'F--- Sister Jean'

I mentioned this on the college rings thread, but figured it had enough cross-over sports and journalism appeal that it could stand alone.

As most people who have been following the Tournament know by now, Sister Jean is the 98-year-old team chaplain of Loyola. They show her during the broadcasts as often as they used to show Brenda Warner.

Anyway, Tennessee radio host jokingly Tweets "Fuck Sister Jean" after Loyola pulls the Round of 32 game out against the Volunteers in the waning seconds. Drunk Chicago Twitter is wildly triggered on St. Patrick's Day.

Today, Tribune columnist David Haugh calls the host and provides some red meat to the city.

I wanted to know why anyone would tweet the F-word at Sister Jean, so I called the host who did

I worried about giving a publicity-seeking shock jock the attention many crave. I picked up the phone anyway because I don’t really believe the adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity. I think this example dispels that notion.

I can’t imagine anything good about becoming known nationally as the guy who, in a failed attempt at humor, used profanity to mock a 98-year-old nun revered by college basketball fans around the world.

I asked McClure about his motivation.

“My comments about Sister Jean were meant simply as a joke, nothing more, nothing less,’’ McClure said. “It was not an emotional response over a basketball game, nor was it meant to be a slight toward Catholicism or the elderly in general. The joke value came because of the fact we were dealing with a 98-year-old nun who is deservingly beloved by people for her outstanding service. Anything said that would oppose that would create a little shock value, right? It was meant to be comedic — cheap, maybe — but comedic. A lot of people got a kick out of it, and a lot of people were offended by it.’’

I was offended by it.

I tend to be on McClure's side here. He Tweeted something that was intentionally so outlandish that that was the joke: how outlandish it was. Maybe he's a "shock jock," but that single Tweet doesn't put him in that category for me, alone.

I'm fairly astonished about the outrage, but, on the other hand, I guess I'm not. Haugh tends to be a pretty buttoned-down columnist.

Thoughts?

 

The Tweet was juvenile, not funny and wholly inappropriate.

I don't care what an idiot shock jock says on Twitter, but I do think it's a mistake for Haugh to call more attention to it.

I am not a Roman Catholic, either, for what it's worth.

 

Sports talk idiots are going to commit sports talk idiocy.

 

Nothingburger all the way around.

 

Yeah.

Life is so much better not listening to those guys in the first place.

He’ll eventually meet a fate like the various Barstool douches are running into and that will be enough.

 

I think in the guy's head, he was saying the same thing as Fuck Mr. Met or Fuck Youppi. He sees her as a mascot, a symbol. Of course, she also happens to be a human being as well as a 98-year-old nun. You're gonna get some blowback.

 

I often don't mind if someone is an asshole — to each his/her own — but at least be funny or creative about it. The suggestion that Carlin or Hicks or Pryor were just swearing, and that was what made them funny is so utterly wrong.

"Fuck [pop culture person]" is about as lame an attempt at humor as I can imagine.

 

No, I think he was well-aware that she's a 98-year-old nun and that was the joke, treating a 98-year-old nun as Mr. Met or Youppi or the Phillie Phanatic. I thought it was slightly funny and certainly not offensive, but I'm less earnest than you guys.

 

There was an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee—can't remember which one—where Seinfeld talked about how he liked to work clean in part because it was a bigger challenge. The inference being that working blue is a little bit of a dodge even for the greats.

 

I'm not offended by it at all. But I do understand why other people might be.

 

Agreed. The idea that just cursing can be funny without any real thought behind it always reminds me of the Eddie Murphy bit about a call from Bill Cosby. Of course, that entire bit has an entirely different context now. Then it was simply Cosby, who had a reputation for clean humor, calling Murphy to chastise him for using profanity. Murphy spoke about how he was offended, because it sounded like Cosby was saying all he did was get on stage and curse. Having grown up on Carlin, Pryor and Murphy, it made me want to tell Cosby to have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up, too.

 

I tend to agree with this. There are posts here somewhere where I talk about not finding the British "Office" very funny because a lot of it was juvenile penis jokes. Some people love that shit. My brother loves that kind of stuff. When Louis C.K. goes off on some tangent about having sex with children, it's like, "Get back to the funny stuff about how amazing airplanes are."

The Tennessee Tweet was such a throwaway line, it was almost like he was lampooning the reaction of a superfan. I doubt he expected Drunk Chicago to get this worked up.