Jules Feiffer has described Tony Auth best, "His perspective is that of a bemused and often angry comic historian. Irony, never a favorite form with Americans, is his meat and potatoes. He is not smug, and though he can be mean, he is never mean-spirited. Auth is a moralist and an optimist. He insists, even in this day and age, that hope is more than the name of a right-wing comedian or the shtick of a reactionary president."
© The Philadelphia Inquirer - All Rights Reserved.
Chuck Asay by Chuck Asay
Clay Bennett by Clay Bennett
Comments (16) (Please sign in to comment)
Doughfoot said, 10 months ago
A college needs football the way a fish needs a bicycle.
When my university raised the athletic fee all students paid solely so the football team could stay in whatever conference they were in, the students actually protested. We had a rally and banners and all. It wasn’t a “let someone else pay for it” rally, it was a “why do it at all” rally.
There are a small handful of schools for whom the football program is actually profitable: it brings in more revenue than it expends. But that’s only because they have other schools to play, schools for whom the football program is a drain on their resources and a distraction from their actual purpose of educating students. In the end, schools like mine are subsidizing the others.
Why does this continue? Why do boards of trustees authorize larger salaries for coaches than for professors? Can you imagine the argument being made for such sums being devoted to the drama program? "If we don’t want our college plays to look amateurish, or if we want our college actors to attract talent scouts from Hollywood or Broadway, we have to maintain production values, and we need top people to direct. … " Sports are needed in colleges the way the drama program is needs: to provide exercise, diversion, recreation, and relief for students from their academic pursuits. Instead many of our institutions, looked at objectively, are football clubs which support themselves by holding classes.
hippogriff said, 10 months ago
They dare call the player’s salary an “athletic scholarship”. There is nothing scholarly about it. The term is athlon, the prize for which the athlete competes. This might also teach more Greek than just the alphabet used by the campus drinking clubs.
1opinion said, 10 months ago
As an aside, during half-time performances, for local or national football, why do they cut away to talking heads instead of staying with the bands and color guards performing on the field?
emptc12 said, 10 months ago
@Doughfoot
I feel almost exactly the way you do. However, many people don’t — otherwise sports competitions of all varieties would not glut the media. I’m always amazed when I see on TV a sports stadium filled to capacity with people there to see something I care nothing about.
Many years ago, before basketball became so popular and the players received high salaries, one of my high school classmates said in all seriousness that “he loved basketball and wanted to devote his life to it.” Since he was a short guy, we thought, “How ridiculous! How can anybody say that about a kid’s game?” He wasn’t a dummy, after all, and had more sensible career options.
Over the years, I often hoped he followed his dream — he would be a whole lot wealthier than I am now. Because once the entertainment business discovered sports, it became bloated with money. People involved became very well compensated.
College sports have always been valued beyond what I think is their due. It used to be that young sports heroes had a few years of glory and then entered standard professions. They entered an adult world that was seldom as glamorous and almost never as heroic.
In our society, the most nonsensical things have high value – paintings, antiques, baseball cards, celebrity possessions, beanie babies – even if they have no intrinsic worth. Grown men playing kids’ game become fantastically rich. Constantly, my personal operating philosophy is confirmed: “Life is Absurd.”
Imagine how the world would be if each of us could design it according to our tastes.
In my world, grownups that play sports would not end up multi-gazillionaires. Universities would focus on academics and job training, useful research, and those kinds of things.If I had the effective-dream capability of George Orr, in THE LATHE OF HEAVEN, all that would happen and a lot more. Everybody exactly like me might be happy, but the majority of people would not.So it goes. Learn to laugh at life and figure human nonsense just makes the stories better.
Justice22 said, 10 months ago
More heads should roll at Penn State because of the lack of attention, coverup or whatever you want to call it.
pirate227 said, 10 months ago
Idolatry at it’s worst.
Doughfoot said, 10 months ago
@emptc12
Actually, I have nothing against sports per se. I am sorry that I came to hate such things as a kid, I would be thinner and healthier today if I were more active. And I don’t begrudge people the pleasure of sitting in the stands and cheering for the hometown team. I don’t object to people devoting themselves to sports, or singing, or any of a number of other activities. I do object to being required to financially support it whether I want to or not! Among other things …
Tigger
said, 10 months ago
This applies to all Colleges in the USA, not just Penn State
emptc12 said, 10 months ago
@Doughfoot
My sentiments, also. If you want to see the purity of play and music, watch children at it. Their imagination is fascinating, their optimism boundless. Children play even in the rubble of destroyed cities. A song by Theodore Chanler uses the poem, “We Are the Children,” and expresses this perfectly (darn, can’t find the poem on-line, sorry).
I think that adults try to re-capture that feeling when they watch the play of professional athletes. Unfortunately, like so many images presented to us through media businesses, it’s often about as satisfying as watching other people eat. It seems all human feelings are commercialized and packaged these days for passive viewing.
Business has trained people to be content as consumers, not participators. It’s the wave of history you and I have been dropped into. It’s my conceit to imagine that somewhere above Someone is watching and sees the bigger view.
I recently re-read THE HASHISH MAN, by Lord Dunsany:“Once I found out the secret of the universe. I have forgotten what it was, but the Creator does not take Creation seriously, for I remember that He sat in Space with all His work in front of Him and laughed.”
walruscarver2000 said, 10 months ago
@emptc12
I have no interest in sports either, but in fairness, I must say that I have known literally dozens of kids over the years that stayed in school and passed their classes because they knew it was the only way to play the sport they were so keen on.
emptc12 said, 10 months ago
@walruscarver2000
So true. I remember kids who sat in school, seldom saying a word, embarrassed to death if called on to recite — who soared like young springboks at recess time. It was a joy to see!
A sound mind in a healthy body should be the twin goals of schooling. What a shame that they separate so widely later on.
Because of budget cuts, the schools in our area have curtailed most sport and extracurricular activities. They’ve shortened recess to about 15 minutes and placed many restrictions on play activities during that time.
Then they teach toward the state achievements tests so heavily and pile on so much homework that there isn’t much joy in learning.
Then, kids must early on pick a profession and study hard for it. Or overtrain in some sport if in if their talent lies there. Talented youngsters may be unreasonably pushed by tiger moms. For the rest, video games sap their free time.
I feel sorry for kids these days. They can’t go to parks without protection, they can’t completely trust adults in the traditional organizations that kids used to join.
Oh, that the joyous childhood that Ray Bradbury extolled in his stories still existed!
walruscarver2000 said, 10 months ago
@emptc12
Old as I am, I’m inclined to think Ray was wrting sc-fi even then.
vwdualnomand said, 10 months ago
penn state covered up sandusky to protect football. they had a file on him since 98,
emptc12 said, 10 months ago
In regard to my previous post, I here provide the text to the song by Theodore Chanler :
“The Children”
We are the children who play in the park
All the day long from the dawn till the dark;
We are the children.
We will grow older, as ev’ryone knows,
And when we grow older, what do you suppose
Will become of the children?
Will there be children again,
When we who are children are women and men?
Yes!
Surely the world will love children no less;
Children will come when we children are gone,
Out of the darkness and into the dawn,
Taking our places,
Bearing our brightness and lightness of limbs,
And our laughter and loves in their faces.
Leonard Feeney (1897-1978)
lookinside said, 10 months ago
When I was a kid(‘50s) people watched Little League and High School games. Then they got fat and lazy, and inspired professional sports TV programming, pushing pro salaries through the roof. There’s a lot to be learned from the fate of the Roman Empire.