Listen, motherfuckers, I am trying to get drafted here

Leave my ass be.

For one day, can we just back away from the bullshit?

For Thursday, April 25, can we celebrate and cheer for Brandon Williams?

Bruce, old pal, don’t speak today. Lock yourself in a closet. Take Carmen to Hedonism II or something. Just don’t engage in any evocative behavior. It doesn’t end well.

For one day, let’s let Brandon Williams wait for his name to be called. Let’s lift our glasses and toast him and let’s forget that we want to figuratively burn each other at the stake. This could be a fun day for Missouri Southern athletics and it could reinvigorate fundraising efforts for the Plaster Athletic Complex.

So shut the fuck up today. Act like you have to sing in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. See? Did we say that? We are sorry.

Just let this young man have his day without you stealing a headline.

What a dickhead

Call me Bruce!

Earlier, we took a shot at Michael Beatty of The Joplin Globe.

We stand by that for now. The Globe’s Emily Younker did follow up tonight with a story on the MSSU international mission story. Incredibly, it includes this passage:

Despite saying last week that he would not ask legislators to slow the bill’s movement through the legislative steps, Speck on Tuesday said he understood that call.

“We certainly agree with the fact that if we stop it now, we have more time on campus to discuss it,” he said. “I think there have been enough concerns about it that we need to take a step back and look at it, and I’m fine with it.”

Translation:

“We certainly agree that I was exposed as a sneaky assclown and I am being forced to let the campus discuss it. There have been enough concerns that a person not possessing my assholeitude would have anticipated and have now come to light that I am forced to eat shit, step back realize I don’t rule the world.”

Beatty gets off the Watch schneid. For now. And we do find it interesting that virtually everything we called bullshit on was covered in the story. Credit to Younker.

Speck got caught with his pants down. Again. The difference here is that he tried to deceive or end-around his governing board and state legislators. That is a step up from screwing with faculty and staff.

Those people keep him in his job. And they don’t like being circumvented and they don’t like being made to look foolish. And Speck did that to them.

When will they jettison this dickhead?

The Asshat of the Day

Now that shit is getting real, here is a university press release.

Is Joplin Globe Publisher and Bruce Speck apologist Michael Beatty.

After two quality stories on the Missouri Southern international mission flap by Emily Younker, the news broke Sunday that the amendment to SB67 was dead. Killed by Sen. Ron Richard. Emily would be all over that shit, right?
Wrong.
Instead, we get this university press release on the matter.

We particularly love this slice of bullshit:

MSSU administrators said in a statement that they think the university needs time to study the issue.

Really?

Well here is what you said days ago.

When asked by the Globe after the meeting, Speck said slowing down the bill wasn’t likely to happen.

“I don’t have plans to do that,” he said.

OK.  Well, we guess now you do. With Richard’s bowling shoe up your Rich Tenor Ass.

Then there was this gem:

He also said that despite the designation, there is “not a pervasive attitude that MSSU is associated with an international emphasis,” and that many students statewide, as well as many in the local community, don’t automatically link MSSU with an international emphasis.

It is pervasive enough to turn around 180 degrees the university’s position in a matter of days.

So where is the story about this backdoor bullshit’s demise? Maybe Younker has been sent to McDonald County or grad school. Or maybe Beatty continues to kiss Speck’s ass even as it twists alone in the wind. Again unavailable for comment.

What were the odds?

Just sit in the corner and shut up, Bruce.

Really.

How many of you would have laid down some real cash on the prospect that Ron Richard would ever be the voice of reason?

We are pleased, mind you. Just surprised.

That being said, Bruce Speck is like the Mary Tyler Moore of bad publicity. He can take a nothing story and suddenly make it national as all hell. The San Francisco Chronicle picked it up.

But that isn’t the funniest shit of all (more in-depth post coming). The real hilarity is the way the U is backing off its previous statements and trying to sell this as their idea. In reality, through various social media, personal conversations and, yes, speculation, The Watch has determined that this is how it unfolded.

In the middle of the week it broke, a Jefferson City lobbyist with an interest in higher education legislation noticed the amendment and contacted Chad Stebbins to ask about it. Stebbins said he was unaware and began making queries.

The Joplin Globe got wind of it and Emily Younker did interviews with MSSU administrators and lawmakers. The Speck camp realized “Oh, shit. We got caught” and released a statement via email minutes before the campus closed that Friday.

In the media reports, it was clear that VPAA Pat Lipira and area lawmakers were caught by surprise and faced with an impossible decision. A true “Hobson’s Choice.” They could say as much and without all the facts leave the college president out on an island. Or they could close ranks, obfuscate and call Speck a fucker in private.

We bet they wanted to do the former, but wisely chose the latter.

When alumni got wind of the scheme, they went apeshit. Richard and others got bombarded with pissed off messages in all forms of media. As the grown-up and senior General Assembly member in the area, Richard made it known that he could kill this piece of shit but had to be asked to.

Sherry Buchanan, the chair of the Board of Governors (yes, due respect in this case), spoke with Sen. Richard and for political reasons did not publicly admit to asking him to fix this mess. But after the conversation, Richard asked members of the Missouri House to spike the amendment. Richard’s financial situation and ability to contribute to others’ campaigns gives him that kind of juice at the other end of the Capitol building.

Speck sends his self-serving and idiotic justifications to The Globe as an op-ed piece. The news of Richard’s action is made known the same day it runs. Speck is now alone.

In today’s Associated Press story in the SF Chronicle is this paragraph:

A university spokeswoman said Speck was not available Tuesday morning for an interview. In a recent guest column in The Joplin Globe, he said the current statutory language misrepresents the school’s broader mission. He also tried to assuage concern about the move.

We guess he found Cassie Mathes’ phone number after all. Get used to that “not available,” by the way. We are betting that the Board is putting a muzzle on RTV for a while. Again.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the very reason Speck was hired (in our view) — to kill the international mission — was the final domino in his undoing?

Miss Julio yet?

Just askin.

Do they teach public relations here, Part Shit, we lost track

Bruce W. Speck

It is so simple.

You have a PR person. Pick up the phone and call Cassie Mathes.

RTV: “Cassie, we are thinking of asking the legislature to remove the international mission language from state law. We are going to ask a guy from Warrensburg to help and we are going to attach it late in the session to another, widely supported higher ed bill. No one should notice until school’s out and it is too late.”

CM (An MSSU communications graduate): “Oh fuck.”

Cassie would have told His Doucheship that his idea would not be debated on the merits but the method. And it seems she would have been spot-on.

We bet she never knew about it until she had to clean the stables of the mess he left.

Ron the Kingpin taking you into Monday…

We need a strike, Ron

Ron Richard may be worth a fuck after all.

News around the internet is that Richard, the Missouri Senate majority leader, and a Missouri Southern alumnus, may put the brakes on an amendment to  remove the U’s international mission from state law.

Reports are that Bored of the Governors sent a message to a representative of the Southern Faculty Senate indicating that “Senator Richard has decided to pull the MSSU amendment to SB67 for further study of long-term ramifications.”

This is good news. It doesn’t exactly make Richard a profile in courage, but more a profile in political expediency. You see, this kicked up a shitstorm.

The rumor has always circulated that Mighty Dwight and Bruce Speck wanted to kill the international mission. But they couldn’t do it right away. First they had to get rid of some problems.