Ken Burger, The Post and Courier
There are some Charleston staples you can depend on: the stench of a horse-drawn carriage, the “charm” of a crowd of drunken frat boys, and the wit of Ken Burger, who has been writing his column for decades and continues to amuse and inform. Here’s a compilation of a few of Burger’s more memorable leads, along with one of Burger’s own picks:
• This is the kind of thing that gives pompous, overbearing, out-of-touch bureaucracies a bad name. (August 30, 2006)
• There is a time and place for everything, and that time and place has come for the state of South Carolina. After years of flying the Confederate flag in the face of the world to show everybody how defiant we are, it’s time to reconcile and move on. Why? Because it’s going to continue to cost us money and a whole lot more. Our dignity. (July 30, 2006)
• INDIANAPOLIS — I can’t decide which is more amusing — the irony or the hypocrisy. The fact that the NCAA is headquartered in this city and state named for the once-proud and prolific American Indian only adds to the absurdity of its recent tirade against member schools that carry Indian-related nicknames. (Aug. 17, 2005)
• Turns out Lou Holtz was preparing his players for life after football. When he had them picking up litter along the highway, he must have known some of them were destined to wear prison jumpsuits someday. (March 7, 2005)
• SOMEWHERE ON I-26 — This is the part they don’t tell you about in journalism school. The part where you’re sitting in a Waffle House at 2 a.m. between an old man smoking cigarettes and a guy who may or may not be gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Sitting at the Waffle House, I mean. (Jan. 17, 2005)
• An hour before tipoff, Jamel Bradley was at courtside talking to a group of kids. And not a single word was spoken. That’s because the kids, like Bradley, are deaf. (Jan. 31, 2002)
• Every tough team has a tender story. And for the No. 1-ranked South Carolina Gamecocks, his name is Fox Beyer. In the game of college baseball, where the players are big and strong and athletic, Beyer dances among the best of them on his spindly legs, traipsing pigeon-toed from job to job without even a thought of what he can’t do. (May 28, 2000)
• Regardless of how you feel about John Daly, you cannot save him from himself. His recent decision to return to a life of drinking and gambling is no doubt a suicide attempt for a man who has already proven he cannot handle either vice. (Sept. 30, 1999)
• As a soaking rain fell on a sparse crowd at Johnson Hagood Stadium Saturday night, The Citadel Bulldogs were going about the business of losing another Southern Conference football game. (Sept. 28, 1997)
And Ken’s pick:
• I love women. I love basketball. I hate women’s basketball. (Nov. 30, 1995)
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