Clinton & Me

by Michael Graham

  In a statement, Graham said: “. . . Without thinking, I made a stupid, insensitive and indefensible remark. On every show, I preach that people should suffer the consequences of their own stupidity. That principle certainly applies to me.”

  * * *

  In case you missed it in the local papers, or on the national wires, or on the Drudge Report, or on CNN (good grief), yes, I’m the moron who shot off his smart mouth and got fired for making a crack about the shooting at Columbine High School.

  Like our beloved president, when I do something stupid, I like it to be really, really big.

  You can read the quote above and decide for yourself whether or not I deserved to be fired—again—for something I said. But as for me, I’m not complaining.

  While I disagree with my former boss’ view that my fateful words were “the most reprehensible on-air comment” made on his radio station in the last seven years (I can think of a dozen things I’ve said myself that were worse), I completely support his right to determine who does and does not belong on his radio station. I am a true believer in free-market capitalism, and I will be until the day my unemployment benefits run out.

  Seriously, I’ve received quite a few supportive e-mails (mail@michaelgraham.com) and calls, and while I appreciate the personal kindness, the comments have a disturbing tone. They imply that I am the victim of an injustice. I couldn’t disagree more.

  What happened to me was the natural, foreseeable consequence of my own actions.

  When the spineless weasels at the South Carolina Educational Radio Network banned me from their airwaves in 1991, they were reacting quite rationally to my on-air comments. I’m the one who went on their air and said that a tough new ethics law banning criminals from state government meant “there wouldn’t be enough legislators left to convene a quorum.” Sure, the folks at SCERN approved the script and edited the tape. But when the complaints came pouring in, the choice for these cowering toadies was either standing up for the principles of free speech and an independent press or doing the bidding of the semiliterate mouth-breathers in the General Assembly who control their budget and wanted to see me dumped.

  Folks, this is a no-brainer! If the people at SCERN (Spineless Cowards Early Retirement Network) were truly principled, independent journalists, they wouldn’t be working for the government in the first place. I knew that at the time, but I insisted on sitting in front of the mike and telling the truth about South Carolina’s state legislature.

  Hey, I’m lucky I wasn’t lynched!

  Then in 1995, when the General Assembly passed a budget amendment firing me, specifically, from my media lackey job in the South Carolina secretary of state’s office, this, too, made sense. The firing was, in part, a payback for comments made in these columns, articles that contained the kind of literary material always unpopular among state legislators: irony, sarcasm, multisyllabic words . . .

  In a sense, these politicians were honoring my work. How would I have felt if the people I wrote about ignored my writings each week? Would it be better for my column to just roll off their polyester-clad backs like spiked punch at a lobbyist’s reception?

  Instead, I got exactly what I wanted. I wrote stuff down. They read it. They hated it. I won. Okay, I got fired, but technically that’s a win—unless you’re one of the many credit card companies waiting for next month’s payment.

  So when I was invited to become a radio talk show host at WBT in 1998, I went there with the same ambitions with which I wrote these columns. I wanted people to be engaged by what I had to say. I wanted them to react. I wanted what I said on the radio to matter.

  Why, then, would I start whining now that it does?

  What I said about killing jocks—on that day, at that time and on that station—was stupid. I shouldn’t have said it, but I did, and what I said mattered. I’m glad. Poor, but glad.

  This is in direct contrast to the self-serving hypocrisy of the Howard Sterns and Marilyn Mansons of the world. Like the pathetic teenage losers who worship them, the shock jock/shock rock crowd cries out to be heard, to be seen, to be noticed. Stern, Manson, Rob Zombie et alia scream, “Pay attention to me!” all day long.

  But when they say or do something so stupid, vulgar or ridiculous that it gets the attention of a grown-up, Howard and company just blush, look down at their shoes and say, “Who, me? Why, no one really listens to me. My words are of no consequence at all. Nobody’s paying attention, are they?”

  That was the ruse Howard Stern tried to pull after wondering aloud (and on the air) why Columbine’s Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris didn’t rape their female victims before killing them. When the stunned people of Colorado lashed back at his lame attempt at humor, Stern, as usual, played possum—albeit a particularly ugly, juvenile, self-aggrandizing, hypocritical one.

  The premise of Howard Stern’s show is that stupid people have more fun. As a fledging talk show host, I absolutely disagree. Stupid people don’t have more fun; they just laugh at the same joke over and over again.

  But whether they are morons or Mensa members, Stern’s audience deserves better than a talk host who pretends his talking is mere idle chatter. Howard, if you honestly believe your words have no weight, then why do you keep talking?

  Those of us who want to participate in the great national conversation—as either a writer, a talker or a rocker—are in it because we want our words and ideas to matter, to have impact. When they do and the consequences are acclaim, life is good. But when our words strike hard and the results are unpleasant, the desire to run away from those words is mere cowardice, nothing else.

  Well, unlike Stern, I am no coward. Okay, so I’m not a genius, either, as I demonstrated on April 20. But when I say that there are worse things to lose than a job, trust me. I speak from experience.

  Loco

  * * *

  May 1999

  In loco parentis: the legal theory that schools may act in the place of parents.

  What does it take for a schoolkid to be a rebel these days?

  Failing grades? No way!

  Complete illiteracy? Nah, that just gets you on the varsity football team.

  Caught with a pocketful of condoms? Are you kidding? Who do you think gave ’em the condoms in the first place?

  For the rebellious teenager of today who really wants to get in trouble with the American public school system, I’ve got just the thing: free speech.

  Forget sex, drugs and rock and roll. A handful of sentences tossed upon the Internet, a line drawing or two, and you’ll be the first hellion in your class to get suspended, expelled—even arrested!

  Don’t believe me?

  Ask the thirteen-year-old Arizona boy given in-school detention for carrying an electronics magazine to school that contained advertisements for guns. When he added a penciled cartoon showing the school blowing up, the kid was actually arrested by local law enforcement.

  Another teenager was recently escorted off his high school campus and to the nearest police station. His crime? Wearing black clothing.

  Since the Columbine High School tragedy, the American Civil Liberties Union reports a tidal wave of panic at public schools, leaving in its wake the wrecked academic lives of ambushed students. Public school administrators, whose incompetence and pettiness are legendary, have been using the Colorado shooting to give themselves permission to behave stupidly, not to mention destructively, toward the students in their charge.

  Take the case of fifteen-year-old Andrew Eisen, an honors student in Antioch, Illinois. After a suspicious poem (yes, that’s right, a poem) was found in his locker, Eisen was taken to the police station, where he said he was fingerprinted and charged with disorderly conduct. He then spent a week in juvenile hall and faces expulsion for the remainder of this school year and all of the next.

  Now, we can all agree that fifteen-year-olds writing unauthorized poetry should be discouraged—it can lead to other harmful lifestyle choices, such as majoring in English—but should a stude
nt be arrested for a poem? And if so, how can any student walk the halls with a Walkman tuned in to Marilyn Manson or Coolio?

  More disturbing is the case of eleven students from Brimfield, Ohio, a small town about thirty miles southeast of Cleveland. The students had a Web site filled with images of dragons and castles and dark poetry, which had been created months before the Littleton shootings but was updated with comments on the massacre. The students called gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold fellow “freaks” and sarcastically praised them.

  One statement read: “I wonder how long it’ll be before we’re not allowed to wear our trench coats anymore. You know those screwed-up kids in Colorado were wearing them, so that means I will also kill someone, and so will all my friends.”

  What’s this? Teens using sarcasm? They must be stopped!

  And, of course, they were. The school district’s superintendent immediately suspended the students for the unauthorized use of humor and alleged independent thought.

  However, the ACLU successfully fought their expulsion by arguing that schools have no right to punish kids for what they say off campus. If schools have the right to monitor students’ personal, off-campus Web sites, why shouldn’t principals be allowed to read their diaries, too? Tap their phones? Eavesdrop on their conversations down at the Sonic?

  The argument made by the anti-freedom thugs who run our schools is the typical Hillary-style hyperbole: “We’ve got to do something! The kid who writes provocative poetry today could be the clock tower shooter of tomorrow!”

  But this is a false argument. The alternative to jackboot justice is not helplessness and inaction, but rational action. What the hell is a school doing regulating any kid’s off-campus speech? If schools want to ban trench coats and Rob Zombie CDs on school grounds, fine. If they want ban “threatening statements” on campus, no problem. (Pop quiz: What’s the most threatening statement you can make to a public school administrator? “I support vouchers.”)

  But when some thuggish school administrator tries to destroy the academic future of a seventeen-year-old North Augusta, South Carolina, student for writing on his personal Web page that his ROTC teachers should “eat feces and die” (as was recently reported), the line of reason has been crossed.

  Actions should have consequences, but not every mistake should be punishable with death. After all, we’re talking about children. Is a police station really the best place to send smart-mouthed kids who need to learn a lesson in self-restraint?

  Then again, if the alternative is leaving these children in the government-run school system, maybe we’re doing them a favor.

  Keeping Score

  * * *

  March 1999

  How stupid can you be and still attend college? It depends on how well you do on the boards.

  No, not the college boards. Backboards.

  Dennis Rodman I’m not, and the last year I played for the Pelion High Panthers, we won a whopping total of three games. So when I applied for college, I had to demonstrate that I could actually read and write, which meant doing well on the SAT. I got the test scores I needed and eventually went on to an illustrious collegiate career at a third-rate college: Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (Don’t ask.)

  Also attending ORU was a basketball star known around campus as “Lester the Molester,” a tribute to his high scoring record in a rumored one-on-one matchup with a reluctant cheerleader. Lester’s SAT scores were comparable to my average points per game—statistically speaking, nonexistent—but this did not prevent him from becoming a scholar-athlete in full standing. Or a starting forward for the ORU Titans.

  Lester, an illiterate, anti-intellectual clod, had absolutely no interest in attending any university, no matter how low its academic standards. The Reverend Oral Roberts, no devotee of academic rigor himself (he did not allow his biology majors to study the theory of evolution), did his best to dumb down the university experience, but he could never drop standards low enough to accommodate Lester’s limited intellect.

  Why was Lester at ORU? To play ball, which is exactly what everyone—teachers, administrators and the National Collegiate Athletic Association—had to do to keep him there.

  The bizarre dance between Lester the Molester and the ORU holy rollers demonstrates the core fallacy in the current debate over SAT requirements for student athletes, namely, that these athletes are in any sense of the word students.

  The serious players at most NCAA Division I schools, the players that matter, are not scholar-athletes, as the NCAA insists. They are minor-league professionals, working their way toward their personal goals of reaching the majors. The schools are the equivalent of a farm system, exploiting these athletes to generate entertainment revenues while offering low wages and limited benefits.

  There is a major PR effort to disguise the obvious, but the competent students know why individuals who think Isaac Newton invented the fruit-filled cookie are taking up space in our classrooms.

  Sure, there are some true scholar-athletes, most of them in sports such as intramural rugby or Greco-Roman snowboarding. But they aren’t the reason for the lawsuit that inspired a federal judge recently to order the NCAA to stop using SAT scores as part of the criteria for admitting football and basketball players into collegiate sports programs.

  And let’s be clear on one thing: The athletes are complete academic incompetents. We aren’t talking about people who confuse effect with affect or misstate the value of pi by a digit. We’re talking about clods who are repeatedly unable to achieve the NCAA-mandated score of 820 on the SAT, an exam that gives them 400 points just for showing up.

  It gets even worse. Because the SAT is scored on a scale from 400 to 1,600, there are 1,200 possible points on the test. Scoring 820 means you only have to answer enough questions right to earn 420 of those points. In other words, to qualify as a NCAA linebacker, you have to know a whopping 35 percent of the material covered in a multiple-choice test!

  It is hard to know who is served by the federal government’s order to eliminate SAT requirements and allow still more idiots into college sports programs, other than the idiots themselves and the coaches who consume them for our entertainment. Some see it as a civil rights issue, because nearly every highly recruited student-athlete who can’t get past the SAT requirement is black.

  No one has explained to me how a binomial equation can be racist. But let’s assume that the SAT is somehow biased against black students. Okay, how much is the bias worth? Ten points? Fifty? A hundred points, in the worst possible scenario?

  These failing athletes aren’t even in the ballpark. The argument that these jocks are potential Einsteins who are being held back by biased testing practices might hold water if they were missing the cutoff score by a few points. But the decision by Duke University (average SAT score = 1,300) to reject the application of Joe Jock (SAT score = shoe size) isn’t an act of discrimination. It’s an act of mercy.

  Why subject these athletes to certain academic failure? Why force their fellow students who actually want an education—and the teachers who serve them—to waste precious time and resources on the utterly incompetent?

  Forget federal lawsuits by activist lawyers on behalf of academic failures. Let me suggest to every student reading this a new course of legal action: Sue the schools that put these idiots into your classroom.

  The next time you find yourself sitting in class, bored to tears while your professor explains to Arnold Athlete yet again that the French Revolution did not sing “1999,” pull out your cell phone and call your lawyer. The university’s athletic policies are denying you the right to the quality education that you and the federal student loan corporation are paying good money for.

  Sue the university, sue the coach, sue the athletic director and definitely sue the stupid student. (Hey, he could have a lucrative shoe contract one day!) Ask a judge to explain why the students who want to learn should be punished to accommodate students who don’t.

  Of cour
se, any student who filed such a lawsuit would soon be beaten to a pulp, if not by the athletes themselves, then almost certainly by fellow students who dream of seeing their team in the Final Four. Chances are that anyone who takes on the current college athletics/entertainment axis is going to get slapped around.

  Right, Lester?

  Dead Foreigners

  * * *

  March 1999

  Before we consider the Clinton administration’s policies in Bosnia, a brief quiz:

  A charismatic, rabidly partisan political leader sends his troops to round up citizens, members of an unpopular ethnic minority, and herd them by the thousands into camps. Their property is seized, and many are forced to flee to their homeland. Is it a war crime?

  If so, the criminal is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The people in the camps were all American citizens who happened to be of Japanese descent. The year was 1942.

  “But Michael, that was war,” you say. To which I reply: Precisely. And during a war, one person’s ethnic cleansing is another person’s fight for democracy.

  The issue is war. And the reason so many of us here in America are having trouble getting a handle on the Kosovo story is that we completely missed Chapter 1: “There Was This War . . .”

  The things people do in wars are nasty, brutal and hideous to watch. For example, what would you say if I told you that in Vietnam, American soldiers shot hungry, nearly naked children, some as young as ten? Your reaction: “Those soldiers were animals! Lynch ’em!”

  But what if I then told you that these same children were carrying grenades and were about to dump them into our soldiers’ laps? These soldiers are still child-killers. But are they still animals?