Friday, March 20, 2015

Diplo v. Taylor Swift, Greece needs a Xerox machine and Brett Bielema keeps lying to himself


- How are there still public figures who don’t realize that at this point, there is nowhere they can go in either the physical or digital world where their words won't be heard and if they’re newsworthy, repeated over and over? The list of public figures who have tweeted the wrong thing or let rip with an offensive remark that ended up going viral is too long to list here, but add former head of Homeland Security and current University of California president Janet Napolitano to it after a contentious California University Board of Regents meeting where protesters voiced their concerns about budgetary issues in the 10-campus system. Napolitano, who by now should be used to the public directing verbal bile her way, was instead badly rattled by the protesters' chants and rather than shake them off and keep going, she turned to a regent member to her left, and said, "Let’s go. We don't have to listen to this crap." Yes, this woman said the C-word. Look at J-Naps, getting all salty with it. Big ups for holding back and not saying sh*t, but a microphone caught the comment she apparently thought was private and even though her words were something even a third grader would not consider profanity, she issued an apology just in case. "I'm sorry for using a word I don't usually use," she said at the beginning of a meeting the next day, asking those offended by the word choice for "empathy and understanding." Again, who was offended by that? More offensive is the fact that a woman entrusted to run a major university was so seriously unsettled by chants from a group of about 30 students and at one time, a student partially disrobing. Apologize for your lack of poise and get better at handling the hate, J…………


- Take a cue from “Frozen” and let it go, Arkansas Razorbacks coach Bret Bielema. No one’s buying your bogus pitch that college football needs to outlaw the turbo-charged fast-paced, no-huddle offense that coincidentally has kicked your teams’ asses over the past few years. Bielema, who favors a ground-out-out, throwback approach to football based on massive offensive linemen and running the ball 110 percent of the time, has been one of the loudest voices among the disingenuous ass hats in the coaching fraternity who can’t keep up with that newfangled spread nonsense and claim that it’s somehow hazardous to players’ health. For more than a year, this anachronistic thinker has feebly argued in favor of rules to restrict the speed with which offenses can operate, demanding that there be a rule to prevent teams from snapping the ball until at least 10 seconds ran off the 40-second play clock. In one of the cheapest ploys and biggest reaches ever, Bielema even referenced the death of Cal football player Ted Agu, who died following a training session. Amazingly, the self-serving views of a few stuck-in-the-past coaches weren’t a winning case and the rule was ultimately tabled. Even after that defeat, Bielema refuses to concede his fight to change the rules regarding the pace of play in college football and he’s throwing blind haymakers in the general direction of the hurry-up, no-huddle offense. "We have to protect student-athletes to extremes we never thought of before,” Bielema said in addressing the sudden retirement of San Francisco 49ers linebacker Chris Borland, a former player of his at Wisconsin left the NFL at 24 years old because of concerns over the effects of head trauma. That was the perfect opening for Bielema to cite a study he may have made up which allegedly showed that "players in the no-huddle, hurry-up offense play the equivalent of five more games than those that don't. Adapt or perish, Brett, is still the universal imperative……….


- Does Greece know it’s 2015 and scanners, copiers and digital imaging technology have all been invented? Yes, the Mediterranean nation is built largely on its amazing, world-shaping past that saw it give berth to things like the Olympic Games, modern democracy and Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo, but not everything in Greece needs to be rooted so deeply in the past. For example, it is OK for government officials to make digital or physical copies of important documents so there are enough of them to go around in the even someone needs to take a second look at, say, the country's original bailout agreement with the European Union. Had someone realized the magic of Xerox or Hewlett Packard is real and not the next chapter in Greek mythology, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis would not have been forced to stand in front of his country’s parliament and explain why he felt "almost infinite anger" when told that a copy of the agreement was not available when he took over nearly two months ago. According to Yanni V., a copy of was missing from the ministry and it took three and a half days to track one down because of a rather bizarre tradition in Greece of ministers taking key documents with them when they leave office. Exactly who the hell started that tradition and how corrupt was that person in order to need to take all documentation of their crimes and corruption with them so there was no proof tying them to their crimes? Varoufakis promised to change the rules to stop the practice, but his comments came right before the Greek prime minister was to hold emergency talks in Brussels with lead lenders over the country's troubled bailout negotiations and didn’t exactly paint the country in a favorable light………


- It hasn’t been a great 2015 for glow stick-wearing, tweaker/techno disc jockey Diplo. First, he and fellow electro-crap-spinner Skrillex were shut down by police in California while attempting to put on a marathon, 24-hour DJing set. Now, he’s dealing with the unmitigated wrath of teenage girls and young women around the world on account of him daring to make a less-than-flattering remark about their icon, former country singer and current pop tart Taylor Swift. Diplo stepped on the wrong side of Swift’s legions of shrieking, angsty female fans when he tweeted that "someone should make a kickstarter campaign to get Taylor Swift a booty. It was not as offensive as Kanye West’s treatment of Swift, but it was enough to spark social media outrage from Swift's fans and even fellow pop star Lorde, who replied by tweeting, "Should we do something about your tiny penis while we're at it hm." Having endured the avalanche of 140-character hate that came his way, Diplo is now waving the white flag and slowly backing away from the scene like a child who just broke his mother’s favorite vase and is shrinking away in the hopes that maybe it will all just go away. “It's like an army that's worse than North Korea... All I know is don't ever get into a feud with Taylor Swift [again]. She has like 50 million people that will die for her,” Diplo said. The man whose name sounds like a cheap ripoff of a popular brand of children’s toy building blocks is somewhat correct, even if a reality show to see if Swift’s fans would actually die for her would be a cool, watchable twist on the whole Hunger Games phenomenon. "You can't step into that arena. That was something I was never prepared for ... one of the biggest mistakes of my career was definitely f*cking with her,” Diplo added. Fortunately, these two met up at the 2015 Grammy Awards and appeared to patch things up, even posting an Instagram photo together……..

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