Scruggs: Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate…
Khayat refused to play safe politics and disown Scruggs or shun him. He treated Scruggs like a human being. For that, he’s catching Hell in some quarters.
As a parent of a recent Ole Miss graduate, I’d a lot rather have a chancellor at a Mississippi university who stands by people when they make terrible mistakes than one who teaches them the early reality of fair weather friends or whose loyalty only extends to those who haven’t made mistakes.
It took a lot more character for Scruggs’ friends to stand by him through this ordeal than it did to turn their backs on him.
Oh, yes, and there’s the issue from some of my MSU and USM brethren that perhaps Ole Miss should “give back” Scruggs’ dirty old money. Hmmm. Interesting theory.
But if that’s the case, then every man, woman and child in Mississippi will have to pony up, too, to “give back” the hundreds of millions of dollars that we as taxpayers have spent from the tobacco settlement Scruggs brokered to pay for government services. After all, the Legislature has raided those funds frequently and spent them on our behalf year after year after year.
Sid Salter
Clarion Ledger
7/1/8
Magnolia Tribune
