Lynn Westmoreland Needs His Diaper Changed

We interrupt the start of another weekend of S.E.C. baseball action to bring you the following breaking news from Washington, D.C.:

U.S. Congressman Lynn Westmoreland is a whiny bedwetting crybaby and somebody needs to shove a pacifier in his mouth before he speaks in public again.

As you know, it has been a great year for Georgia athletics but it hasn't been much of a year for Georgia politicians smarting off snarkily about athletics.

Jack Kingston? Embarrassment.

The General Assembly? Jointly and severally, an embarrassment.

Michael Adams? Embarrassment del grande.

So just when I'm thinking it's safe for the Georgia faithful to go back out in public, I see where there's a diary about Bulldog transfer NaDerris Ward from the fine fellows over at Addicted to Quack, so I head over in that direction, where Dave tips me off to this:

I understand that a great many of you who are reading this are principled playoff proponents who dislike the B.C.S. I respect that point of view. However, there is no way this kind of nonsense is going to do anything but make us look like a bunch of sore losers and petty wimps.

The Bulldogs didn't have a gripe about not getting into the national championship game; the Red and Black didn't win their conference title, Louisiana State and Oklahoma legitimately leapfrogged them on the final weekend, and, if the 'Dawgs had just scored one touchdown in a night game at home against a team that went 6-6 and didn't go to a bowl game, Georgia would have had its shot at L.S.U. on the first weekend in December, with a national championship game berth on the line. (Had Georgia won the head-to-head tiebreaker for the Eastern Division's slot in the conference title tilt, the Classic City Canines would have met Louisiana State with a chance to advance to play Ohio State. Sounds to me like we settled it on the field.)

The Warriors likewise didn't have a gripe because they played an atrocious schedule and their unworthiness was confirmed in New Orleans when, um, you know.

The Broncos have a gripe. Boise State had a case to make for the 2006 national crown and B.S.U. need not fear a post-Sugar Bowl backlash against non-B.C.S. teams because the Broncos face legitimate slates. If Congressman Simpson wants to pursue this, I think he's probably wasting his time, but his constituents might conscientiously have an argument.

We don't, and, even if we did, we were the No. 2 team in the dadgum country! Aside from occasional outbursts of idiocy from, um, you know, no one is doubting the Bulldogs as contenders.

This, therefore, is a cheap and disingenuous stunt on Westmoreland's part and it makes every denizen of Bulldog Nation look small. He ought to be ashamed of himself and everyone who calls himself a Georgia fan ought to be ashamed to claim him.

I am all for the proper combination of athletics and politics, but this most certainly is not that. It has been said that some men run for office to do something and other men run for office to be something. It is now abundantly clear that Lynn Westmoreland falls into the latter category.

It's not even hard to imagine why. While several elected officials yet retain a sincere commitment to serving the commonweal, public office always has been a haven for many shallow people who entered politics as a means for working out grudges after being driven to pursue power by every playground bully that ever made them feel inferior.

I'm guessing a guy with a girl's first name took a lot of abuse in school, almost certainly verbally and perhaps even physically, so it's hardly surprising when that guy runs for office and, once he wins it, decides to use his privileged position to respond to perceived affronts with cheap gestures like this chest-thumping resolution to address the alleged ills of college football.

It would be one thing if this was merely a facile photo opportunity that constituted nothing more than the usual fiddling while Rome burns that we see from U.S. Congressmen who feel free to stick their noses into big-time sports instead of addressing the real issues at least some of them were sent to the District of Columbia to help solve. That would be despicable, of course, but it would be typically despicable rather than extraordinarily so.

At a time when University of Georgia athletics is riding high and needs no help from meddling interlopers, these grandstanding politicians keep leaping onto the bandwagon in the most meanspirited manner in order to get themselves some ink. Truthfully, I ought to ignore it, but, frankly, it's making me and my people look bad to the rest of the country, and I am sick and tired of this weak, wussified crap from pansy public officials who think it will play well with the common man if they engage in the pretense of barroom banter as part of their strategy of trolling for votes.

You may not like the B.C.S. You may think Georgia was robbed of a spot in the national championship game. You may choose to express your outrage at each of these by, say, posting a comment or writing a diary here at Dawg Sports, or by expressing your opinion on a message board. These are perfectly appropriate avenues for venting your spleen, irrespective of whether I happen to agree with your particular point of view. Such perspectives can be, and have been, set forth articulately and effectively.

It's one thing to behave like an obsessed fan at a sports weblog or a message board, though; those places are, and are designed to be, oases for obsessed sports fans. Using your position as a U.S. Congressman to drop a vindictive resolution in the hopper as a means of giving voice to such complaints, though, is superficial and small. As a lawyer who loves the U.S. Constitution and a sports fan who loves the Bulldogs, I find that an offensive desecration of two things about which I care very deeply . . . one of which Lynn Westmoreland swore an oath to uphold and defend, the other of which he unconvincingly claims to be supporting through this shabby act.

It is bad enough even coming from representatives of states which are home to small-market teams purportedly toiling in obscurity in the W.A.C. who just happen to have received much media attention and, oh, yeah, recent invitations to play in the very bowls they are grousing about for excluding them. For a self-appointed spokesman like Lynn Westmoreland to express ersatz indignation at being treated as a second-class school with no shot at a national title on behalf of a football team that has won national titles and is among the contenders for another one starting on Labor Day weekend, though, is hypocritical and can do nothing but demean the very institution he claims to want to help.

It is high time we told such buttinsky politicians as Lynn Westmoreland to grow up, go to bed, or (at a minimum) find a line of work which will not require the rest of us to pay attention to their prattle. Such facile gestures as these are the epitome of childishness and, if weak, petty, little men of this sort want to denigrate their once-high offices for no better or nobler purpose than to issue threats to take their ball and go home from the well of the U.S. House of Representatives, that is their tawdry infantile business.

When a guy like Lynn Westmoreland becomes the latest in a lengthening and sorry line to drag me, my people, and my alma mater into his pathetic useless games, though, it is time for us to rise up and tell this pitiful excuse for a public servant that he disgraces all of us who bleed red and black by misrepresenting us so badly.

For bringing all of Bulldog Nation into disrepute, Congressman Westmoreland, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. If you aren't man enough to be better than that, you need to sit down, shut up, and switch allegiances so you can start rooting for a team with as little class as you possess.

In case you're interested, Lynn, I hear Auburn is always in the market for folks to help the rabble drape Toomer's Corner in toilet paper . . . which, come to think of it, is precisely the appropriate product with which to dispose of this feculent substitute for statesmanship.

Go 'Dawgs!