Absurdity alert

From The Cavalier Daily

University President issues statement regarding alleged racial epithet used by Medical Center employee….

Howell reported that the offender “said something like this: ‘I can’t believe in this day and age that there’s a sports team in our nation’s capital named the Redskins. That is as derogatory to Indians as having a team called Niggers would be to blacks.’”

Though Howell said no staff members said they were personally offended by the remark, they said they would have preferred if the word had not been used….

“[C]ompeting for the Pac-10 title within a few years”

SI.com’s Stewart Mandel applauds hiring of Mike Stoops: “Not only did the Wildcats land one of the architects of the nation’s most dominant defense the past four years, but they got someone with a keen understanding of what it takes to rebuild a program.”

Counterpoint to Frank Solich firing

Denver Post writer Bill Briggs toured the Big 12 this fall dressed in the colors of the opposing team. His tour included Lincoln on the day of the Nebraska-Kansas State game; a game Nebraska loss by the largest margin at home since 1958. The scene he describes might surprise you.

NewMexiKen read only a few of Briggs’s other Big 12 articles but those I read were amusing and interesting. Colleagues at the National Archives used to spend autumn Saturdays attending games at various colleges. It doesn’t seem like a half-bad pastime. Offhand NewMexiKen remembers going to games at eight different campuses. Seems like a good beginning.

Bowl possibilities

Chris Dufresne in the Los Angeles Times takes his “best stab at the BCS bowl lineup, provided form holds among the top teams: Sugar: Oklahoma vs. USC; Rose: Texas vs. Michigan; Fiesta: LSU vs. Florida State; Orange: Miami vs. Ohio State.”

Good matchups.

“[D]ocudramas are the enemy of thought, history, fact, and public understanding”

Easterbrook

Even if the show was totally fair to the Reagans, Easterblogg is glad CBS cancelled it, because all docudramas should be cancelled. News programs are good and pure fiction is fine; docudramas are the enemy of thought, history, fact, and public understanding. When a viewer sees something in a docudrama, he or she has no way of knowing, not the slightest clue, whether what’s being presented is real or fabricated. Docudrama producers claim they are driving at “higher truth,” blah, blah, but what they are driving at is lower drek.

Which is it?

Early Sales Appear Modest as Holiday Season Begins (The New York Times) or Merchants score solid sales gains for Thanksgiving weekend (USA Today)?

Gnat

Those who have read James Lileks describe his daughter “Gnat” will not want to miss today’s The Bleat. He promises this page will only be current today, so click while you can.

Rosa Parks…

was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, on this date in 1955.

Allen Stewart Konigsberg…

was born in Brooklyn on this date in 1935.

“I never wanted to kill anybody,
but if a man had it in his mind to kill me,
I made it my business to get him first.”

The History Channel tells the fascinating story of Elfego Baca for This Day in Old West History

Elfego Baca, legendary defender of southwestern Hispanos, manages to hold off a gang of 80 cowboys who are determined to kill him.

The trouble began the previous day, when Baca arrested Charles McCarthy, a cowboy who fired five shots at him in a Frisco (now Reserve), New Mexico, saloon. For months, a vicious band of Texan cowboys had terrorized the Hispanos of Frisco, brutally castrating one young Mexican man and using another for target practice. Outraged by these abuses, Baca gained a commission as deputy sheriff to try to end the terror. His arrest of McCarthy served notice to other Anglo cowboys that further abuses of the Hispanos would not be tolerated.

The Texans, however, were not easily intimidated. The morning after McCarthy’s arrest, a group of about 80 cowboys rode into town to free McCarthy and make an example of Baca for all Mexicans. Baca gathered the women and children of the town in a church for their safety and prepared to make a stand. When he saw how outnumbered he was, Baca retreated to an adobe house, where he killed one attacker and wounded several others. The irate cowboys peppered Baca’s tiny hideout with bullets, firing about 400 rounds into the flimsy structure. As night fell, they assumed they had killed the defiant deputy sheriff, but the next morning they awoke to the smell of beef stew and tortillas–Baca was fixing his breakfast.

A short while later, two lawmen and several of Baca’s friends came to his aid, and the cowboys retreated. Baca turned himself over to the officers, and he was charged with the murder of one of the cowboys. In his trial in Albuquerque, the jury found Baca not guilty because he had acted in self-defense, and he was released to a hero’s welcome among the Hispanos of New Mexico. Baca was adored because he had taken a stand against the abusive and racist Anglo newcomers. Hugely popular, Baca later enjoyed a successful career as a lawyer, private detective, and politician in Albuquerque.

Baca was 19 at the time of the shootout and lived until 1945. In 1958, Walt Disney Studios produced The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca. Robert Loggia played the title role, with a cast that included Annette Funicello (as Chiquita), James Coburn and Alan Hale, Jr. (Gilligan’s skipper).

A golf tournament of sorts, the annual Elfego Baca Golf Shoot in Socorro, New Mexico, celebrates the deputy — “competitors are loaded into four-wheel drive vehicles to ascend Socorro Peak, 7,243 feet above sea level. Here they will battle in a one-hole shoot. The hole, a fifty foot patch of dirt, is located on the New Mexico Tech campus, about 4 hours long, 2550 feet down, and almost three miles away.”

You can read more about Elfego Baca here.