Comments on: DR. LOU HAS AN APOLOGY

By: sb

sb — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:11:46 +0000

BK @ #27…re-read what I wrote…nothing there about a “good leader”, but rather “good at what he did”, which, yes, was to direct mass murder. But far be it for me to get in the way of a fine rant…please, carry on with your descriptive and enlightening froth.

By: oc phil

oc phil — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 23:01:10 +0000

#29 That made me laugh as much as anything else in O’s post.

By: DC Trojan

DC Trojan — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:45:02 +0000

Gen. Stoopnagle – several years ago. In a national sporting history replete with disaster and humiliation, that stands out.

By: Gen. Stoopnagle

Gen. Stoopnagle — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:29:40 +0000

Scotland drew with Faroes?

I had no idea.

By: Tizoc

Tizoc — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:15:48 +0000

Mark @ 29:

I think you can assume that was intentional.

By: DC Trojan

DC Trojan — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:49:41 +0000

Gen Stoopnagle @ 26 – I like to think that Austria’s draw with the Faroe Islands was all part of the global re-balancing of karma they earned for trying the “we had no choice, we were annexed!” argument since 1945.

And in case you were wondering, for Scotland it’s payback for taking the King’s shilling and shooting the locals around the world. Sure, the English claim that the verse in the national anthem about “rebellious Scots to crush” is just an anachronism, but we know better.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:37:50 +0000

Am I misreading above, or is Orson referencing Stalin as stopping the British army?

“That man didn�t stop the British army by being lucky. Nope! Ol� Joe did it the same way Woody Hayes beat his opponents, using the best tools both of �em had plenty of: rickets and starvation. Still plenty of both in Ohio.”

By: Reggie Bush's Impala

Reggie Bush's Impala — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:35:11 +0000

No joke here, just saying the guy misspoke, and since the topic of his mention was…OMG HITLER, there has been an outcry. Common decency, or not, there should be no reprimanding other than, as you pointed out, a “hey let�s not use totalitarian dictators in our college football analyses anymore” talk from his superiors.

The only reason why there would be a reprimanding for Lou would be for the sake of ESPN appearing to be politically correct and thereby providing justice against anyone who says the word Hitler on the air, even in jest.

By: BKDawg

BKDawg — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:24:44 +0000

#19 & #24… Ignorance knows no bounds. If your definition of a great leader is: to waste 40% of your resources exterminating civilians, (many of whom would’ve gladly fought for Germany, as the German Jews did in WWI) while at the same time trying to fight a war on several fronts and making one of the worst tactical errors in history by invading Russia before the winter (ala, Napolean) — than I’m sure you think Idi Amin is the 20th Century’s Abe Lincoln.

That is of course getting beyond the obvious of perpetrating the worst act of human atrocities ever. Yeah, some great leader…

By: Gen. Stoopnagle

Gen. Stoopnagle — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:18:32 +0000

And in the end, DC Trojan, Austria could only draw with Faroe Islands?

I once watched – on TV – Faroe Islands v Spain on the one island in the Faroes large enough to contain a soccer pitch and some portable aluminum stands of the Community Optimist Football League variety.

Spain 8, Faroes 0.

By: DC Trojan

DC Trojan — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:09:09 +0000

This”Holtz sholdn’t get a reprimand” business is a joke, right?

I don’t think that Lou Holtz is a Brownshirt (his underpants may be another issue, but there’s no shame in that for a man his age), but as a general rule of thumb, invoking dictators of totalitarian states which undertook genocide is monumentally stupid and should be cause for apology – if only to the person at the other end of the comparison.

That’s got nothing to do with political correctness, and everything to do with common decency. Just stick to calling DickRod an asshat like a civilized person would…

While I’m on my soapbox: all this great leader stuff is bunk; Hitler wasn’t actually good at anything except getting the locals riled up. It’s well worth plowing through Ian Kershaw’s two-part biography of Hitler; the crux of his argument is that when it came to actually organizing anything more complex than a beer hall putsch, Hitler couldn’t actually find his keister with a map of the Eastern Front and two OberGruppenFuhrers to help. Thus the Nazis accelerated their inevitable loss because of the chaos from everyone trying to “move towards the Fuhrer” and him proving to be a moving target. Trying to pin it all on Hitler is tantamount to proposing omnipotence and absolving the many, many hands that made light work of mass murder.

By: JTG

JTG — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:46:06 +0000

It really is ridiculous that people are so sensitive that a reference to Hitler being a leader of men is seen as objectionable. Clearly he was an amazing and charismatic leader, but you have to separate that from what he was trying to lead them to do.

Stalin and Mao were strong leaders as well, and also genocidal maniacs.

His point was simply that just because one is a good leader, doesn’t mean they are good. I think.

Regardless, taking it as praise for HItler’s agenda is ridiculous.

By: Reggie Bush's Impala

Reggie Bush's Impala — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:34:00 +0000

While I cannot dispute that making references to Hitler is not particularly good for ones career path, saying Notre Dame fans (Domie-Land?) are tolerant of racism is idiotic.

That’s like like saying USC fans tolerate double-homicides.

I guess thats what passes for low hangin’ fruit around here…

By: InsaneCoachPosse

InsaneCoachPosse — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:26:54 +0000

yum-yum love me some ham sandwiches

By: oc phil

oc phil — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:25:57 +0000

Pelican Pants @7: That would make Toledo the Serbian partisans. Yugoslavia (mainly Serbia) was the only country the Germans took who managed to drive them out again without being “liberated” by the Allies. Obviously the beating the Nazis were taking on the Eastern and Western fronts allowed it to happen, but it was still quite a feat.