Saturday, October 27, 2007

No Bottom With This Line....

Just when you think the depths of stupidity have been plumbed, you're surprised and delighted when some new idiocy comes to light. The incredibly intelligent administration at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign™ have been forced to rescind a ban on the logo of Chief Illiniwek™ in the homecoming parade. "The Chief"™ is the school mascot who was deleted this year after a 99-year controversy, the details of which are far too dreary to chronicle in these pages.
Now the dear Halls of Ivy™ finds itself in a predictable guerrilla war attempting to keep The Chief ™gone, while thousands of fans and supporters, complete with t-shirts, caps, mugs, keyrings, emblazoned vehicles, etc., pledge to keep him alive.
So- the first battle in the war was to determine the ownership and use of the logo. While the Big U™ has discontinued and revoked all license to use the logo, it retains Sole Ownership™ and must now fight the predictable and inevitable ad hoc battle to keep it suppressed.
The battle over the parade ban was spontaneous, but surely was equally predictable. How on earth all my university administrator acquaintances (of whom I have none), who live and die by all sorts of holy freedoms of expression 24/7/365, could have imagined that there would not have been a holy howl raised when they attempted to ban the logo in the homecoming parade must remain one of the great mysteries of this football season, if you don't count why the U of I™ plays Ball State. At all. (Ball State University, in Muncie, IN, dear old "Testicle Tech," the arch-rival of my alma mater, Indiana State is this year's victim for homecoming.) Wait! That's right....they've got the same season record. Illinois beat- Indiana. Ball State beat- The Southern Michigan Girl Scouts.

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