Let's go down the line, shall we? Christmas . . . uh, it's about a manger and wise men and Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer in the little town of Bethlehem, right? Now where's my presents?

EASTER . . . uh, bunnies laying eggs . . . ham for Sunday dinner . . . and, uh . . . bonnets?

Memorial Day . . . uh, baseball. Start of summer. Yeah, that's the ticket!

Labor Day . . . uh, the Jerry Lewis Telethon? Wait . . . Jerry's not doing it anymore. Oh! The end of summer! What else? We got nothin'.

That. my friends, is why the Big Show is here -- to clue you in on stuff. Well, that and play lots of great music.

This is Labor Day weekend. That would mean we're celebrating something having to do with . . . wait for it . . . labor? Not, not hours and hours of excruciating childbirth -- labor as in "workin' hard for the money."

Labor as in "labor union." Back when politicians and greedmeisters hadn't made "union" a dirty word yet. Back when people thought there was a certain dignity to labor, and that the dignity of workingmen (and women) ought to be protected.

Back when it was considered a good thing that an Average Joe could make enough money to take care of his family. Maybe even put the kids through college . . . upward mobility and all that stuff.

WE STILL believe in all that quaint stuff here at 3 Chords & the Truth, and this week, we're saluting labor for Labor Day. Our "work" set is tasty, indeed. Why not give it a listen, huh?

In other words, you don't have to check your brain -- or your conscience -- at the door to be well and properly entertained on the Big Show.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

The rich man's burden: Poor folks voting

Over the past couple of years, writers at The American Thinker have had trouble keeping their demagoguery straight.

Basically, they can't decide whether President Obama is a mortal threat to the republic because he's too Nazilike or because he's not Hitlerian enough. If you ask me, it'd be a trip to sit in on their editorial meetings.

For his part, Washington "investigative journalist" Matthew Vadum comes down squarely on the side of "more Hitler, dammit!" The least the government could be doing, he writes this week, is to keep the parasites away from the voting booth.

You don't say.

ACTUALLY, I took liberties in describing his position. Vadum didn't actually call the poor "parasites." He just referred to "nonproductive segments" and how the poor "burden society."

And said that "empowering" them is "antisocial" and "un-American."

Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?

Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery.

Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.

(snip)

Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn't about helping the poor. It's about helping the poor to help themselves to others' money. It's about raw so-called social justice. It's about moving America ever farther away from the small-government ideals of the Founding Fathers.

Registering the unproductive to vote is an idea that was heavily promoted by the small-c communists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, as I write in my new book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

In an infamous 1966 Nation magazine article, the radical university professors urged that the welfare apparatus be used to destroy the American system. Borrowing a phrase the ultra-leftist Leon Trotsky used in one of his many anti-Stalin tracts, The Platform of the Joint Opposition (1927), they titled their blueprint for radical change "The Weight of the Poor."

By "weight," Cloward, Piven, and Trotsky meant power or influence. All three wanted to use the poor as a battering ram against the systems they sought to overthrow.

Trotsky thought too many bureaucrats and middle-class people were involved in the Soviet Communist Party and that it was moving too slowly in its efforts to change that society. He wanted more poor people in the party in order to overthrow Stalin's obstructionist bureaucracy and clear the way for "true" communism.

Stateside, Cloward and Piven wanted to use the "weight" of the poor to bring down American capitalism and democracy.

IT IS but a small leap one makes from lebensunwerten das Wahlrecht to lebensunwerten Lebens -- "life unworthy of the right to vote" to "life unworthy of life." This is especially true when one uses rhetorical trampolines such as "antisocial," "un-American," "nonproductive segments" and "burden to society."

Vadum's paranoid vision is that of a Marxist Obama destroying society with all manner of collectivist insanity made possible by registering parasitic hordes of poor Americans and making sure they vote early . . . and often.

A couple of years earlier, though, Cliff Thier fretted over the president's nascent "Obamacare" plan for polar-opposite reasons -- that a Naziesque Obama would deny medical care to old folks because they no longer were productive. From The American Thinker of Aug. 24, 2009:

Under ObamaCare, the older you get, the more likely it will be that you will not be permitted to have an operation, or to receive the optimal medicines. The reason is that you likely will be taking more out of society than you will be contributing in taxes. Which leaves us with a simple question: Who in his right mind would dare to retire?

[An aside. In Nazi Germany, the mentally ill and physically disabled were labeled as "unproductive members" of society. As were, of course, the Jews. Euthanasia was the inevitable and logical result of such thinking then. It is also the inevitable and logical result of such thinking today.

The prophet Ezekiel was supposed to have resurrected the dead. That it is an Ezekiel authoring the Obama Administration's "Robert's Rules of Death" must be God's little joke.

That it's an Israeli doctor who is advocating this system of rating the values of different human lives must be Dr. Mengele's little joke. ]

You and I will have no choice but to continue to work into our 80s (God willing) and beyond. We will have to do everything we can to convince the government that we put more into society than we take out.

If, however, you are younger than 15, older than 40, you've got a problem. If you're younger than 2, or over 65, or mentally ill, or physically disabled, you've got an even bigger problem.

If you love someone who is over 65 or physically disabled and they contribute something important to your life, that won't count. Only if they pay taxes will their lives be rated as worthy.

Good luck to you.

AND GOOD LUCK to The American Thinker and its contributors as they wrestle over whether they want to fight phantom Nazis or, instead, become real ones.

The frightening '50s

You want to know what those love letters in the sand said?

"I want to eat your brains!"

The Billboard: It wasn't fit reading for the faint of heart.

Speaking of Wossamotta U. . . .

Enjoy!

The long leg of the law

Click photo for video

If LSU quarterback Jordan Jefferson can keep a felony conviction off his record, I think I've found a future profession for the young alleged curb-stomper.

Omaha cop.

It falls under "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." Become an Omaha cop, Jordan, and you can kick the s*** out of people, then get a "Get Out of Jail Free" card!

The beauty of America is that, in one place, you can have the city prosecutor making a similar argument for the Long Leg of the Law as defense attorneys made on behalf of felony battery suspects in another. Is this a great, morally relativistic country, or what?

The Omaha World-Herald takes it from here:

A tape of an Omaha police arrest has raised questions about excessive force. But authorities say the tape doesn't depict the whole story — and a review by the city prosecutor ended with no charges against the officers.

The tape, shown Tuesday on public access TV, shows police using force while taking Robert A. Wagner, 35, into custody outside Creighton University Medical Center shortly after Wagner's cousin was shot and killed on May 29. At one point, a female officer kicks Wagner repeatedly as he lies on the ground.

But authorities note that the tape doesn't show what happened before the arrest. Wagner is accused of pushing one officer and punching another, said Omaha City Prosecutor Marty Conboy.

Wagner is charged with felony assault of an officer in connection with the incident. A pretrial hearing in the case was scheduled for Wednesday morning, but was postponed. Wagner declined to comment.

Conboy said the officers involved in the incident will not face criminal charges.

The tape shows a female officer kicking Wagner three times in the right shoulder or head area. Conboy said it also shows what looks like Wagner taking a swing as he enters into the view of the hospital's security camera.

"The problem with this video is you don't see everything that was going on before," Conboy said.

AND THE PROBLEM with the LSU bar-brawl videos is that none of them show the first punch, either. But the Baton Rouge and Omaha videos do show the one relevant thing -- a curb stomp of someone helpless on the ground.

A criminal-justice professor told Omaha's KETV television that's all he needed to see:

A [University of Nebraska at Omaha] professor, known for his expertise in police matters, says what happened during an arrest caught on surveillance tape should never have happened.

The video comes from the parking lot of Creighton University Medical Center early on the morning of May 29. Police reports allege the man in the video, Robert Wagner, punched an officer off camera. On camera, nine officers surround Wagner, and while he is one the ground, one officer kicks near his head several times.

The Omaha police department took the surveillance to the city prosecutor who found no criminal wrongdoing and as of Wednesday night there was no complaint filed by the suspect.

Dr. Sam Walker, a UNO professor and an advocate for police accountability, said he was troubled when he saw the video.

“The initial reaction was obviously just shocked,” said Walker. “The female officer kicking the guy three times, she should be fired.”

Walker said there is no legitimate reason for any officer to do that.

City prosecutor Marty Conboy watched the video and said there is nothing criminal about it.

“Whether it's appropriate or not, I can't comment,” said Conboy. “Whether it's criminally intended assault, it does not appear to be gratuitous or something she does intentionally.”

“She didn't do it accidentally,” argued Walker. “She didn't stumble, so I think he was wrong on that.”

WHETHER it's football, a bar brawl or an arrest, there's one simple rule: You don't kick a man when he's down.

If you're too stupid -- or too gangsta -- to understand that, the criminal-justice system needs to kneecap you. But good. Right now.

That's because the police force has the same room for thugs as the football team at Wossamotta U. -- none.

El socialismo, sí! Darwinismo social, no!

I remember standing in line at the local Sears service center years ago, out in the industrial hell of southwest Omaha, waiting to get a certain part for our lawnmower or something.

The line was long, the service slow. Competence seemed negligible. The vibe was not one of "How do we improve the customer experience today?"

Finally, one guy closer to the front of the line had had enough. I know I had had enough, and this guy had been standing in line longer than me.

"This is worse than Russia!" he erupted. I mean, he screamed that. And then he stormed out the door, part not in hand.

Mind you, this was when the Cold War still raged. When "Russia" meant the Soviet Union. Land of communism . . . and craptastic workmanship.

IN THE NEWS today, we learn that American babies are more likely to die than those in 40 other countries -- most all of which Republicans deride for their allegedly inferior pinko "socialized medicine."

But their babies are alive. Too many of our fine, capitalistic progeny aren't.

From My Health News Daily:

Babies in the United States have a higher risk of dying during their first month of life than do babies born in 40 other countries, according to a new report.

Some of the countries that outrank the United States in terms of newborn death risk are South Korea, Cuba, Malaysia, Lithuania, Poland and Israel, according to the study.

Researchers at the World Health Organization estimated the number of newborn deaths and newborn mortality rates of more than 200 countries over the last 20 years.

The results show that, while newborn mortality rates have decreased globally over that period, progress to lower these rates has been slow, the researchers said.

In 2009, an estimated 3.3 million babies died during their first four weeks of life, compared with 4.6 million in 1990, the report found. About 41 percent of all deaths of children under 5 occur in the first month (the neonatal period). Progress to reduce newborn deaths has been particularly slow in countries in Africa, the researchers said.

A BANANA REPUBLIC, if you ask me, is one where "family values" politicians yell and scream about the genocide of abortion -- which it is -- but are perfectly content to let babies croak once they exit the womb unmolested. Particularly poor babies, who most depend on the ebbing Medicaid kindness of federal and state lawmakers.

In other words, "This is worse than Cuba!"

I guess there are worse things in the world than socialism . . . like whatever the hell it is the United States does now.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Simply '70s: He hates these cans!

Note: Some language NSFW . . . or for kids
In 1979, Navin Johnson's adoptive father explained the whole deal about the difference between s*** and Shinola to him . . . but sadly neglected to mete out any pearls of wisdom concerning snipers.

Or his "special purpose."

Them things happen. Particularly in The Jerk.

May Steve Martin live 100 years.

The Twitterian Paradox

"Follow me and I follow you"?

Uh, not exactly.

And not only because of the hypocrisy of it all will I not follow back @followmeback on the Twitters. I will not follow back @followmeback because I'm allergic to spam.

You follow me?

Teabonics

From the "you can't make this s*** up" department, we have the Tea Party Patriots' poetry corner:

I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW
BLIND OBAMA
YOU HAVE WAKEN UP A SLEEPING GIANT
WE THE PEOPLE UNITED WE STAND
AS ONE NATION
TO SAY NO
YOU MUST GO
WE THE PEOPLE SAY
NO YOU MUST GO
IMPEACH OBAMA
AND BRING HIM TO JUSTICE
IMPEACH IMPEACH
BRING HIM TO JUSTICE WITH ALL THE OTHER TRADERS
TO WE THE PEOPLE AND THE CONTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC OF
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WHO STAND TOGETHER AND WILL NOT FALL
PLAY WE MAY BUTT WHEN NEEDED WE COME STAMPEDING PROWD AMERICANS READY
TO FACE ANY ENEMIES FOREIGN OR DOMESTIC
WE THE PEOPLE SAY
THE CONTITUTION IS IN OUR HEARTS
ONLY A TRUE AMERICAN KNOWS ITS TRUE PATH AND WILL DEFEND UNTIL DEATH
YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOW'N FREEDOM WILL STAND FOR THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE

The biggest loser (with the biggest megaphone)

I wonder how many "dittoheads" were listening to the latest from Rush Limbaugh as they mucked out their flooded houses?

Or made arrangements for the funeral of a loved one lost to "overhyped" Hurricane Irene?

Or sat in a sweltering, darkened house with a battery-powered radio?


From Business Insider:

"I'll guarantee you Obama was hoping this was going to be a disaster as another excuse for his failing economy," he said. "If he's out there blaming tsunamis, if he's blaming earthquakes, and whatever natural disasters there are, this one was made to order, but it just didn't measure up."

I guess this was just Vermont's warning from God about Bernie Sanders. Right?

Anybody got a 6-cent stamp?

Is it too late to send off for my groovy Motown fun fan kit?

For $2, it's a steal!

Just a little Category 2 hurricane

Our State magazine

For more than 108 years, the Markham-Albertson-Stinson Cottage has stood watch over Old Nags Head, N.C., as in this picture from last year.

Did I say "has stood watch"?

MSNBC.com

I'm sorry, I meant had stood watch.

It had survived all manner of hurricanes, squalls and nor'easters since 1903. Three families had whole worlds wrapped in its weathered timbers.

It could not survive "just" a piddly Category 2 hurricane named Irene this weekend. Eventually, worlds cease to be, except in blessed memory.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

But Five-0 does

“I think that we need to all take a deep breath and relax. This is college students acting like college students on both sides. I don’t buy into the word ‘victim’ at all.”

-- Lewis Unglesby
Jordan Jefferson's
defense attorney

For the record -- though I am loathe to admit it nowadays -- I am an LSU graduate.

You know, F*** Bed Check and Let's Go Get in a Bar Fight U.

I also will admit to spending my share of time in barrooms while an undergraduate -- and the drinking age was 18 back then.

And I want you to know that I am officially pissed off -- but good -- at Lewis Unglesby's lame-ass defense of the guy who may be trading in No. 9 for a much longer set of digits and a starring role in The Longest Yard 3.

It's the defense of low expectations . . . of "but everybody's doing it, Ma!" It's the same kind of non-existent expectations that historically has made my alma mater a nationwide academic also-ran and has made my home state a nationwide embarrassment.


EVERYBODY gets in bar fights and (allegedly) curb-stomps some guy.

Nobody invests in higher education -- that's for eggheads. Harvard and Stanford are just jealous of our football team.

Everybody in government's a crook. But at least ours are more entertaining, you stick-in-the-mud Yankee sissies.

Help! I've fallen and I can't get up! Give me some money, America!

As one scholarly former LSU football coach once observed in the heat of battle, "F*** that s***!"

AS I NOTED, I spent more than my fair share of time at Murphy's, the Bayou, the Cotton Club, the Spanish Moon and God knows where else. Oh, the Tiger Lair in the LSU Union . . . can't forget that Friday-afternoon favorite. (And yes, LSU had an on-campus watering hole back in the day. I'll bet you're so shocked.)

Likewise, I will stipulate that I am well familiar with jocularity, falling on my ass, puking in the bushes on the Quadrangle and bed spins. I hate bed spins.

Despite my best attempts at undergrad alcoholism and bar-hopping, however, not once did I ever engage in a bar fight. And any head I may have kicked probably was the result of drunkenly stumbling over a passed-out classmate.

I don't know. Maybe I just never got the hang of college, or of "acting like college students."

Then again, maybe counselor Unglesby is either full of crap or knows his potential jurors all too well. Probably both.

3 Chords & the Truth: Tunes for a stormy day

I grew up during a heyday for hurricanes on the Gulf Coast.

The first I actually remember was Hilda in 1964. What sticks in my mind was my confusion as to whom this Hilda person was and why she was in the news. I pictured in my mind a middle-aged lady who had been in a bad car wreck.

I am not making this up. At any rate, I was soon to learn otherwise.

WHEN YOU'RE a little kid, hurricanes meant one thing: You got to camp inside. Quilts on the living room floor. Hurricane lamps. Candles. Battery radios. No lights. Picnic food at home.

Too, you got to stay up way late. Hilda, and Betsy the next year, were nighttime hurricanes. And who the hell could sleep through all the howling and banging outside?

What we needed then -- but didn't have then -- was 3 Chords & the Truth, and lots of tasty storm tunes, on the transistor radio. An iPod also would have been nice in the mid-'60s, but back then that would have been an unmistakable sign of an alien invasion.

ANYWAY, you guessed it . . . not that you really had to guess. This week's episode of the Big Show features a great big heapin' helpin' of songs to hunker down with if you happen to be on the East Coast of the United States.

If you're not, enjoy anyway. Then save the show for when you need it, all right?

It's kind of like having a hurricane party on an MP3 file, only you're not too liquored up to save your own butt if the occasion presents itself. In other words, make the best of the situation . . . but be careful out there.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there (and stay put, for cryin' out loud). Aloha.

Where have all the grown-ups gone?

Click for video

This video is up here because I needed to cleanse my mental palate.

You see, I just read the police report about the football riot at LSU. The one that fanboy enablers dismiss as just another "bar fight" and has Tiger quarterback Jordan Jefferson and three others in such legal hot water.

You may read the initial police report here. I don't intend to spend any more time -- at least in this missive -- on a mob of wannabe London rioters who were so stupid as to break team curfew, head to a bar, yank a guy out of his pickup, beat him senseless and do it all while "wearing official LSU Football shirts."

Who'll notice? What's the worst that could happen?

NO, FORGET that and forget them. One is hopeful Five-0 will remember well enough for the lot of us.

Remember the video above, the story of something good that descended upon Baton Rouge for more than half a century. Someone who came to WAFB television in 1960 and really built something over the next 30 years, and did it unpretentiously while, to my knowledge, not causing any mass mayhem at local barrooms while wearing Channel 9 swag.

Another grown-up has left the scene in my hometown, and in American journalism. Another grown-up from "the greatest generation" has departed America and moved to a better neighborhood, one where the streets really are paved with gold.

There will be no more Newsline 9, News-Scene or Channel 9 News for Carlton Cremeens to anchor or orchestrate. There will be no more talent for him to find, hire and develop. There will be no more insistence on stellar writing. (Turn on your local TV news tonight. I dare you.)

And there will be damned few mid-market TV anchors who can, for example, hold his own with someone like Walker Percy and then get the interview published in The Southern Review.

Another grown-up gone. Now we return you to our regularly scheduled bar brawl.

Terrible grace vs. just terrible

This week, you can't open the sports section without reading about the star-crossed relationships of 20-year-old college students and 50-something coaches.

In Baton Rouge, among the stately oaks and broad magnolias, police hauled in four LSU football players Tuesday for questioning about a bar brawl that left four men battered and bruised -- one of them with cracked vertebrae. Two of the players, including Tiger starting quarterback Jordan Jefferson, weren't even old enough to have a legal beer at the time.

The cops say somebody's going to face charges -- maybe even felony battery charges. The question now is who. Jefferson?

Some substitute who throws better punches than blocks? Some other among the 20 or so Tigers at the appropriately named bar -- Shady's -- Thursday night?

Po-po ain't done questioning the thirsty Tigers yet, according to The Advocate:

The names of the men injured in the fight were not released. However, White said, the man who was knocked unconscious and suffered contusions to his head, nose and hands is a Marine.

White said four LSU football players implicated in the incident gave their statements to police Tuesday at State Police headquarters and gave investigators the names of at least a dozen witnesses.

The four players — senior quarterback Jordan Jefferson, 20; freshman wide receiver Jarvis Landry, 18; sophomore offensive tackle Chris Davenport, 21; and sophomore linebacker Josh Johns, 21 — met with police for about two hours, the chief said.

“They were quite gracious,” White said of the players. “They gave their statements willingly.”

Police spokesman Sgt. Don Stone said investigators will interview the witnesses the football players told them about.

“It’s possible we will talk to more football players,” he said. “Names were mentioned today (Tuesday).”

Stone said interviewing the additional witnesses could extend the police investigation five, possibly 10 days.

“This investigation is far from over,” he said. “We are still on a fact-finding mission.”

However, Stone added, based on facts investigators already have gathered, “there is a good chance that when the investigation is over arrests will be made” and that people could be booked with simple battery and second-degree battery.

Second-degree battery is a felony offense that carries a maximum five-year prison sentence upon conviction while simple battery is a misdemeanor.

LSU'S COACH, Les Miles, says he'll take action beyond extra running for the team as the situation sorts itself out. He won't say what, because LSU football coaches have their priorities -- like not tipping off No. 3 Oregon (Sept. 3, Cowboys Stadium) about personnel or the game plan.

The cynical among us are tempted to just chalk this up as "college sports today." Another typical day in the big-money, big-entitlement, BMOC world of 20-year-old jocks and their 50-something coaches.

Tempted. Tempted until another story presents itself -- one of a 50-something coach and her 20-year-old son.

This one comes out of Knoxville, Tenn., just a few hundred miles northeast of the underage beer and parking-lot brawls of Baton Rouge. Torn from the pages of The Washington Post, it's Sally Jenkins' account of a women's basketball program, a devastating diagnosis, terrible grace and the unshakable bond between a mother and a son.

YOU WANT to know why Pat Summitt, leader of the Lady Vols the past 37 years, has won more games than any coach of either sex, anywhere? Here's a clue:

Last Thursday, Summitt, Barnett, and her 20-year-old son Tyler, who is a junior at the University of Tennessee, met with Chancellor Jimmy Cheek and Athletic Director Joan Cronan to inform them of her condition. Barnett warned Summitt that contractually school administrators had the right to remove her as head coach immediately. Instead, Cheek and Cronan listened to Summitt’s disclosure with tears streaming down their faces.

“You are now and will always be our coach,” Cheek told her. With the blessing of her university, she will continue to work for as long as she is able.

“Life is an unknown and none of us has a crystal ball,” Cronan says. “But I do have a record to go on. I know what Pat stands for: excellence, strength, honesty, and courage.”

To Barnett, Pat’s fight is characteristic; her determination to keep working, and also to act as a spokeswoman for Alzheimer’s, is not incompatible with the values she has always preached as a coach.

“If you go back to her speeches, and her discussions with players through the years, you see several things,” Barnett says. “One is absolute dedication. Two is an unwillingness ever to give up. And three is an absolute commitment to honesty. And in this challenge that she’s facing, she is displaying the exact traits that she’s always taught. . . .Pat is going to run this race to the very end.”

(snip)

It wasn’t until August that the reality of her condition hit home. “There was a pretty long denial period,” Tyler says. “At first she was like, ‘I’m fine.’ ”

When the blow finally fell, it was heavy. Summitt had always been the caregiver: Friends, family and former players struggling physically or emotionally have always come to her house for comfort, a hot meal and soothing advice in that honeyed southern voice. “I want to go see Pat,” is a common refrain. It wasn’t easy to reverse the role, and to admit that she would need care.

In September 2006, not long after the death of her father, she separated from R.B. Summitt, her husband of 26 years. Some months later, she found herself immobilized by physical pain, and was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Summitt rarely betrayed in public the toll of that disease, but there were occasions, before it was successfully controlled by medication, when her son had to help her put her socks on.

In between those traumas she suffered a shoulder separation — from fighting a raccoon — and was hospitalized twice, once for cellulitis, and once for dehydration and exhaustion. Still, for all of that, she managed to lead the Lady Vols to consecutive national championships in 2007 and 2008.

Through it all, there has always been a sense of centeredness in Summitt. She is like a marble pillar, ramrod straight, that seems to have stood for a thousand years, while everything around it falls.

“Everyone has always wanted to know what Pat’s really like,” DeMoss said. “The word I’ve always used is ‘resolve.’ Pat has more resolve than any one I’ve ever known. She has a deep, deep inner strength.”

But now she will need a different kind of counterintuitive strength. Surrender and acceptance have never come naturally to her, nor has admitting vulnerability. She has trouble even uttering the word Alzheimer’s. But she’s learning.

“We sat down and had a good talk, and realized that the only reason we even made it this far, was that we had each other,” Tyler says. “It started with her father passing away, and then the divorce, and the arthritis, and then the Alzheimer’s, and each of those things, I don’t know how anyone could go through them alone. So we figured out that as much as we wanted to be Superman and Wonder Woman, and take care of things alone, we needed each other.”

MEANTIME, down on the bayou, the LSU players' high-powered yet pro-bono attorney, Nathan Fisher, says his clients are "scared to death" and that they "cried in this meeting -- they are scared to death."

Did you get the picture that they're scared to death? Do you get the picture that I'm strangely unmoved, considering?

Would that Pat Summitt might have the sad satisfaction of knowing why she's facing a sentence impervious to the best efforts of the best lawyer money can't buy. Or, thus far, to the best efforts of the best doctors that money can.

And would that a 20-year-old kid at the University of Tennessee had nothing worse to worry about than the prospect of a jail time and the wasting of a collegiate football career.

Lord, have mercy.

Help! Help! They're being repressed!

I am one of those Catholics who believes in God, not cultural self-identification.

I believe that God exercises a "preferential option for the poor." I believe that's in the Bible -- somewhere toward the back.

I believe that how we govern ourselves, and how our governing structures implement a basic vision of social justice, is a direct reflection on a democracy's citizenry, which grants consent to its agents.

I believe that God does not sleep, that nations come under judgment and that we are in big, big trouble.

I ALSO BELIEVE that Louisiana -- my home state -- is working hard to sink from mere banana republicanism to fascistic banana republicanism, and that this stinking turd some self-righteous collegiate twerp left on the opinion pages of LSU's student newspaper is Exhibit A. From the soiled July 28 edition of my old stomping grounds, The Daily Reveille:

Obama and the Democrats love to paint a picture of the "poor" as innocent people "just trying to stretch every dollar as far as it will go."

I wonder how many Democrats have ever been to a Third World country to see what poor really means. For two weeks I stayed with a family in Costa Rica who had no air conditioning, no hot water, no washer or dryer, and the roof of the house was raised above the walls so that air could circulate in and out. And yet they washed all my clothes, gave me meals every day and never complained about it.

There are definitely some Americans who are truly needy, but it would be ridiculous to think the 47 percent of Americans not paying federal income tax are eating food out of dumpsters.

It's sickening to hear Obama and the Democrats portray the poor as blameless people in dire need of government help when our poor live lives of luxury in comparison to the poor of other countries.

It isn't the rich who are paying less than their fair share in taxes. To the contrary, they're paying much more than everyone else. It's America's poor who get free health care and new SUVs who aren't sharing the sacrifice.

And if we don't start taxing the rich, Obama wants to withhold Social Security checks. How about the government withholds welfare checks from the "poor" instead of Social Security to those who have actually paid their fair share?

It's about time the so-called poor Americans share the sacrifice and pay their fair share of taxes.

BACK IN MY DAY, the "f*** the poor" crowd complained about "welfare Cadillacs" and ghetto dwellers buying bottles of Mad Dog and Colt 45 tall boys with food stamps. Now, apparently, it's "free health care" and "new SUVs" that are the problem.

My assumption, though, is that the faces behind the stereotype are still brown ones.

What I don't understand is why the smug Reveille columnist, Austin Casey, didn't aim lower for whom he considers real poor people. Why not starving Somalians instead of Costa Rican peasants?

That could have made him feel even better -- or worse, depending -- about how rich America's poor are in the grand scheme of things. After all, it doesn't look quite so bad that the richest 1 percent of Americans controls 40 percent of its wealth and takes home a fourth of its annual income if we get to put quotation marks around our poor.

Sorry, make that "poor."

OF COURSE, the whole construct of inequality in the United States is unique to "socialists" like . . . well, me. I actually give a rat's ass about stuff like this. Austin Casey and the rest of Tea Party America don't.

When Austin Casey encountered the poor of Costa Rica, they sheltered him, fed him and wished him well. When Austin Casey encounters the poor -- sorry, "poor" -- of America, he pouts, stamps his feet and screams "Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"

Tea Party America is not the land of e pluribus unum -- out of many, one. Instead, it is the land of ad te sorbet -- it sucks to be you.

Jesus has an opinion on that. It's in the Bible -- somewhere toward the back.