"Don't use the tragedy in Paris to try and undermine the awful things that are happening in #Mizzou. Both of these events are terrible." So tweeted "ADash," one of the scores of young narcissists upset at being shoved off center stage by the "awful things" in Paris.
But just how awful are things at the University of Missouri? The answer - not very. Indeed, never has an insurrection been incited over less than the one last week that forced the resignation of the system president and the chancellor of the flagship campus in Columbia.
If real, all the incidents that inspired the upheaval are trivial, but one stands out for what it reveals about the costly insanity of higher education. I refer here to the swastika drawn with human feces, the third and most celebrated of the events that triggered the insurrection.
But let's start at the beginning...
The first occurred in late September when the gay, black student body president Payton Head allegedly heard someone yell a racial slur at him from the back of a pickup truck off campus.
Incredibly, this incident made national news, prompted a weepy apologia from the chancellor, and inspired a protest march. "Racism lives here," said the protesters, overlooking the fact that this racist campus elected a black gay man not only president, but also homecoming king.
I say "incredibly" because, if true, the incident was scarcely worth reporting even locally. On average, five black men are murdered every week in Missouri, the highest per capita toll in the country, and none of those murders received a hundredth of the attention this slur did.
I say "if true," because we have only Head's account. As Head proved this past week, his word isn't worth much. Last Tuesday, he warned his Facebook friends to "stay away from windows in residence halls," the reason being that the "KKK has been confirmed to be sighted on campus." Head also claimed to be "working with" the campus police, the state police and National Guard. He later apologized for making it all up and offered to step down as president.
The second incident actually seems to have happened. As reported in the student newspaper on Oct. 5, a "suspect presumably under the influence" stumbled into a rehearsal for the Legion of Black Collegians (LBC) Homecoming Royalty Court, and when he finally stumbled out he "used racial slurs and hurtful language."
This incident led to a sit-in and another groveling letter from the chancellor's office. Authorities immediately had the suspect "moved from campus" pending a feint at due process. The offense reportedly made "members of our community feel hurt and angry."
It should be noted that since 1988, the LBC has chosen to stage its own homecoming, one of several traditions and institutions on campus reserved exclusively for black students on this putatively "inclusive" campus.
These first two incidents set the stage for the inevitable third, the "poop swastika" as it is widely known. On Oct. 24 at 2 a.m., campus police reported a "hate crime" committed in a unisex bathroom, namely the drawing of the aforementioned swastika.
This discovery generated the kind of gratuitous bureaucratic response that is in no small part responsible for the accelerating cost of higher education. The police notified the campus Title IX office, representatives from all the minority communities, including Mizzou Hillel, the Jewish group on campus and the only one that might have cause for concern.
In the flurry of emails that flowed from this pathetic incident, it becomes clear that there was a suspect, an individual of unspecified race who had earlier called a white male student a "bitch ass nigga" and made other "anti-Semitic remarks." Reading between the lines, as one must do in the Orwellian world of campus race politics, it seems altogether possible that the poop artiste is black. To wit, the hate crime has been reclassified as "tampering."
Details. Details. The incident was enough to inspire Jonathan Butler's hunger strike against "white privilege," a posture that wilted when revealed that Butler's father made $8 million last year as a Union Pacific executive.
That revelation came too late to help the football program. In solidarity, the team's black members - who, of course, have never used the "N" word - demanded the head of the university president, and they got it.
They also got more than they bargained for. On Wednesday, Sci Martin, a potential recruit from New Orleans, eliminated Missouri from his short list. "I'm not going back in time with this type of madness," he said.
Martin will not be the only recruit to come to this conclusion. The rival SEC coaches will see to that.
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Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessary represent those of Headlines and Global News.
JACK CASHILL: An independent writer and producer, Jack Cashill has written 11 books since 2000, nine of which have been featured on C-SPAN's "Book TV." He has also produced a score of documentaries for regional PBS and national cable channels. Jack has written for Fortune, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard. He has a Ph.D. from Purdue University in American studies.
