With the recent hullaballoo over U.S. Rep. Charlie Rangel’s ethical troubles, we were reminded of the person he beat in the Democratic primary for the seat in 1970 — Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Like a lot of people, we lament the passing of an era when if people did things they shouldn’t, they went big and were unapologetic. This is a damn good story. Enjoy.
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was perhaps the epitome of wealth, power, and ego — a modern Narcissus. Powell’s charisma propelled him to represent Harlem in New York’s 18th Congressional District in 1944, and holding the seat until his ouster by Charles Rangel in 1970. Contributing to Powell’s downfall was the scandal that centered on the case, Powell v. McCormack. The central issue in Powell was that the 90th Congress sought to exclude Powell — that is, to expel him before seating him. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court found for Powell, stating that Congress has to seat all of its duly elected and constitutionally qualified members before voting to expel one of its members. However, the story is not with the bare facts. One must answer several questions. First, what events could have precipitated such an action? Second, how could have over two-thirds of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to refuse to seat one of its most senior and most powerful members? Third, what did the Supreme Court think of the proceedings, what did they decide, who dissented and why?
Powell was seemingly in scandal from the first day he appeared on the House floor. From openly breaking with his party and supporting Dwight Eisenhower for president in 1956, to his three botched marriages, to his globe-trotting and behind-the-scenes chicanery. Many congressmen sincerely despised Powell, yet were overcome by his personality when one-on-one with him. Southern congressmen especially resented how Powell would take his committee into investigating the backcountry of Alabama and Louisiana; indeed, into the congressmen’s own staffs. They also resented Powell’s trappings of luxury, his Jaguar convertible that was so conspicuous in the Capitol garage. Powell was notorious for his proclivities with women. He caught the wrath of S.C. congressman Mendel Rivers when Rivers found his wife and Powell having a jovial time together at a Washington social event. By the time Powell v. McCormack rolled around, Powell had his third wife in de facto exile in Puerto Rico while traveling and cavorting publicly with Corinne Huff, one of his staffers. Powell was also developing into the very definition of a loose cannon. According to Max Rabb, a member of the Eisenhower administration, Powell “…was a power. You knew he was there…. You couldn’t control Adam Clayton Powell.” Powell himself and his contemporaries both credit him with much of the civil rights, desegregation and antipoverty legislation that came out of the Congress. Indeed, the War on Poverty itself. Considering these facts, there would not be surprise in the situation that Powell found himself in 1966, with an enemy lurking behind every desk in the House. One could begin at the beginning with Powell’s actions and notoriety and the resentment by the press and public, but we will begin with the Esther James scandal.
Esther James was a grandmotherly Harlem woman, but to make ends meet after her husband died in the ‘50s, she took to handling the money for neighborhood gamblers. In a 1960 speech, Powell claimed that James was a “bag woman” taking cash from gamblers to pay off the police. James soon thereafter sued for libel. Powell never could fit the trial into his schedule, and after several continuances, the court finally convened and rendered a $211,500 judgment against Powell. One of the jurors stated that the jury ruled for James on the basis “…nobody has a right to shoot off his mouth that way, especially a member of Congress….” This was not the end of the case, however. Powell made every effort to evade payment. He stayed out of New York every day except Sunday in order to avoid being served with a civil contempt warrant, spending much of his time with his third wife in Puerto Rico. After being served with a criminal contempt warrant, Powell tried to enlist the President Lyndon Johnson and the Justice Department to try to defend him, to no avail. By this time, the date was 1965, and Powell began to use the argument that he was in trouble because of some sort of racist establishment police conspiracy against him because of his anticorruption efforts. In November of 1966, Powell was ordered to either work out a payment arrangement with James or be incarcerated. Powell’s attorneys worked out a deal with James, and the event was settled. The press did not particularly approve, since James would be 121 years old by the time the debt would be paid off.
Instigated by the protracted James ordeal, during the fall of 1966 rumors were floating around the Capitol about a coup in the House Education and Labor Committee, which Powell chaired. Indeed, people began to go around Powell by taking their concerns to the party leadership and the White House, sensing that Powell was losing control of his committee. Powell’s loss of power was almost entirely his own fault. He rarely tried to keep his appointments with the committee. Often, people felt Powell was too distracted and busy with the business of being Adam Powell to pay attention to the creation and passage of legislation. Powell’s prejudices may have also affected his plight. In his autobiography, Powell asserts that,
A white Northerner is one who says openly that he has no prejudice and yet who practices it every day of his life. The white Southerner is the one who says, “I am prejudiced, but I have certain friends [not just Uncle Tom friends] I would do anything in the world for.” In other words, one is a hypocrite and one is bluntly honest.
Powell loved to mispronounce the name of a Northerner on his committee, saying the Indiana congressman’s name as Braydemas, not Brademas, as the name is supposed to be pronounced. This small attack incensed U.S. Rep. John Brademas, and caused him to be one of the leaders of the coup against Powell, in which he was joined by two other Northerners, Frank Thompson of New Jersey and Jim O’Hara of Michigan. Powell was shocked. He thought he has treated his “…committee with more fairness and justice than any other chairman of the House or Senate.” Regardless, U.S. Rep. Sam Gibbons, a Florida Dixiecrat, submitted the committee reorganization proposal, and it passed 27-1. Powell seemed to think that he was being attacked for being a black man with power. That detail may have been part of the reason his fellow congressmen pounced on him with such fervor, but not the entire reason.
A week after the committee reorganization vote, a special subcommittee was formed to look into Powell’s use of committee funds for staff and travel. There also seemed to be evidence of Powell’s estranged third wife being on the payroll. Ironically, U.S. Rep. Wayne Hays of Ohio was named to the committee. At the time, Hays was believed to have taken a House dining room headwaiter on a taxpayer-financed jaunt to Paris. Powell had once seen Hayes in a risqué Paris nightclub. Furthering the irony, Hays was later expelled from Congress a little more than a decade later for having a mistress on the House payroll.
The Hays committee discovered that many airline tickets that had been taken out in the names of staffers had, in fact, been used by Powell and Huff on trips to places like Puerto Rico, Miami and the British island of Bimini, 60 miles off the Florida coast. In addition, evidence surfaced that Powell used committee funds to pay for a maid for a three-week vacation to Bimini. Moreover, there was a strange circumstance with Powell’s wife’s payroll checks from the committee. The checks were sent to Powell’s office, endorsed in his name and deposited in his account. Powell, however, explained that his finances were administered by Maxine Dargans, and that she had endorsed the checks and placed the money into a joint account held by both Powell and his third wife. Powell goes on to insinuate that Dargans was bought off by the Hays committee. When Powell’s third wife, Yvette, came to testify before the committee, she said that she had not given consent for anyone to endorse the checks and that she had not heard from Powell in over a year. Powell asserted that she had been bought, as well.
The Hays committee reported what had been suspected, that there was strong evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Powell, and asked for an inquiry by the Justice Department. Speaker of the House John McCormack sought to stop the bloodletting, though, and tried to get Powell to return from Bimini to Washington and retake political control of his position. In spite of efforts from such notables as A. Phillip Randolph and Bayard Rustin to convince Powell to return to the Capitol, Powell saw it fit to stay on Bimini and snipe. When the House Democratic Caucus met on Jan. 9 of 1967, it installed U.S. Rep. Carl Perkins as the new chair of House Education and Labor. Powell retaliated by public statements that there was a campaign of racial bigotry afoot and a double standard in the Congress for black and white congressmen. This statement may have, indeed, been true, but bigotry was not the reason Powell was removed from his committee chairmanship. In a conversation with Johnson advisor Henry Wilson, Powell remarked that his present position was a “dark plot” among three Mormon representatives, including the Udalls, Stewart and Mo.
A stir, but not major action, occurred among blacks in the civil rights movement and the entertainment community. Floyd McKissick and Rustin came to Powell’s aid, as did Dick Gregory and Sammy Davis Jr. Rangel, then a young Harlem politico, also helped by organizing a rally for Powell at the Capitol.
The day following the Caucus vote, the House voted by more than 80 percent to not seat Powell until a committee decided if Powell was fit to serve or not, in light of the New York court actions and the evidence of misappropriation of committee funds. McCormack then appointed the select committee, which included such notables as U.S. Reps. Emanuel Celler, Claude Pepper and John Conyers. Legal machinations were already beginning. The American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to the committee detailing the unconstitutionality of refusing to seat Powell, and Powell himself was already assembling a crack legal team of perhaps the best eight antiestablishment attorneys in the nation. The report of the committee was uncertain; the initial sentiment was split down party lines, with the Democratic majority in favor of Powell. Powell maintained that as long as he fit the constitutional requirements — age, citizenship, and residence, he should be seated. The committee was not so sure. The Hays report was factored in, as well as Yvette Powell’s testimony, the “bag woman” deliberations and every questionable action Powell took since assuming his chairmanship in 1961.
Powell reacted to the House’s action in what had become typical behavior from the distinguished congressman. Immediately preceding the House vote to not seat him, Powell harangued the congressmen on the House floor that he knew of no congressman that did not have a few skeletons in his closet, insinuating that he was being singled out for reasons other than those mentioned by the House. Powell continued to assert that he was being attacked because as a friend of his said, “…[Powell] is a Negro and wields power like a white man wields power.” Using this method of defense he attempted to rally civil rights leaders and other activists to his cause. However, even those like Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King, Julian Bond, and U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy could not exert enough influence in Congress to effect any change in the House’s chosen path.
Many on the select committee feared making a martyr of Powell by expelling him, so on the first day of March, 1967, the committee recommended that Powell be seated, censured, stripped of his seniority and fined $40,000. The committee members felt a lack of rules about such situations, and the need to make up the rules as they went along, but they seemed satisfied with the report. During debate on the committee decision, Powell was in Bimini, and the congressmen present were trying to decide what, constitutionally, they could do to reprimand their colleague. There were not many people present who were sure about which course of action was the best and most legal. Holland claimed that Powell was a victim of latent racism in the House, but the overwhelming cry came from Republicans and Southern Democrats who claimed that Powell was guilty, arrogant and irresponsible, among other personal defects. After four hours of debate, the committee report was defeated and U.S. Rep. Tom Curtis of Missouri’s resolution to exclude Powell from the 90th Congress was passed by an overwhelming majority. One week later, Powell filed suit against the Speaker, sergeant at arms, clerk, doorkeeper and certain members of the House.
A month later, a special election was held to fill the vacancy in Powell’s seat. The Republicans tried to get every sort of famous black conservative to run. Baseball player Jackie Robinson and jazz musician Lionel Hampton’s names were bandied about, but James Meredith, who had integrated Ole Miss, was the person to announce his candidacy. However, soon after he retracted and a relative nobody was put against Powell, who had decided to run for reelection. Powell won, 86-12 with a third-party candidate splitting the difference. However, Powell waited to present his certificate of election to House, stalling to see what the courts would decide.
Initially, the district court ruled against Powell, and he sought immediate appeal to the Supreme Court, which was denied. Powell went to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, where he was rebuffed by future Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, before he was allowed to appear before the Supreme Court. Powell contended that the Speaker denied him the oath, the clerk refused him duties due to a representative, the sergeant at arms refused to pay him and the doorkeeper refused him access to the House floor. However, Powell had to win another election before the Court granted certiorari on November 18, 1968. He did, and went into court with a peoples’ mandate. During the layover between certiorari and the oral arguments in April of 1969, Powell was seated in the 91st Congress as a freshman and with a $25,000 fine.
As a result, the Court had to deal with not only with the constitutionality of exclusion, but whether the case was moot or not in light of the actions of the 91st Congress. The Court also considered the charges of racism. In the oral arguments, Justice Hugo Black asked Bruce Bromley, attorney for the appellees, whether the House excluded Powell because he was black. Bromley gave an unequivocal denial. Chief Justice Earl Warren also had suspicions about whether the House’s exclusion of Powell was completely without racist overtones. The attorneys in the room had the distinct impression that the Court was focusing more than expected on race and was leaning towards Powell.
On June 16, the Supreme Court ruled 7-1 against the House, with Warren’s majority opinion stating that the House had exhibited a dangerous misuse of its powers. The Court decided that the House must seat all of its members if they meet the constitutional requirements and only then seek an expulsion resolution. However, the exclusion path that the House followed was patently unconstitutional. Warren was particularly upset about the fact that the House believed it had supreme authority over treatment of its members. Warren therefore took pains to point out that the Supreme Court is “the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution.” The Court dismissed the claims against the congressmen mentioned in the suit and also dismissed the back-pay argument, and therefore cut away the entire scandalous back-story with Powell and the House. It was for this reason that mootness was not considered, since the parts of the case pertaining to mootness were thrown out. This action left the Court able to openly reprimand the House for abuse of power, which the Court seemed to gladly do. The only justice to dissent was Potter Stewart, who asserted, simply, that the 90th Congress had ended, Powell had been seated by the 91st Congress, and the matter was moot.
The House did not take kindly to their legal spanking, and U.S. Rep. Gerald Ford first asserted that the House would not abide by the judgment, soon thereafter seeking a Justice Department investigation of Powell. Still, the case had been decided and the House had its wings clipped by a watchful judiciary, providing a case study in the balance of powers and the checks and balances system. The legacy of Powell can be seen in what instances the case has been cited. Perhaps the best time Powell was cited was in United States v. Nixon, where the Court made the point that sometimes the Court has to look beyond the “names that symbolize the parties to determine whether a justiciable case or controversy is presented.”
Friday, The State reported that Sen. Vince Sheheen’s gubernatorial campaign made a few erroneous endorsements in a list sent out last week. It’s an easy enough mistake to make, which is why we wonder why campaigns put out lengthy endorsement lists. There always seems to be a cock-up one way or another.
In the story, Rep. Anton Gunn, who was included as one of the endorsers, said, “I haven’t endorsed anybody. I’ve got my own [re-election] race to concentrate on. I’m not mad [at Sheheen's campaign staff]. I know it was an honest mistake.”
The best part of the story was reporter Gina Smith ironically making a mistake of her own. Several times, she called Sheheen campaign manager Trav Robterson “Trav Roberts.”
Trav Roberts, Sheheen’s campaign manager, is taking the blame.
“This was an oversight on my part,” Roberts said Thursday. “We got very excited that nearly 60 percent of Democrats in the House and Senate were endorsing Vincent. Blame it on an overzealous campaign manager.”
Roberts would not discuss how the list was put together. He noted, even with the six Democrats removed from the list, a majority of Democrats at the State House are backing Sheheen.
But hey, it’s the Friday before St. Pat’s. Everybody gets a mulligan, right?
We’ve found ourselves perplexed over the recent months regarding the interesting political flexing going on by Steve Benjamin’s campaign for mayor of Columbia. The man ran as the Democratic nominee for attorney general in 2002, and counts among his strongest supporters top Midlands Democrats. And yet, it’s not a cut-and-dry situation.
Benjamin hired the local political consulting firm Richard Quinn and Associated to run his campaign. This is the same firm who ran Atty. Gen. Henry McMaster’s race against Benjamin in 2002, and is running McMaster’s gubernatorial campaign. Naturally, that’s giving Benjamin a free pass on RQ&A’s in-house blog, The Palmetto Scoop. Really — Wheels McGee has been at every Benjamin event we’ve ever attended, which is a tad odd for a GOP political consultant and blogger.
In the meantime, he’s also hired several people who were a part of President Barack Obama’s campaign during South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary (Craig Schirmer and Laurin Manning, among others). Early Thursday morning, Benjamin’s campaign announced it would start running a radio ad playing up his Obama connections in the Democratic-leaning capital city.
COLUMBIA, SC – Steve Benjamin’s Mayoral Campaign broke onto the airwaves this week with a radio ad featuring a 2007 voicemail left by then Senator Barack Obama.
“I’ve saved this voicemail for well over two years now,” Benjamin explains. “It has been a personal inspiration for me because I still believe in what we can do when we work together. I still believe in hope.”
The radio spot, Benjamin’s first, went into rotation this week and can be heard on radio stations all across Columbia and at www.stevebenjamin.com.
This takes an extraordinary amount of hubris, considering that his consultants ran U.S. Sen. John McCain’s Republican presidential primary campaigns in this state not once, but twice. Quinn Sr. was a close, unpaid advisor on McCain’s campaign for president in 2008. Then there’s something else.
Interestingly, the child, who seems fit to consider the majority of Republicans in the General Assembly as socialists, has been slurping Benjamin since the very outset. Baldy ran a line of smack against former Speaker of the House David Wilkins, writing, “Anyway, given how ferociously Wilkins promotes (and protects) his reputation as a “Republican,” we were a bit surprised to see him hosting a fundraiser earlier this week for uber-liberal trial lawyer Steve Morrison, who is running for mayor of Columbia, S.C. on the Leftist Lying Bastard ticket (j/k … it’s a non-partisan election).”
Mind you, he never says things like this about the Quinn firm and its relationship with Benjamin, even while assailing RQ&A when it comes to Innovista. It’s often said that a man is judged by the friends he keeps. Another old bromide is “actions speak louder than words.” Benjamin’s words try to play up his connection to Obama. But his actions in regard to people like the Quinns, Folks and Fogle say so much more.
And at this point, we’ve been totally soured on Benjamin, Morrison and City Councilman Kirkman Finlay III. Somebody put a call in to Aaron Johnson.
Wednesday, the S.C. Chamber of Commerce released its endorsements for the Democratic and Republican gubernatorial primaries. Sen. Vince Sheheen took the nod for the Democrats, which is not very surprising. With the exit of Charleston attorney Mullins McLeod and Columbia lobbyist Dwight Drake from the race, it’s not hard to figure out that Sheheen will best Supt. of Ed. Jim Rex and Sen. Robert Ford for the nomination.
The Republican endorsement went to U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett. Making a decision in that race is way more risky for anyone this far out from the primary. Barrett, Atty. Gen. Henry McMaster and Lt. Gov. André Bauer are in a three-way dogfight for the nomination, and it’s only going to get nastier as the months go on until June.
Wednesday afternoon, the Sheheen campaign launched a new Facebook effort: “Hey, folks — let’s beat Gresham Barrett to the 5,000 mark in FB fans! It would be great if you could click on ‘Suggest to Friends’ underneath the profile picture. Thanks!” That was followed by Barrett’s page responding with, “We’ve been challenged. The Sheheen campaign is trying to beat us to 5,000 fans. Help us get there first by clicking the ‘Suggest to Friends’ link under my picture.” Barrett made it first.
All of this is to say that it looks like the leading candidates for both nominations are already preparing to go at it. That means that the other guys — Rex, Ford, McMaster, Bauer — better step up their campaigns, or the general election campaign will start before the June primary showdown.
A bill to give South Carolinians the chance to vote on a state constitutional amendment to ban card check cleared its last hurdle on Wednesday, as the House and Senate both approved H. 3305 with more than a two-thirds majority. Card check is a process that allows easier organizing by unions, and is a departure from the norm of a secret ballot. The amendment is meant to head off the Employee Free Choice Act, a union-backed bill making its way through Congress. Still, if a majority of agreed, under the EFCA a secret ballot vote was still A-OK.
“I don’t necessarily take any pride in the fact that we let Boeing in because we trampled on the rights of workers to organize,” said Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter in the Free Times. “I’m glad Boeing is here, but I quite frankly would like South Carolina workers to have the opportunity to negotiate contracts that will pay them a livable wage and with health benefits similar to what the Boeing workers [in Washington] got.”
Republican leadership in the General Assembly dispute such allegations, saying that making sure card check doesn’t make it to the Palmetto State protects our state’s workers. Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler said, “Boeing’s decision to expand its facility near Charleston serves as a reminder why we must protect our tough right-to-work laws. We are sending a strong message to the world: We want your business, and we’re committed to getting it.” Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell added, “I don’t know of anything more basic to the essence of our nation than the right to a secret ballot election.”
The bill was one of the priorities of conservatives in the General Assembly this year, after it was put on the on-deck circle in the first half of the 2009-2010 session. Following the vote, Sen. Larry Martin took to the Internet to explain what went down.
Have you texted while driving? WTF is wrong with you? Talking on a cell phone in the car, taking the wheel while tipsy and getting more baked than a loaf of bread before hitting the roads scares us less than watching someone whip out their phone and start texting in the driver’s seat. H. 4282 was passed by the House on Wednesday by a vote of 98-18, making it a crime to act in such a behavior.
Unfortunately, amendments diluted penalties in the bill (because legislators want to keep texting while driving?), but it’s a good first step in the right direction in a state known for its dangerous highways.
“As technology changes so must our laws,” Speaker of the House Bobby Harrell said in a statement. “Our state’s teen drivers are the most avid cell phone users and the most inexperienced drivers on the road. The combination of the two is a formula for disaster. Multiple studies have clearly demonstrated the dangers of distracted driving — several concluding it to be more hazardous than drunk driving.”
Oh, this is fun. MoveOn.org, Brave New Films and the Service Employees International Union went live with a Web site to have some fun with Fox News’ “crying man,” Glenn Beck. Turns out, he has it out for us. Oh noes!
In 2008, now-Rep. Mike Sottile ran for the open seat in HD-112, a nice place to live in the Lowcountry. Mt. Pleasant Town Councilman Joe Bustos was the chosen candidate in the Republican primary by the “pro-hit list” forces in South Carolina. Like many of their other candidates selected by that group, Bustos wasn’t very successful, losing 56-44. Sottile went on to win unopposed in the general election.
Evidently, losing by eight and now battling incumbency is not stopping Bustos for making another go. In case you missed it, in the meantime he also lost a race for mayor of Mt. Pleasant. We guess some people like making running for office — and losing — a hobby on par with building model airplanes and sports rec leagues.
Bustos promised to end politics as usual, adding, “Growth of government is out of control, and we must elect new leaders to rein it in.”
Bustos also said his 2009 mayoral campaign will help his chances this time. “I think the door-to-door campaign (last year) worked very well and we were really coming up in the polls, so I think we have a certain amount of momentum in this campaign.”
[sarcasm] Yes, political scientists are universally agreed that losing consecutive races for office makes the voters more amenable to your new campaign. [/sarcasm] If the people who backed Bustos in ‘08 are smart (S.C. Club for Growth, Howard Rich, the Sanford mafia), they’ll spend their money on a race in which their candidate may actually have a chance.
You would think that Democratic candidate for SC-02, Rob Miller, would have taken some good lessons from his 2008 campaign against incumbent U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson. When he announced again, it looked a lot to us like it would be similar to Beaufort architect Jane Frederick’s second run against the late U.S. Rep. Floyd Spence. He’d pull some votes, but wouldn’t significantly challenge Wilson.
Last fall’s fun and games infused both campaigns with an insane amount of money for a South Carolina race for Congress. Miller now has more money than Democratic Sen. Vince Sheheen, who actually has to run a statewide campaign for governor instead of just one of six districts. Capitalizing on his buzz, Miller has been traveling the country to raise money and making the best of his Internet fundraising.
But other than that, his campaign has largely been a low-key affair. So, it came as an interesting revelation to see the report and fallout from Miller’s appearance at a meeting of the Greater Irmo Democratic Club. From what we’ve been able to gather, the Club invited WIS to the meeting, then there was a brouhaha about who ordered the WIS cameras be kept out.
After a couple days of thinking about this, we consider it Miller’s, or his campaign’s, fault. The woman who spoke for the GIDC, Joanne Hafter, said in a story by WIS, “I just want to set the record straight, neither I or anyone from GIDC made the decision to exclude the media, especially after we invited the media in the first place. It was Rob’s campaign manager who was adamant about not having press coverage.”
We actually met Ms. Hafter years ago, when we went to school with her daughters. Between the person we knew (however briefly) and the person we don’t, we’re siding with the GIDC on this incident. After all, we’ve been alerted to other screw-ups with the media committed by the Miller campaign.
When you’re the underdog in a district that skews against your party, you have to be very careful about what your campaign does, who it courts for support and how you manage your media exposure. Common sense would say that Miller would have known this already. Doesn’t seem like his campaign figured that part out.
Several months ago, news came out that the Major League Baseball team that has a lifetime contract with Satan, the New York Yankees, reached a deal to play host to a bowl game in the new Yankee Stadium. Already, the Yanks had been brokering deals to bring in regular season games with teams like Notre Dame and Army, in a desperate attempt to get Beano Cook to return their phone calls (they love you Beano — they didn’t mean what they said about 1950s Syracuse).
ESPN, the main generator of the out-of-control growth of bowl games in the past 20 years, has signed on to broadcast this massive mistake. Dec. 30, outdoors, a bowl game in New York City. Between the No. 3 Big East team and the No. 6 Big XII team, after BCS selections. RATINGS BONANZA!
And, oh, did you know what the official name of this steaming pile? It’s the..
Future generations will look back at such an abomination and rightly call us all idiots.
