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Mr.
Governor, don’t you have more important issues at
hand across the Commonwealth than to meddle with who
belongs to which athletic conference?
Where do state politicians get the right to put
pressure on UVa or Virginia Tech athletic programs
when they don’t spend a dime on collegiate sports?
Most Virginia
fans would rather see their school take care of itself and see
Virginia Tech get sent up the New River
without a paddle. Why should UVa help the Hokies?
Warner’s
office called North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley on
Thursday afternoon in an attempt to get him involved
in the issue. Most of those who know Easley believe
he’ll distance himself from the issue.
“I don’t know how it is in Virginia, but if
Easley tried to put political pressure on North
Carolina or N.C. State to lobby for East Carolina
into the ACC, they would have to call in the
National Guard around the governor’s mansion by
sundown,” a Raleigh sportswriter told this
columnist.
David
Teel of the Newport News
Daily Press
was also critical of Gov. Warner’s
“posturing.” He
mocked the Governor’s standing:
Gee,
aren't the state's crumbling highways, rampant
layoffs and $2.1-billion shortfall enough for Warner
to worry about? Does Warner, a graduate of George
Washington
University
and
Harvard
Law
School,
sincerely care about Virginia Tech athletics? Was he
sucking up to John Chichester, chairman of the
Senate Finance Committee and a die-hard Hokie? Or
was he courting all Hokies with an eye toward a
future
U.S.
Senate campaign?
Teel
also had this assessment:
Let's
reverse the roles. If
Virginia
were about to lose
its conference home, do you think Virginia Tech
would spend political capital to throw the Cavaliers
a lifeline? Get serious. The Hokies would step on
their necks.
Bob
Lipper of the Richmond
Times-Dispatch satirized the ACC machinations:
This
just in: Seeking extra clout in the Forensics
Championship Series, the Ivy League has voted to
increase its ranks by adding Oxford, Cambridge,
McGill and the Sorbonne to its eight-member base.
Dave
Fairbank of the Daily
Press, while acknowledging that Hokie fans had a
right to be “cheesed off,” said, “’Welcome
to college athletics in the 21st century.’”
The Washington
Post’s Sally
Jenkins used the ACC’s expansion plan to argue
for taxing NCAA sports programs:
The
NCAA has gotten off scot-free for years by arguing
that sports contribute to the educational and
financial condition of a university. The argument
was always specious -- revenue-producing athletes
live apart in athletic dorms and don't even eat with
their peers or share the same curriculum, nor are
they graded like them -- and now the ACC has
revealed it as utter fiction. Athletic departments
own the money. They pay themselves whatever they
bring in, in the form of rampant excesses and perks,
as well as overly generous salaries to athletic
directors and huge ones to coaches. It's a lot like
Enron.
Tax
them.
Getting
in Gear
The
Daily Press,
after editorializing that he was “Delegate
Gridlock,” allowed Del.
Tom Gear, R-Newport News, to respond. Defending his no-new-taxes pledge, he wrote:
My
constituents are not opposed to growth and
development, or expanding our port system. They know
that the real cause of peak-hour congestion is how
traffic flows. They know pouring more concrete
didn't fix problems in Northern Virginia
or anywhere else.
Beach
Party Finances
Some
frowned upon the revelation that the City of
Virginia
Beach
spent taxpayer money entertaining legislators and
their families. Dave
Addis of the Virginian-Pilot
was not bothered at all. “Twenty-five dollars
invested in greasing state legislators, out of a
$1.3 billion city budget, is hardly a big-time
giveaway.” Perhaps
he missed the real
cost--$10,000. An
unscientific poll
by the Pilot
found that 90 percent of respondents disapproved of
the expenditure.
Rift
With the Right?
The
Washington
Post’s R.
H. Melton suggested that traditionally
Republican business leaders might be dissatisfied
with the social agenda of conservative Republicans
in the legislature, possibly threatening their
long-standing alliance.
By the end of his piece, though, he conceded
that the criticism he had heard was “pretty
muted.”
Yes,
But...
Finding
the downside of an otherwise positive event is a
favorite pundit technique.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani came to
Virginia last week and helped Attorney General Jerry
Kilgore raise up to a half million dollars for his
gubernatorial campaign.
Jeff
Schapiro of the Times-Dispatch
wondered why Democrats didn’t make more of the
philosophical differences between Giuliani and
Kilgore, then helpfully listed them.
Margaret
Edds of the Virginian-Pilot
warned, “Some serious questions loom about the
state's future, and to become governor, Kilgore must
answer them to the satisfaction of a reasonably
broad spectrum of voters.”
Do
More Than Apologize
In
a Washington
Post op-ed, Ken
Woodley, editor of the Farmville
Herald, wrote that an apology was not enough for
the shameful closing of Prince
Edward
County
schools in 1959 to avoid integration. He offered a
plan:
In
the 2004 session, the assembly should create a
Prince Edward County Scholars Fund, financed by the
five years' worth of appropriations that
Virginia did not make for
public education in the county from 1959 to 1964.
That money could be used to establish a program
providing adult education for GED preparation, full
tuition grants for two-year degrees from the state's
community colleges and scholarship funding at state
public four-year institutions of higher learning.
Don’t
Say That
Gordon
Morse of the Daily
Press
dealt the final blow to the dead horse
that was Republican candidate Paul Jost’s use of
the word “Nazi” to describe Sen. Ken Stolle,
R-Virginia
Beach.
Memo
to political wannabes: Never, never, never make
references, casual or otherwise, on or off the
record, to the Third Reich. It just has a way of
conjuring up images of spotlights, bad architecture
and death camps. Even if you can do a pretty good
rendition of "Springtime for Hitler,"
resist the urge.
Besides, if you really want to sling some invective,
try to aim it at your opponent.
--
My 19, 2003
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