Posted by aogFriday, 13 October 2006 at 18:58 TrackBack Ping URL

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This post at the Daily Duck about the NCAA’s rabid enforcement against “offensive” logos reminds me of an incident that was formative for me back in my college days.

One of the second tier protestors of the fad at the time (anti-apartheid, I think, but doesn’t really matter) was a friend of a friend and so I exchanged views with her now and then. I thought even at the time that the protests were silly and their stated policies more likely than not to be counter-productive to their stated aims. I pursued that subject and eventually ended up with the following scenario as a litmus test:

There is a village and the people in it are starving. You can carry in food yourself and distribute it, saving 10 people from starving. Or, you can have a robot carry the food in and it, being stronger, would transport enough food to save 100 people. What do you do?

To both of this this required no thought but for different answers. As you may guess, I was for the robot. The FOAF was for carrying it herself, because other it wouldn’t be evident that you cared. It took me a while to really come to grips with the concept that ordinary, non-deranged people thought that way but it has come to symbolize for me the essential narcissism of the MAL and provide a powerful analytical tool. It is frequently the case that if you presume that the protestors of this ilk are driven primarily by concerns about their own image (internal and external), apparently inexplicable behaviors become obvious.

In this case, it’s not about the feathers, or the Native Americans, but about the enforcers looking like crusaders for the oppressed. As with my college associate, actual benefits to the oppressed are at best secondary. To quote the letter from the targeted college,

Meanwhile, across the country, in the face of massive academic underperformance, embarrassing misbehaviors on and off the field, and grotesque commercialization of intercollegiate athletics, the NCAA has proven hapless, or worse. It is galling that a university with such a consistent and compelling record of doing things the right way is threatened with punishment by an organization whose house, simply put, is not in order.

Well, yeah. Cracking down on those other things will upset a lot more people and is far more difficult that finding something offensive about a logo. That’s not to mention that, as it turns out here, the target is far more likely to bow down on something like this than something that impacts the competiveness of its sports teams (which tells you something of alumni priorities, but that’s not the point of discussion here).

Perhaps I am not one to comment, as I would dump the entire sports program rather than change my logo, but let me openly mock the NCAA for its self absorbption that puts its appearance of political correctness above the interests of Native Americans and the athletes it is putatively supposed to protect. But hey, that would be work and not a way to find fufillment for their enormous talent at flourescent idiocy.