THEODORE HUXTABLE'S PROTEGE got the week off last week for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, that excellent holiday wherein Duke gives us the day off so that the 15 percent of the student body who is already attempting to make the world a better place gets together and talks about making the world a better place. Unfortunately, the other 85 percent is either shopping at the Streets at Southpoint mall or sleeping off a hangover after a night brought on by the logic of, "Hey, no school tomorrow, no homework yet, nothing to do. Well, it's another chance to get wasted."
To answer Nathan Carleton's published question of why we celebrate this particular day and not any other holiday, it is actually because, when we considered ending this practice a year ago, Chuck D threatened to bring Public Enemy back together just to record their protest song, "When I Get to the Bryan Center," which would be put on their new Apocalypse 03: The Enemy Strikes Black Again album. Actually, I made that up. Flava Flav made the threat.
One suggestion to alter this is for Duke to give us President's Day off instead, because, well, the idea of the University making a big event out of Caucasian males is pretty funny. And at least then we wouldn't have to hear the arch-conservatives' pathetic whining of "Boo-hoo, woe is me, this campus is so 'liberal,' so many 'left-wingers,' no one listens to me, I'm such a rebel, boy am I a rebel, boo-hoo, woe is me, boo-hoo, I'm a rebel." Wait, no, they'd still probably whine anyway. Never mind. But alas, instead we got last Monday off, and thank gosh, really, as I was completely exhausted after a whopping eight days of class. Another benefit is that I could follow an interesting development in The Chronicle this week. No, it wasn't Nikyatu Jusu's latest gift to the student body, which is ever-so-wittily titled "Do These Genes Make My Butt Look Fat?" though in an amazing feat of writing, she manages to make that pun the most worthwhile, intelligent thing in the entire column--quite an accomplishment, to be sure.
Nor was it the DCU's inspiring "Free Speech for people we don't hate" campaign. To their credit, though, it really turned me around. I was all for hearing what someone convicted of bombing our Capitol had to say, until I was repeatedly reminded by school conservatives that she was a "lesbian." Yuck. Let me side with the male gender on this one and claim that, while conventionally attractive women with fake breasts, cosmetic surgery and make-up having sex with each other on screen is perfect material to masturbate to, these actual lesbians are, wow, revolting. And let's face it: Women that I don't like to look really shouldn't be brought on this campus. Especially if they don't think about femininity the same way I do. Oh, and particularly if they attempted to bomb our Capitol.
But no, the development I wanted to explore was the fight for Sy-(Snootles)-and-the-RambliA±-(Root-Beer)-Gnome's "Jonathan Swift I-Can't-Tell-If-This-Guy-Is-Kidding-Or-Not-So-I-Have-No-Idea-What-He-Is-Attempting-To-Say" Award. Last semester the winner was Matt Gillum, who inserted into his otherwise-legitimate argument for interracial sex phrases that were so bad ("Shangri-la where everyone's skin is a nice hue of taupe," anyone?) that they required an explanation from Chronicler Rob Goodman that "Matt Gillum is a real Duke student--all quotes attributed to him--are authentic." Now, Gillum begins his latest work, on the merits of striving to earn money, by inserting the gem, "Nothing in the world is more sacred than exorbitant wealth," a sentence so ridiculous that it spurred Ben Dalton's conjecture that "It's hard to believe that Matt Gillum's letter is not a weak idea for a prank." Hmm. Excellent work, Gillum.
But it looks like the master will have competition this semester. Up-and-comers like Manny Stockman, for instance, a junior claiming he has "worked to gain" all his wealth. Well, it might be a bit more convincing if, I don't know, someone else wasn't paying your way though Duke University. Is this irony, or chutzpah? Who can say? And what about grad student Jenny Niedermayer, who is asserting that Iraq in 2003 is in the same situation as Germany in 1939, because they both previously lost wars that ended in treaties? Everywhere, people look at each other quizzically. Is she kidding? Is she serious? What the hell is going on here?
But alas, these problems have come up before in The Chronicle. After all, was Jamicia Lackey a complete and utter racist, or just someone making those columns up to show us what a real racist was, so we could avoid being like the ingeniously-created alter-ego of hers that she constructed for her column? Did Alex Epstein, meanwhile, really believe a single word he said? Ah, the questions Chronicle readers must ask themselves.
It was 274 years ago this year that Jonathan Swift published "A Modest Proposal," his misinterpreted satire suggesting that the English eat children who were poor. Coincidence? Well, actually, no, that's not even a round number. But then again neither is 393, which is the number of years since the founding of Jamestown at the time of the minting of Virginia's "Jamestown Quadricentennial: 1607-2007" quarter, released in 2000. Um... what?
THEODORE HUXTABLE'S PROTEGE, in a vision of Allen Ginsburg last week, saw the best minds of his/her generation ravaged by cold, freezing hysterical angry, pulling themselves down the icy stairways at midnight looking for a lite beer, hat-headed undergrads shivering for the ancient powerful destination of the drunken mess in the machinery of bid nights.
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