May 31

I Wasn’t Offended. I Was Disappointed and Embarrassed.

I love my job. I love my specific place and I love the larger institution. I have felt very lucky year after year to be there, among such interesting people and I have tried my hardest to make sure that I am contributing interesting things to that institution.

The idea that, if I met a brilliant coach and married him, that my cute, but not gorgeous, fat ass would count against him if he tried to get a job at Vanderbilt?

That doesn’t offend me. It breaks my heart.

5 thoughts on “I Wasn’t Offended. I Was Disappointed and Embarrassed.”

  1. Is it just me, or are collegiate sports (at least the supposed ‘big money’ sports) just a cesspool of moral and ethical degradation covered with a veil of ‘tradition’? I’m not surprised by the coach’s comments, but I think a huge part of the problem is apparent in the Vice Chancellor’s rationalization (notice I didn’t say ‘apology’) after the fact:

    I understand that James felt it was joking, but we do have a lot of people out there who get offended by things.

    Got that? The problem is not that the university paying hundreds of thousands a year to have one of its biggest public faces be a raging misogynistic asshole. The problem is that there are a lot of thin-skinned panty-wastes and harpy bitches out there who won’t get it, so the good coach should endeavor to use more ‘appropriate’ language in the future.

  2. I think that pretty much any time “valor” and “honor” and “heroism” and “tradition” get detached from a specific person doing a specific action–in other words, when they become roles one can step into or masks one wears–human nature insures you’re going to get a cesspool of moral and ethical degradation hidden underneath.

    But yeah, you’re getting at exactly my point. I heard what Franklin said and I was upset. Like i said, it didn’t offend me. And hearing the Vice Chancellor pass those remarks off as just, you know, offensive to those people who like to get offended by things, just broke my heart.

    I want Vanderbilt to value me, because I value it. And I want it to value me as a competent employee, not as proof of some dude’s ability to get a worthy fuck, or of the university’s ability to provide young men with skills that will get them good thing to fuck.

    I think I’m working a job, you know? Franklin’s comments and the Vice Chancellor’s laughing it off makes me feel like I inadvertently landed at the Playboy Mansion where I am obligated–at the least–to provide the fantasy that any man who arrives on campus could have a shot fucking me and would want to.

  3. Well Sam, it probably isn’t just you, but I think you overstate. Few are more aggrieved by college sports than those who played. It’s one of the reasons why you see kids heading for the exit as soon as the opportunity arises. If it’s a cesspool of anything, it’s one of greed and avarice, not depravity (depending on what you consider depraved I guess).

    I have to admit suddenly tearing up a bit when talking abt this w/ Psychic. I’ve never had a soft spot for Vanderbilt, but Franklin’s stupidity did break my heart a bit given what he could have meant to the athletes and for Black coaches breaking barriers. And that his attitude indicates he’d continue to transfer such attitude to young Black men when it’s clear we need much less of that kind of thinking.

    So the VC laughed it off, but is this really the end of it? Faculty do have power. Faculty and alumni basically pushed Butch Davis out of his job at UNC.OK, our current chancellor is a former faculty member, so they have his ear in an extraordinary way. I don’t know that it will continue as a laughing matter.

  4. I guess that’s the thing I really wrestle with. I don’t want to see Franklin fired. Vanderbilt fires him and someone else will, I’m sure, pick him up.

    I want to see Franklin really give thought to this. Is he saying that, if a man married a woman who is, by Franklin’s count, “hot” and then she’s in a car accident and disfigured, that that man is wrong for staying married to her? That life happening to her should count against her husband?

    Does he really believe that women’s greatest assets are our looks?

    He is a leader. The amount of good he could do by saying “you know, i said some flip shit the other day, but then I thought about how I’d feel if anyone judged my wife and found her wanting or how I’d feel if I was a woman and someone made me feel like my primary value was as a pseudo-Playboy bunny and it sucks.” would be tremendous.

    So, I can’t help but hope for that.

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