More Journalistic Fellatio From “La Liberbad”
For those of you unfamiliar with the way journalism works in South Carolina, our state’s mainstream media quit doing its job a long time ago – particularly when it comes to “reporting” on South Carolina’s increasingly costly, unfocused and ever-expanding system of higher education.
Don’t get us wrong, they still do a “job,” alright … just not the kind of “job” you can talk about in polite company.
By far, the worst offender in this “vein” is La Socialista – a.k.a. The (Columbia, S.C.) State – which performs near-daily journalistic fellatio on the University of South Carolina like its life depended on it (which it might).
Seriously, people … when La Socialista isn’t pimping lies or fudging numbers for USC on the front end of its various boondoggles, it’s ignoring scandals on the back end. All of which makes it a regular one-stop misinformation shop, at least as far as the public is concerned.
That’s pathetic … but par for the course in this bass-ackwards state.
Next up is La Liberbad, a.k.a. The Greenville News, which has a similar “Heywood Jablome” relationship with its local institution of higher learning.
No kidding – Clemson gets harsher treatment from its own alumni newsletter than it gets from the News, people.
The latest pro-Clemson propaganda from La Liberbad is a ringing endorsement of University president Jim Barker on the occasion of his tenth year at the school.
From the editorial, entitled “Clemson Roars With Barker …”
Barker has immeasurably improved Clemson during his 10 years in the top office, and he’s done so during a time when the school has faced staggering budget cuts …
… As president, Barker has set exceedingly high standards for Clemson while also becoming a friendly face to students. Clemson has worked its way up the U.S. News and World Report rankings from 38th in 2001 to 22nd …
… So here’s to another 10 years for Barker, who sees “tremendous opportunities” in the next decade.
First, take a moment to suppress your gag reflex. We know it’s hard, but assuming we can all manage to hold onto our cookies, let’s examine this gratuitous knob-shlobbing point-by-point, shall we?
Has Clemson faced “staggering budget cuts” during Barker’s time in office?
Of course not.
As we exposed in our article, “The Truth on Higher Ed Spending” (annual financial data updated here), Clemson’s total budget as appropriated by state lawmakers has grown steadily over the last decade – even as the economy went downhill after 9/11 and then went even steeper downhill over the last two years.
In fact, when you include Public Service Activities (PSA) spending in the total, Clemson’s state appropriated budget (not including tuition) has jumped from $399.3 million in 2000 to $656.1 million this year.
Oh, and tuition has nearly tripled over that time period, too.
Now … has Clemson improved its standing on the U.S. News & World Report rankings? Absolutely … but the school has done so by admittedly manipulating data and artificially inflating its own performance at the expense of other schools on peer assessments.
Take a look at this article to see the depth of Clemson’s deception as it relates to gaming the U.S. News & World Report ranking criteria.
Also, there’s a compelling argument to be made that Clemson’s effort to boost its profile by attracting smarter, out-of-state students has forced it to abandon its land grant mission of educating South Carolinians – or at least the half of South Carolina that actually graduates from high school.
Interestingly enough, Clemson’s duplicity with regard to these rankings first surfaced when FITS published an exclusive report back in April based on confidentially-obtained University memos. What did these memos show? That Barker and his administration had been gaming the U.S. News & World Report rankings since 2001, letting the magazine’s criteria dictate nearly every move the school made (and every penny it spent).
Also, let’s not forget Clemson’s bureaucratic explosion under Barker - including a 21.5% raise for himself in 2006 that represents just part of his ginormous $400,000 salary.
Believe it or not, there was a time when La Liberbad’s editorial page editor, Beth Padgett, would have been outraged by all of this behavior. In fact, she would have been on the leading edge of the fight to reform this sort of nonsense.
Now?
Like her counterparts in the “newsroom,” she’s obviously become another one of Barker’s back alley girls.
Comments
By Ynot on December 21st, 2009 at 7:12 am
brainwashed?
By barker/sanford=humiliation on December 21st, 2009 at 9:44 am
Why can’t the people see?? Barker is a like a cancer on a once proud University. Please remeind everyone of the hatchet job done on Mr. Troutman and many other loyal, honest but, unfortunately, not politically connected, employees of our University. He has allowed unjust treatment, harassment, retalliation without censure, sexual battery and emotional homicide to go unchecked. Not only ignored but, completing the shameless treatment by rewarding the perverts and favorite suckups with lavish pay raises and perks.
What the hardworking employee gets disciplined and demeaned for is cause of reward when it is actions of a VP, Associate VP, General Counsel or other, either politically powerful or those entrenched in the fortress that guards Barker on each and every side when any grievances are spoken. From hidden funds, those set aside for unauthorized purposes, those foolishly spent on total foolish rankings manipulation to unjust and dastardly treatment and lies to the Usniversity rank and file and the public, it’s a sad message that the State of South Carolina is making to the Nation.
By sorepaw on December 21st, 2009 at 10:58 am
If Jim Barker wants to go out on a (relatively) high note, he should retire this year.
Clemson will almost certainly take a slide in the next US News rankings, due out in August 2010.
And his administration lost any positive sense of direction 3 or 4 years ago. Since then, it’s been about wagon-circling and nest-feathering.
By No Name on December 21st, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Well the economy will begin to introduce the reality of all that money and angst spent for a Clemson degree will get you exactly squat …
no jobs so why pay that much.
In defense of the people still inside the Greenville News building…most …..like the folks at the State paper …..are holding onto their jobs by the thinnest of rationales …
now you can say this is no excuse… but these folks have never held jobs that are either performance based or ones that could ever possibly be held to the heat and stress of the unemployment line….much like the academics that sit inside the last great fortress of employment …the depression resistant University….
so they just write what they hope will keep them employed a little longer in a medium that must reinvent itself to survive.
So you can expect like minded people to try and be cheerleaders for the return of the status quo. Whores…???? They can only hope so .
I have a prediction regarding Barker….now that Wilkins is in place… I think the real audit and internal investigation will commence. They heard what Troutman said they just did not want it to become public.
The rapid tuition and SAT inflation that has riled many Clemson alumni….many of whom have had to beg to get well qualified kids into the school…. are starting to organize and ask real questions…questions that many were told to keep quiet until an adult like Wilkins could get in there to accomplish the investigation and cauterize any collateral damage.
Barker is a prick control freak clown…. who has populated the administration with ass kissers and non-Clemson people.
These non-Clemson people …this started in earnest about 5 years ago …in a move in cahoots with the Clemson Land Condo Building Barons like Skelton and others….. have pushed this “Clemson is Duke\Georgia Tech\MIT”…. fill in the blank… depending on what pool of money they are trying to rob….. bullshit too far and have over played their hand.
Not satisfied with employing every relative they had and throwing their weight around…these Barker Bastards thought they could bums rush everyone on everything.
What changed……..Wilkins arrival and the sting fact that they lost to USC…that’s right losing to Spurrier and then to Georgia Tech in the Championship smashed the delusional Clemson bubble and put everyone in Tigertown in a real bad mood.
Because now they have to listen to a whole year of hearing…and rightly so…that they got stomped by USC and were just the eighth best football team in the SEC…could be even worse if they lose to Kentucky…which is what most must think because they can not even sell the minimal allotment for the Bowl game.
It is driving them all crazy.
By Waywardson on December 21st, 2009 at 1:51 pm
From what I can tell, Barker’s biggest problem is that he has always wanted something for nothing. He has treated Clemson University like a get-rich-quick scheme. Not only did he rate the university above all others in the U.S. News poll, he gave no other university a mark above “marginal”(!) Harvard, Yale, Penn, Brown, Cal Tech, MIT, Stanford –just marginal undergraduate experiences. And he recently said to students that he would not change a single thing about his responses. Worse, in a recent news article, the new chair of the Board of Trustees, Wilkins, said the Trustees view Barker as among the best university presidents in the United States. Talk about living in denial.
Barker has shown not a bit of shame in running up legal bills of 1 million dollars on a single lawsuit. When he became president, he conducted an expensive national search for a provost while having no intention of hiring anyone but the unqualified insider who has infuriated the faculty and staff by approving and receiving massive administrator pay raises.
How these people can even make eye contact with others is beyond me.
By SnakeMD on December 21st, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Watch out for higher and higher SAT scores–especially like those SAT requirements for Princeton and MIT and such. You almost have to have perfect scores to get accepted to these schools. The result is a culture of elitism that leaves a lot of productive people out. If you look at society as a whole and what makes people successful and productive citizens it isn’t necessarily the absolute brightest people in the world accomplishing this. Lehman Brothers recruited heavily over the last twenty years from Princeton and what did the best and the brightest do for them? Hell, I’ll take good old First Citizens Bank with graduates from all the SC colleges to manage my money, and I’ll come out ahead in the long run!
By southernmapart on December 21st, 2009 at 10:02 pm
What happened about Clemson being a land grant school to educate local kids?
By WorkingTommyC on December 23rd, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I agree about “La Liberdad.” If a reporter can’t say something bad about someone or some institution, then he’s not reporting, he’s repeating–usually the subject’s self-declared “accomplishments.”