Gee, Constance

In the annals of Bush Derangement Syndrome, a new case study has been added and hits close to home, just around the corner to be exact: This vignette might be entitled "Constance Gee & the American flag versus George Bush et al."

It seems that Constance, the second wife of the "rock star" Chancellor Gordon Gee of Vanderbilt University in Nashville (the highest paid university head in the history of the nation) doesn't, hasn't and never will like President Bush, The War or anything even slightly to the right of Ted Kennedy. And so she uses her position as First Lady of Vanderbilt, my old alma mater, to drive home her point: When Bush was re-elected for a second term in 2004, she ordered the American flag lowered to half-mast at the mansion, named Braeburn. In mourning, Constance, a tenured professor at VU, wanted everyone in town to share her pain. Then to console herself, she went into her hidden stash at the mansion and smoked herself a joint "for medicinal purposes."

While the antics of Constance making a spectacle of
herself has been gossip around these parts for a while, the wonderful/awful saga of the high-living, big-spending Gees went mainstream on September 26, 2006 on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Tongues have been wagging here ever since. Some highlights of that story continue, " Mrs. Gee has caused stirs on campus with her liberal politics."...besides lowering the American flag at Braeburn which Mr. Gee says he soon ordered back up the pole, "she and others signed a letter of protest to the chancellor when Condoleezza Rice, then Mr. Bush's national security adviser, was invited to address graduating students in the spring of 2004."

The upshot of the story is that the 66-member Board of Trustees at Vanderbilt is trying to rein in both their chancellor's freewheeling spending (the Gees just finished a $6 million renovation of the mansion, going over budget by millions) and free-talking, unhinged liberal wife. without running off Mr. Gee and his amazing fundraising machine.

"Trembling, the chancellor confessed, 'I've been worried to death over this,'" saying that she smoked marijuana only to relieve an inner-ear ailment.

Whatever Mrs. Gee's medical condition, her position as first lady of a liberal arts university has clearly been abused and needs to be held to some accounting. The liberal elites have not only taken over the MSM but the hallowed halls of higher, middle and lower education. And Mrs. Gee is just another shining example. Never mind the new drug-free initiatives on the university campus, or the hallowed exchange of ideas--both liberal AND conservative, Mrs. Gee is unrepentent.

Gee, Constance, we know your politics and your sixties antics. But your husband's many fundraising drives may soon feel the effects when he goes calling for money from many of the same conservatives who helped build the new conservatory at the residence where you don't miss a chance to denigrate our President and hold court on the horrors of the current administration in Washington.

So, please count me out of Vanderbilt's next humongous fundraiser.