By Pat Hickey

Sept. 17, 2023

I have chosen to foment discord, like our brethren on the Left. This will not be meat for pettifogging dodgers, or whatabout-ulists. I intend to spew as much venom, bile and ridicule upon the open-toed sandals of the academic poseurs and over-cooked vermicelli-spined leadership as possible. Northwestern has been a sinkhole of Leftist Marxism for decades, with social engineering labs like The Center for Wrongful Convictions and unrepentant terrorist Bernardine Dorhn’s masquerade as an academic.

I was angry when Northwestern disavowed any connection to Joseph Epstein over his lighthearted tease of Doctor Jill Biden in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece. So furious was the backlash from the Biden White House that the tit-willows of Northwestern chirped mightily and not so very unlike the harrumphing sycophants of Gov. LePetomane in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles.

Joseph Epstein had been a lecturer in the English Department of that school from 1974 until 2002. Epstein’s reputation as an essayist garnered the title America’s Montaigne.  Scott McKnight noted: 

Few are the writers who weigh in so often about weighty subjects without putting their weight down. Epstein professes no known creed. He isn’t simply a stylist with irony but a man of irony itself. In his thrashing away at Adler, for whom he worked on the staff of Encyclopedia Britannica, Epstein reveals his penchant for a lack of finding bedrock philosophical truths as he observes the impact of Adler’s teachings about Plato on Adler’s seminar pupils: “After years of reading Plato, they seem no closer to escaping the cave than the rest of us.” In the opening essay of this new collection, on turning seventy, he says that “I find myself more impressed by the mysteries of life and more certain that most of the interesting questions it poses have no persuasive answers, or at least none likely to arrive before I depart the planet.” He continues, “I suffer, then, some of the fear of religion without any of the enjoyment of the hope it brings.” When his father died, Epstein found that he had left behind some 2,700 pages written in his own style of wisdom. “Although he had no more luck in this than the rest of us, there was something gallant about the attempt” of a senior citizen not finding a publisher but grinding away anyway.

In his essay on why he is not a lawyer, Epstein closes with this: “It’s a much easier job to be an investigator or critic of morality, which is what a writer does, than a lawyer, someone called upon to practice morality, relentlessly and at the highest level, day after day after day.” Faced with the task of cleaning out his apartment and disposing of most of the thousands of books he had collected over a lifetime, he discusses the few authors and books he chose to hold onto. “I kept a few Schopenhauer items, including The World as Will and Representation; his unrelenting darkness for some reasons charms me.” And Epstein notes that “I have three different Bibles in the apartment—a work, the Bible, I’ve not yet read all the way through and tell myself I must before I am hit with a most unpleasant quiz administered at certain pearly gates.”

Lawyers practice morality. Quidam faciunt mores quidam! I know from my fine education at Loyola University of Chicago in the early 1970s that ethics never change, and morals change when ants break wind. Lawyers are just the ticket. Test the windage and get to trial!

Northwestern’s (note that I choose not to include the term university): I admire the school of medicine and do not rope it in with the other prissy gobshites) motto is Quaecumque sunt vero, or Whatsoever things are true. That passage from St. Paul, no pettifogger himself, tells us to dwell upon things that are always true, beautiful and just. Now, imagine a Northwestern professor of journalism telling his students to insinuate sexual interests to get a stooge to falsely confess his guilt for murder, in order to get the guilty (but approved) client off. Protess and be damned! The lawyers weaseled Protess off the hook.

Northwestern’s motto should be Advocati Approbata (Lawyers Approved). Even better, Sum Wildcat sum Chumbalone!

Only a Chumbalone would nod with conviction and stand behind any statement coming from the administration of Northwestern.

I was angry when they sullied Joseph Epstein and now, I am bilious over the pussified firing of Coach Pat Fitzgerald.

I knew Pat Fitzgerald when he was a recruiter for the Wildcats and later, the head coach. Fitz put local talent at the top of his list and many Chicago Catholic and public-school players put on the purple. I worked as director of development at Chicago’s Leo High School and remember Coach Fitz’s treatment of recruits from our inner-city kids. He was always respectful, honest and professional. Our kids loved playing for him.

I know the poisonously woke culture that has managed to strangle the life out of Chicago. Northwestern and its Medill School of Journalism had a huge hand in that. The two daily rags and the electronic media in Chicago, especially (public television) WTTW and (public radio) WBEZ, are propaganda arms of Northwestern’s public morals labs.

A former Northwestern player beefed to the right lawyers about his unhappiness and attributed it to Coach Fitzgerald. Other unhappy boys joined the suit. The President of Northwestern got shit in his blood and overruled himself, first suspending Pat Fitzgerald and then terminating his contract.

Since taking over Wildcat football, Coach Fitzgerald amassed 110 wins for Northwestern and never brought a scintilla of shame to shadow his labors. He never had to rebuild; he would simply reload. Yet, when scandal lisped in the ears of Northwestern leadership and that hint of a day-in-court scented the breezes over Evanston, the woke narrative trumped justice again.

After being fired without any due process, Coach Fitzgerald returned to the sidelines as a volunteer for Loyola Academy football.  Loyola Academy is ranked 3^rd in the State of Illinois with a 3- 0 record.  Northwestern Wildcats, sans Fitz, is 1-1, have lost to the atrocious Rutgers squad.  One wonders if that clapping noise wafting over the waves of Lake Michigan just might be the echoes of Northwestern donor checkbooks slapping shut.  Will Pat Ryan cough up more millions for decades of mediocrity?  Stay tuned dear readers.

Locker rooms are no places for weaklings. But they can be breeding grounds for monsters like Denny Hastert of Yorkville shame, the woman’s trainer at the University of Michigan and Joe Paterno at Penn State. Activist journalists and lawyers are not disinfectants. The eternal truths and ethical verities that should be the foundation of any confederacy of scholars are the stays against evil.

Pat Fitzgerald, like the great Joseph Epstein, is a sacrificial gift to Mammon. Mammon’s laws accept any and all perversity in the name of equity and inclusion. Mammon’s ecology makes sense at Northwestern.

No due process. No justice. No inquiry. No beauty. No victory. Advocati Approbata!

Screw You, Northwestern, to play on the words of your fight song.

May this clown car posing as a seat of learning enjoy misery, failure and empty coffers.

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Born November 8, 1952 in Englewood Hospital, Chicago Illinois, Pat Hickey attended Chicago Catholic grammar and high schools, received a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Loyola University in 1974, began teaching English and coaching sports at Bishop McNamara High School in Kankakee, IL in 1975, married Mary Cleary in 1983, received a Master of Arts in English Literature from Loyola in 1987, taught at La Lumiere School in Indiana from 1988-1994, took a position as Director of Development with Bishop Noll Institute in Hammond, IN and then Leo High School in Chicago in 1996.  His wife Mary died in 1998 and Hickey returned with his three children to Chicago’s south side. From 1998 until 2019, it became obvious that Illinois and Chicago turned like Stilton cheese on a humid countertop. In that time, he wrote a couple of books and many columns for Irish American News. When the kids became independent and vital adults, he moved to Michigan City, Indiana, where he job coaches Downs Syndrome and Autistic teens in LaPorte County.  He walks to the Michigan City Lighthouse every chance he gets.