When I first heard that a football coach sent a message to Stacey Abrams, I naturally assumed he wanted to recruit her to play offensive guard. But, alas, she won’t get that job — and the coach no longer has his after sending a tweet mocking the prominent Democrat’s figure.
As CBS News reports:
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga fired an assistant coach after he posted a tweet disparaging former Georgia gubernatorial candidate and activist Stacey Abrams, the school announced in a 45-second video.
Chris Malone, who was an offensive line coach for the Mocs, smeared Abrams while peddling election fraud claims in a now-deleted tweet Tuesday night.
“Congratulations to the state GA and Fat Albert @staceyabrams because you have truly shown America the true works of cheating in an election, again!!! Enjoy the buffet Big Girl!! You earned it!!! Hope the money is good, still not governor!” he said, according to screenshots of the tweet.
This was such a nation-rending trespass, apparently, that the esteemed university’s chancellor, Steven Angle, felt compelled to issue a video statement (below) denouncing the tweet as “hateful, hurtful, and untrue” (it smelled bad, too).
Yet “the good chancellor was not specific as to what was untrue,” points out American Thinker editor in chief Thomas Lifson. “Perhaps he means there was no cheating at all in the November election? But how would he know there was zero cheating?” he continues. “Even defenders of the outcome concede that there was cheating. There is always cheating, we are endlessly told. It is normal. (Why we should accept cheating as normal is a separate issue.)”
“Does he mean that Stacey Abrams is not fat?” Lifson then asks.
You can be the judge, but let’s just say she won’t be wearing a white, skin-tight dress with wide horizontal stripes anytime soon.
Lifson states that Chancellor Angle’s attitude is another Orwellian attempt to compel people to mouth obvious untruths. So, then, even euphemizing isn’t enough? I mean, can we call Abrams pleasantly plump? Rotund? Comfortingly corpulent? Friendly-fronted? A woman of, uh, generous proportions?
How about morbidly obese?
Because that’s what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called President Trump (video below) in May, claiming to be concerned about his health (‘cause Nan would wear black for a year if Trump had a coronary).
In fact, the Left in general fat-shamed Trump in 2018 with their “Girther” movement. So why was his portly state fair game? I can assure you, being somewhat conversant with exercise physiology, that the president’s body-fat percentage is lower than Abrams’ (men have less internal fat).
Of course, the president has also been the victim of horrible rhetoric on the part of teachers and professors, often in the classroom. How many of them have lost their jobs?
What’s more, consider a story right out of Chancellor Angle’s institution of “higher learning.” A professor there, “a man who has not been named in various news reports, is offering extra credit to any student who can craft a tweet that gets him blocked by Trump’s infamous Twitter account,” wrote People in 2018.
“Each student has been asked to turn in one tweet designed to antagonize Trump,” the site continued. “The professor will then tweet the messages from his own account in hopes of getting blocked by Trump.”
Presumably, this unnamed academic was not terminated. But what’s worse: sending one likely impulsive tweet that you may regret later or giving students a class assignment, on university paid time, designed to help you offend the president severely enough to provoke a response?
Note here that there’s no information indicating ex-coach Malone used a university device or school time to transmit his tweet. And he may have a good First Amendment case if he sent it on his own time. For the University of Tennessee surely receives government money, a reality that limits its capacity to censor employees.
Regardless, you can reject Malone’s schoolyard-like taunts while also finding objectionable the punishing of the relatively powerless in deference to the preferred powerful. Moreover and again, that such protection wasn’t offered to Trump illustrates how we increasingly are a nation of men and not laws/social codes, where benefits are afforded and punishments meted out based not on what you’ve done, but who you are.
Of course, though, you can’t let the peasants think they can display impudence toward their “betters,” I guess. Still, with the weight Abrams carries in the political arena, she can fight her own battles.
