I'm not gonna mince words here. I'm not going to dash out anything. In fact, I'm gonna call an asshole an asshole.

Bobby Knight is an asshole. He's not an a--hole, an assh--e or a rectal aperture. He got fired on Sunday because last week he proved once again that he is, indeed, a major-league asshole.

Also last week, George W. Bush paid reporter Adam Clymer the ultimate compliment: He called a New York Times reporter a "major-league asshole," and he did it right in front of a live mike. News organizations everywhere went into a tizzy, looking up their regulations on the use of the word "asshole" and, in some cases, making up new ones.

My personal favorite in the euphemism category comes from the Washington Times, a paper owned by the Moonies. They inserted "(expletive) [rectal aperture]." This, of course, makes no journalistic sense. First, it's too long. The key in journalism is to take away words, not add them. Second, any kid with a dictionary could put two and two together and figure out that rectal aperture means asshole. So it's not like anything is being disguised.

Time Magazine online said that it would use the full word (without dashes) in stories but would not use it in headlines. I think the main reason for that is that "asshole" takes up an awful lot of space when blown up and bolded. This is also the reason that you've never seen "motherfucker" in a headline.

Anyway, I don't know what all the hubbub was about. All the journalists I know (and that's a substantial number) wish they had such a trophy. A major-party presidential nominee thinks enough about Clymer to call him a bad name. I mean, the ego swoons at the thought. There's only one trophy that would trump this one: If Billy Graham called someone a "cocksucker" while standing in front of a live mike at one of his crusades.

Like I said, let Clymer bask in adoration and then get back to more important things, like ignoring the Presidential campaign.

As for Bobby Knight, no word better describes him than asshole. I think he prefers "prick," but assholes often screw up word choice because certain expressions are off limits due to homophobia.

Bobby Knight should have been fired a long time ago. He should have been given the boot back when his teams stopped winning the Big 10. Back when Indiana started losing in the first round of the NCAAs every year. Back when it became apparent that lots of potential Indiana players were crossing the Hoosiers off their lists. Not because of the name "Hoosiers," mind you (more than enough reason for me), but because of the red-sweatered asshole who ran the team.

When a large number of "Knightisms" (this includes everything from choking players to his disgusting habit of pulling up his red sweater during games so as to give his gut some airtime) found their way to the powers that be at Indiana, those powers decided that in order to be fair to Bobby Knight, they ought to give him one last chance to clean up his act.

But these folks forgot one thing: You can't be fair to an asshole. See, an asshole assumes that all of his problems are put upon him by people who are out to get him. It wasn't Knight's fault that he choked the player; the player asked for it by playing badly. It wasn't Knight's fault that he threw the chair. The "assistant in charge of keeping the coach in the coaches box" (every team has one) didn't act fast enough to grab the chair away. An asshole sees a "last chance" as more persecution, not as an opportunity for redemption.

Maybe that "last chance" had nothing to do with saving Bobby Knight's soul. Maybe the Indiana honchos just wanted to pass the buck. If that's the case, it was a master stroke. The plan worked to perfection. Now it's not Indiana's fault that Knight has been fired. It's Knight's fault. He didn't live up to the terms of his "zero-tolerance" agreement. The university president can stand up and say, "Hey, I didn't fire the General. He fired himself. Next question." The Indiana crew should with the next Nobel Prize for tactical responsibility evasion.

Here's my question to the university: Who's the real asshole now? The one who's always been a real jerk, or the ones who are hiding behind a silly piece of paper, giving the real jerk a chance to play martyr?

Better question: Why should we care about any of this? Don't we have better things to do than ponder the lives of assholes?

Jon Worley has been called an asshole many times. Generally, the epithet has been deserved.