There was another incident in The Free Expression Tunnel at NC State. That darn tunnel is sure getting lots of attention lately. One can’t hardly turn around these days without a new definition of “free expression” over there. This latest incident involved a memorial to the late Kay Yow.
The NC State Poobahs should board up the controversial portal, officially declaring freedom of expression as an impractical concept in these “changing” times. Plan B to that would be appointing ME as Official Censor of The Tunnel.
On November 4 four idiots with spray paint scrawled racial epithets in the tunnel (I thought racial epithets could only be “hurled“?). Their timing ironically coincided with an election earlier that day. That idiocy awakened a local race card player of significant self-importance. He promptly intimidated the UNC System to “do something” about “Hate Speech, Hate Crimes …. & Require Mike Fox’s baseballers to wear their ballcaps cock-eyed”. His ludicrous demands are actually “under consideration”.
Last Saturday night, following the most recent UNC win over NC State, someone defaced a painting of Kay Yow in the tunnel by painting a light blue mustache on her face and writing some really stoopid crap about cancer. The abject stoopidity of the act is universally acknowledged. Kay Yow was the Sara Lee of coaches as “no one doesn’t like Sara Lee (Kay Yow)”. Some fool wanted to embarrass NC State or simply commit a very, very idiotic act deriving some perverse thrill.
It was immediately assumed that the perps are Carolina partisans of some ilk. Yes, it could have been “done by State idiots to make it look like it was UNC idiots” or maybe it was “done by space aliens to protest the firing of Pete Laviolette” but “Carolina partisans” is a best bet first assumption.
I had a chat on Monday with a “high-ranking UNC official”. No, not “him”, someone else. An incredibly level-headed individual. Their comment was the title of this column – “Surely no Carolina fan would do such a thing ”
Implying that an institutional code of decency magically exists among Tar Heel fans. All honor graduates of the Dean E. Smith “Don’t Wave Your Arms At The Shooter” School of Be Nice……. Riiiiiiight?
Most everyone in WuffNation believes a great many Carolina fans are fully capable of such. Not surprisingly, the lower wattage bulbs on the Wuff tree rush to indict every Tar Hole fan since the dawn of time as co-perps in this incident. The mass hysteria handbook calls this the “they’re all abuncha _____” response.
Researching bottom-feeders in any fanbase shows pretty much the same % among all of’em. Go to the monkey boards of any NCAA school thru the Rivals or Scout networks where the bottom feeders dwell. They all have the same limited vocabulary and same colorfully obscene expressions for everyone they really really hate simply because they support their opponents. We jokingly dismiss them ….. whistling past these toxic landfills ….. UNTIL they make a mess the rest of us have to clean up. Like they did Saturday night.
I don’t hang out with that subspecies of humanoid. My many friends among the various rival fan bases are amazingly similar in intellect and deportment and were “raised right”. My high profile UNC friend chooses similar friends. But the bottom feeders exist among us for sure.
Any assemblage of people, beyond 4-5 in number, is too large to say “none of them would ever ____”. I once worked with a quite dysfunctional group of folks of which I figured 2-3 were psychos capable of pretty much anything. Never vouch for anyone’s “would never do” quotient be it politics, sports, religion, eating Indian food or cheating on their spouse.
For certain no Carolina player ever commits a foul in BB or holds or jumps off-sides in FB ….. that’s a given. But “our fans” are not protected by “the referees pick on us” rule.
“Pranks” have always been a part of college life.
Q: When does a “prank” become an alarming societal trend ?
A: When “they” do it to “us”.
Quick Erskine, lets form another whizbang special commission to study blue mustaches on deceased coaches. Require all incoming freshmen to take a course in “acceptable graffitti”. I really miss George Carlin. Don’t you?
There are creepy crawlies among The Old Well set quite capable of ANYTHING. The type that cause Adam Lucas to sleep with a nightlight. But no more or less so than within any fan base. I wish “painting a mustache on Kay Yow” was the worst some of these hairballs will ever do. When a society lowers its civility standards almost hourly, should we be shocked at what we see, hear and read any more ?
Was anything painted in the tunnel on Saturday as bad as the garbage The N&O allowed on their website after Senator Helms’ death? “That was different”. No, it was not. Those who hated Senator Helms were granted “free expression” by The N&O to post their filth. Unlike with Kay Yow’s blue mustache, those who controlled that medium did nothing to remove that disgusting mess.
“Free Expression” takes many forms depending upon the expressor and whoever controls the medium ….. funny how this issue keeps taking new twists and turns ….. isn’t it ???
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