Louisiana Voice

LSU law professor Nicholas Bryner recently told his class that if any of his students voted for Donald Trump because they might not like him personally, but favored his policies, then “it’s on you to prove that by the way you conduct yourselves and by the way that you treat other people around you.”

His remarks, made over 1 ½-minutes, appeared to me to be a simple request that those students practice the Golden Rule.

But don’t take my word for it. Here is the complete video of his REMARKS.

But that’s not the way a guy named Jeff Landry saw or heard it. In a message sent out over X, Landry took it upon himself to pick a fight with Bryner by accusing him of defying “the 76 million Americans who voted for (Trump) – to silence and belittle those in his class who voted for our next president.

Landry neglected to mention that more than 75 million voted for someone other than Trump, so despite the lopsided electoral vote total, the popular vote wasn’t exactly a ringing mandate for Herr Trump any more than Landry’s 2023 election was a mandate, considering he was elected by only about 18 percent of the number of registered voters in Louisiana as the 36 percent turnout was the lowest in Louisiana in two decades.

And of course, there is the student to took the video of Bryner delivering his call for common sense and decent behavior on the day following the Nov. 5 election and forwarding the video to Landry.

There’s nothing wrong with that. This day and age, a person would have to be totally oblivious not to realize that anything he says or does is likely to be recorded.

In fact, I would suggest that that is a great idea for all vehicles to be equipped with video/audio cameras for all encounters with police – especially those police who would beat a guy to death and then tell his family that he died in an auto accident.

So, no, I don’t have a problem with the student who recorded Bryner’s ever-so-brief plea for common decency. In fact, I would argue that the video is Bryner’s best defense against any disciplinary action Landry might try to bring down on him through LSU’s spineless President William Tate.

But Landry’s kneejerk reaction? That’s quite another story. It should be obvious by now, what with his demand that athletes be present for the playing/singing of the National Anthem and that LSU parade out its tiger – any tiger actually, it turns out – for sporting events, that Landry possesses some sort of sick thirst for control every facet of life on Louisiana’s college campuses.

I fail to understand what makes Landry such an authority on academia, given that he’s nothing more than a two-bit hack who suffers from the little-man syndrome that demands that he be given attention on a regular basis lest he feel neglected and unimportant.

I do know that for him to use his office as a bully pulpit (with the emphasis on BULLY) to intimidate or threaten anyone he perceives to be critical of him or to disagree with him as he did with BOB MANN, is not only petulant and petty, but dangerous.

Mann, to his credit, was quick to POINT OUT the weaknesses in Landry’s blatant hypocrisy in claiming on one hand to support free speech even as he attacks Bryner’s plea for common decency.

It’s too bad that Louisiana’s demagogue-in-chief just doesn’t get it.

Maybe instead of posting the Ten Commandments in school classrooms, he should post the Golden Rule in his own office.