Jackass of the Month

We used to trot out the JotM Award pretty regular around these parts. Adrastos runs one over at First-Draft called"Malaka of the Week," highlighting "wankery not evil."

But it got me thinking about what a week it has been. We tend to focus on two topics on Hurricane Radio, sports and politics, and I'll be damned if it wasn't a banner week for bad behavior in both of those realms. Those topics usually have their share of weekly head slappers, to be sure, but the sheer volume of it this is impressive. Some of the memes and stories from Monday are already old news.

That's something. I mean, take your pick...

Jackasses in Politics:
Anthony's Weiner - naturally the biggest political story this week
Andrew Brietbart - he gets one thing right and takes a week long victory tour
The Senator from Louisiana - because of the ninja suit he can put on to completely vanish from the national zeitgeist the minute any other politician has a sex scandal
Sarah Palin re: Paul Revere's guns and bells(?)
Newt Gingrich's Incredibly Imploding Political Campaign

Jackasses in Sports:
Mike Hamilton - soon-to-be-former Athletic Director of the University of Tennessee for his hand in bringing down UT Athletics (and I'm a Georgia fan saying this)
Bill Stewart - soon-to-be-former head football coach of the West Virginia University Mountaineers, who was discovered to be giving the press dirty details on the personal behaviors of the soon-to-be head football coach (sort of a folksy Andrew Breitbart)
LaBron James - for making such a big deal out of playing basketball in Miami, and then playing like this in the NBA finals
Terrelle Pryor - former quarterback for the Ohio State Buckeyes who has gotten involved with so many shady sports star cliches that people may not remember the Cam Newton controversy from earlier in the year

And yet, all of this pales in comparison to former head football coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes, Jim Tressell, who resigned his job on Sunday ahead of a blistering Sports Illustrated expose regarding allegations of widespread and long-term sports-based shenanigans conducted while cloaking himself in the mantle of deeply held Christian faith.

Of course, in true Tressell fashion, he picked the perfect week to do so, because all that other stuff makes Sunday seem so very long ago.

So that's that. Hopefully next week things will slow down somewhat.

Until then, I'll go the opposite route and give you this item of heartwarming, classy behavior.

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Christendom

Rick Santorum sums up the problems with historical revisionism and its application to utopian right-wing politics. He is one of the reasons people can freely associate mainstream Republicans with the policies of 'endless war' and the 'clash of civilizations.'

This is a guy invited to speak to private Christian schools, and Republican womens' organizations in South Carolina - an early primary state for Presidential politics. Santorum has a high profile, nationally, and continues the politics of theocracy, demonization of Islam, and appears to advocate perpetual war by America against nations of the Middle East.

Sounds like a lot of national Republicans these days, doing what they can to fire up the base for 2012.

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More Election Thuggery

In South Carolina and a brutal bit of tape from a Rand Paul event in Kentucky.

Curb stomping a political opponent? Really?

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