2972557[/URL]]Um, no. You can't say you revere trees when your collective actions have been killing them. Slow, fast, whatever. It's just a fact. The corrected analogy is accurate.
No. It's not. Trying to analogize it with people or tragedies of much greater scope strains credulity anyway. (Auburn fans are guilty of this to.)
Also, if you wouldn't mind responding to this portion you chopped.
Have you read the pathologist's report on the trees? The one that comes up seemingly any time this topic is discussed here? Yes, he gave a range. Anywhere from half a decade to a century. Things were still kicking, even after they were poisoned, I think it's fairly obvious that his low end prediction was emphatically wrong. The trees live in pretty poor condition with the power washing, but you can tell that year in and year out leaves kept coming right back until this happened. Truth is, no one really knew if the trees were going to die in a hurry. Anybody that says they do is lying. There was certainly a lot of speculation that they may die, so everything known within a world class agricultural school was being done to keep the trees around and it very well could have been successful.
I, and every other Bama fan I know, have said that Harvey killed the trees. You, and many Auburn fans, want to ignore how damaging to the trees Auburn tradition is.
If you wouldn't mind pointing out where I have done that.
I've never been sentimental about toilet paper, although I do have a preference for two-ply. As for trees, I don't spend my time throwing things at them, cutting their roots, setting them on fire, or power washing them. We must have different definitions of "sentimental." I'm more of a live-and-let-live kind of guy.
Still don't get it. Auburn fans mourned the loss of these trees because of what they represent. We don't do it because we're fixated on TP or anything like that. The great thing about college traditions is that most of them do look silly to outsiders. Cowbells. People dressing up like an native-Americans and riding to midfield to throw a flaming spear in the ground. Touching a rock. Having an eagle fly around the stadium. Midnight yell. That's almost the whole point of having them. It's something you do that other schools don't.
By national perspective you mean uneducated opinions from afar? Considering other fan bases are naturally hostile to any but their own, and that Bama is far more successful, and that many people don't even know where Auburn is, I have no doubt that more people are jealous of Bama than of Auburn. Jealousy breeds hatred and bigotry. I don't value the opinions of haters and bigots.
More to it than that. Brian Downing, Harvey Updyke, Michelle Pritchett, Adrian Briskey. I'm not saying it's fair, but incidents like those do tend to color perspective among the ignorant.
