Things were proceeding in a lively, yet deliberate, manner until last week when the urge to wisecrack apparently got to be too much for FSU trustee Richard McFarlain, FSU alum and state senator, Jim King, and President T.K. Wetherell. Each inadvertently insulted Oklahoma Seminoles, whom they thought at the time supported the NCAA ban.
Mr. McFarlain and Mr. King have apologized for their remarks. But they have caused even people who aren't PC zealots to wince. McFarlain, known for his acerbic wit -locally, anyway - took the cake when he weighed in, saying the Oklahoma Seminoles "got run out of here, by who was it, Andrew Jackson? The Trail of Tears. The real Seminoles stayed here."
Comments by Mr. King and Mr. Wetherell were more vague, but also touched indelicately on the Trail of Tears that, under the 1830 Indian Removal Act, forced thousands of Seminoles out of Florida and west to Oklahoma, with legions dying en route. Such observations, however unintended, struck many as too close for comfort to the Holocaust and other acts of genocide.
8mm