The most (and least) wanted columns

In 1997, musician Dave Soldier, collaborating with Russian artists Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, published results from a survey to find out what types of music people most like and most dislike and combined them into "The Most Unwanted Song" and "The Most Wanted Song." According to them, the most popular song is a sappy, saxophone-infested pop number, while the most unpopular song possible features operatic rapping and a children's choir urging you to do all your Ramadan shopping at Walmart. Their experiment inspired me to do something similar by taking an unscientific survey of the most and least popular column topics and combining them into two mini-columns. As it turns out, the most popular topics included sports, Batman and the Olympics, while the economy, Iraq, student apathy and American Idol were less well-received.

The Most Wanted Column: John Kilgo, the president of Duke University when the basketball program was established, would be surprised at the spectacle the program has become. An old cliche has it that no matter what happens in an athletic event, a billion people in China just aren't going to care. Those Chinese may not care about obscure games like Northern South Dakota taking on Directional Michigan in some place where you can see Russia from your house, but they care enough about Coach K's success for him to be one of the highlights of the Beijing Olympics.

Coach K, of kourse, doesn't just view himself as a basketball coach, but as a "leader who happens to coach basketball." So what does the Men's Basketball Head Leader Who Happens to Coach Basketball have in store for the upcoming season? We can only hope that the tenters in K-Ville, who assure us that they're there to draw attention to the game, not themselves, won't be disappointed with another home loss to Carolina. In fact, Tyler Hansbrough can expect to be about as successful in beating Duke as King Lear was in keeping his daughters in line, or as Harvey Dent would be in winning a beauty contest after the Joker left his face slightly less attractive than Hansbrough's.

Those of us who take a more cynical view, though, may question why a University that doesn't have any decent parking spends so much time on basketball. The coach himself, however, has marked out a specific, detailed plan: "Discipline is doing what you are supposed to do in the best possible manner at the time you are supposed to do it."

The Most Unwanted Column: In 1792, Jebediah Durham led 60 Belgian settlers into the North Carolina countryside where they could practice Scientology in peace. Since that foundation, the city of Durham has not faced a crisis as serious or as avoidable as the one it faces today: the fact that Duke students are not paying enough attention to American Idol.

The rise of Sanjaya was a tragedy of monumental proportions, demanding no less than prosecution of those responsible for the travesty. A generation that actually cared about its popular culture would be out in the streets daily, organizing boycotts of American Idol sponsors and staging sit-ins at FOX affiliates. Instead, our collective ignorance and apathy has let another mediocre season of American Idol go by since Sanjaya, and there are still no safeguards in place to prevent this grim history from repeating itself. Hang your heads in shame.

This apathy permeates our pathetic student body. Nobody stands against such travesties as the war in Iraq, the endless "farewell tours" of the McRib and especially the economy. Do you realize that, at its current rate of decline, the Dow Jones average will be worth zero by the end of November (which, of course, is the result of President Bush's inability to pronounce the word "nuclear")? In the face of these and other challenges, our generation is as paralyzed as Odysseus was when he was bound so he couldn't swim toward the sirens, or as futile as Duke basketball was against West Virginia last year.

Perhaps Barack Obama will change this situation, even if he turns out to be a closet Muslim. However, the damage may already be done. To cite just one of many examples, can lazy Duke students ever be forgiven for allowing the relentless decline of The Simpsons?