Furmanifesto

I once worked for a boss who consistently asked the question, “Would you rather be loved or respected by your subordinates?”,  of course the majority of the employees responded that they’d rather be loved.

The boss’ response to his question was that being “loved” meant that people would walk all over you, but being “respected” meant that they would produce results for you.

The next time we were asked this one of my fellow employees suggested to the boss that he might be confusing the word “love” with “approval” and the word “respect” with “intimidation”.

You can probably guess how much longer he continued to work for the organization.

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With this month’s revelation of a new famous and successful girlfriend, the world’s number one ranking, and a renewed Nike campaign, the platform for the restoration/rehabilitation of Tiger Woods appears to be nearly completed.

The only piece left now is a win at the Masters in Augusta, Georgia next week.

With a win, Tiger will be welcomed back to the talk shows and sports highlights for something other than the personal scandal that took an enormous toll on his professional life.  All of which makes his new Nike campaign so fitting, if not mildly controversial.

With the launch of the new Nike campaign, commentators are beginning to question whether or not “Winning takes care of everything” is an appropriate motto, especially for someone whose personal life was a mess- while he was winning.

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In yet another desperate attempt to find relevance in a world where women can earn a living doing something other than taking their clothes off, Playboy Magazine has chosen to tell us which college campuses lead the nation in… wait for it… “Partying”.

Playboy’s list of top 10 “party schools” was released to “legitimate sports media outlets” this week and there were some surprising omissions; some historically hard-partying stalwarts didn’t make the cut as it pertained to playboy’s selectively chosen, yet tastefully displayed, criteria:

“Sex”, “Athletics”, and “Nightlife”

The hard-working statisticians and researchers behind this year’s list didn’t state how strongly the categories played into the overall decisions, but it doesn’t take a genius to understand that certain schools ranking high in “athletic achievement” and “proximity to Hollywood” wouldn’t need to rank nearly as high in the “sex” department to make the list.

Which makes me wonder how a Christian University from Ft. Worth, Texas with two streets famous for pizza, burgers, and tacos, and a respectable, yet modest, athletic department lands at number 9 on the list?

That’s right, Texas Christian University beat out all but 9 colleges in an All-American ranking of nightlife, sports, and the proclivity for pre-marital prevarication.

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