[LOCKED] OT: Coach Harbaugh meeting with UM Muslim students today re: American Sniper tweet

Submitted by sadeto on

This was reported by The College Fix late yesterday, and appears in an Mlive article this morning: 

LINK

Coach Harbaugh will meet today with a small group of Muslim students who protested the showing of American Sniper on campus, and who were upset by his Twitter post supporting the movie. I take this as further evidence of Harbaugh's character, no matter what your politics. We'll see what comes of it. 

MOD EDIT - Locking this because I wouldn't even know where to begin to clean it up to make it politics-free. The search for nice things will continue. Man, you go to one meeting... - LSA

OP EDIT - 

Jon06

May 20th, 2015 at 10:18 AM ^

This is precisely the right thing for JH to do. We don't seem to disagree about anything substantive.

As for the rest, I am a firm believer in openly mocking people who present partisanship as common sense. It's cool with me if that pisses people off. YMMV.

Jon06

May 20th, 2015 at 10:31 AM ^

I probably am among the most partisan people in this thread, although I think some of the knee-jerk defenders of the military are equally partisan (and part, if not all, of the point of the rhetoric is to not let them get away with attempting to make themselves come off as non-partisan).

Bodogblog

May 20th, 2015 at 10:42 AM ^

"As for the rest, I am a firm believer in openly mocking people who present partisanship as common sense. It's cool with me if that pisses people off." 

"Of course I realize that I probably am among the most partisan people in this thread"

You must mock yourself sir.  If you are OK with partisan views presented as common sense as long as they're the same as your views... well, that's weak sauce.  Lot of people around to do that. 

Yostbound and Down

May 20th, 2015 at 10:03 AM ^

How is it his responsibility to answer to students? He answers to his team and the AD. Hackett obviously wasn't outwardly bothered by it, nor was anyone else in the administration. Not sure if there are students on the team frustrated by it, I'd hope he address it with them, but he owes nothing to anyone else for his opinion. 

Jon06

May 20th, 2015 at 10:08 AM ^

He owes the AD his public silence on issues that will piss off portions of the student body. That kind of PR control is part of being a head coach of a major program. You might think it's a good PR move to piss off Muslim students just on, like, utilitarian grounds. I don't really think that's a game JH should be playing, but I don't mind if you want to disagree about that.

goblueclassof03

May 20th, 2015 at 11:05 AM ^

As a Muslim of Arab ethnicity, I was upset by Harbaugh's tweet.  I find your post to be directed to people like me, and I hope you can reconsider your insulting dismissiveness here.  I believe one could reasonably interpret Harbaugh's tweet to mean that one is less of an American for not being proud of Chris Kyle or gung-ho about that movie.  I understand that some would like to intrepret his tweet as a strong affirmation of the First Amendment, but I would just like to point out that there are other interpretations that are just as, if not more, reasonable.

evenyoubrutus

May 20th, 2015 at 11:02 AM ^

Yesterday.  Something about how he thought the terrible PR would stop once Brandon was gone but that Harbaugh was doing things that looked silly/crazy and he cited examples as evidence like Exposure U and the QB camp. Then he called the hiring of Jay a "joke" or something and said "someone needs to take his crayons away because he's an embarassment on Twitter."

wahooverine

May 20th, 2015 at 9:42 AM ^

How much you want to bet that following this meeting Harbaugh tweets a group photo of him and the Muslim group with wide smiles all around, most prominently JH's signature shit-eating grin.

mGrowOld

May 20th, 2015 at 9:47 AM ^

I have written, deleted, written and then deleted again posts that would surely cross the line both politically & religiously (something I've been able to avoid for almost five years) so I'll just leave it with "good job Jim" and go on my merry way.

So when's the next random OT post scheduled to go up?

mGrowOld

May 20th, 2015 at 10:18 AM ^

Jorts, cookies, wiping, colas are all in the category I was thinking of.  This one is most definitely NOT in that category Sadeto so my comment wasnt directed at your post.  This is connected to Michigan football.  Directly connected.

MeanJoe07

May 20th, 2015 at 9:48 AM ^

Why were they protesting the movie? Kyle killed murdering rapist naughty men that I suppose happened to be Muslim and the movie showed how hard it is to take another's life. which part of that do they oppose?

westwardwolverine

May 20th, 2015 at 9:57 AM ^

Wait! So you're telling me that movies based on true stories don't always follow the story they are based on exactly to the letter????

 

westwardwolverine

May 20th, 2015 at 10:06 AM ^

Actually, I thought it was just a pretty decent war film with a great performance by Bradley Cooper. And I certainly didn't feel like it veered into "The Iraq War was a good and just War!" territory. 

But the easily offended are gonna outraged about certain things. That's why certain people want to boycott Game of Thrones over an offscreen rape, but have no problem with the multitude of awful deaths depicted in the series. 

 

lilpenny1316

May 20th, 2015 at 10:34 AM ^

But the appeal to Downton Abbey (don't laugh) was muted a bit when they had an offscreen rape scene.  It just struck me in a bad way.  I still watch the show, but it took the show from being on a pedestal by itself to just another pretty good show.  Not everyone likes to see the same stuff they can see on the news or current day dramas.  I think GoT fans will eventually learn to live with this new development, even if the passion for the show is not the same. 

Based on what I've read and heard about the subject of Bradley Cooper's character, it sounds akin to a bridge or a school being named after a Confederate soldier/sympathizer.  There will be those who are offended by the persons' acts and beliefs and those that will support that same person for various reasons.

westwardwolverine

May 20th, 2015 at 10:13 AM ^

Do they? Hollywood doesn't make many movies about Muslims (probably because Muslims make up about 1% of the population of the U.S. and aren't a global force at the box office). And most war movies with Muslims generally tend to have both "good" and "bad" Muslim characters. But complaining about how Muslims are depicted in war movies is like complaining about how Germans are depicted in war movies. I could easily say "Hollywood depicts basically all Germans as Nazis!!!!" because most of the time you see Germans in a Hollywood movie, it takes place during WW2. Why doesn't Hollywood do more romantic comedies about Berlin singles looking for love???