Political football: Jeer, jeer for old Notre Dame

This is a little rich coming from people affiliated with a school which employed crookeder-than-a-dog's-hind-leg Lou Holtz as its head football coach for 11 years. University of Notre Dame folk, claiming the school has "chosen prestige over principles, popularity over morality," are trying to block President Barack Obama from being its commencement speaker, because he lifted the ban on U.S. federal funding for stem cell research. And here you thought it was because the Irish football team didn't get a bailout after going 10-15 the past two seasons. (Fifteen losses used to be a bad decade for the Irish in Ara Parseghian's day.)

It's not really about sports, but feel free to see use it as a reason to hope Notre Dame never wins another major bowl game in our lifetime. You have to see the big picture.

I am not a political being (while maybe I am, which is why I'm hiding over in sports). A debate over stem cells, to this self-described South Park Democrat (not a conservative, but hates liberals in a we-can-smell-our-own kinda way), just seems so foolish. Everything you need to know about the lunacy of the debate is furnished by a Family Guy episode where Peter is maimed in a car wreck. He goes to the stem cell clinic, comes out good as new, and exclaims, "Why are we not funding this?"

Anyway, apologies in advance for being a Grade-A, ass-talking pot-stirrer ... Keith Josef Adkins from The Root had some words worth sharing:

"Have these folks lost their minds?! I was raised Catholic. My great-great grandmother was the only black woman who attended Cincinnati's St. Rose Catholic Church and they wouldn't let her take Communion or have Confession. Why? Blacks weren't good enough to eat the body of Christ. Yeh, that was nearly 100 years ago, but the Church still hasn't said Boo about that. I digress ... Look, it blows me away that the Catholic church can make an aggressive effort to shut down Obama because of federal funding that comes out of all of our pockets."

It's not the whole Notre Dame community (apparently Obama beat John McCain in on-campus straw polling), but all it takes is a few bad apples, says I.

You would never see, say, people at Syracuse University, be so high-handed (as far as we know; SU doesn't get the same kind of scrutiny). You'll probably never see Syracuse win a major bowl game in our lifetimes, either, but that's another post.

Related:
Obama's Banned from Notre Dame (Keith Josef Adkins, The Root)