A few issues ago I wrote a “fake news story” about the Ol’ Dirty filling their news editor position with an orangutan named Pat. During a conversation with the Emerald’s business manager Kathy Carbone, she complimented me on the story as well as asked me, “It’s funny, but can you just write that? Or is there some kind of rules against writing fake, ridiculous quotes?” I told Kathy that anyone who thinks a chimp getting hired at a school paper is real was not worth my time. We never received any complaints.
Unfortunately, the same can not be said for the Vancouver Voice, ran by former OC editor-in-chief Ossie Bladine. In a section titled “Not Real News” they ran a fake story about a local business considering implementing casino games for children as part of their business model. Just wait, it gets better.
Apparently a local citizen called the Washington State Gambling Commission and the business is now under investigation. Now, I can understand Ossie’s problem of readers’ lazy eyes — I have read links to this very blog (mostly from Tea Party people who hate me) saying that “there’s not even an author to this blog!” when clearly, my name is directly under the title.
What is more confusing, however, is how on Earth anyone could think that a news organization like the Voice would run a straight news story about a children’s gambling establishment with no commentary or editorial substance. Is the generation gap becoming so large that The Onion is becoming a dividing line?
This is not the first time this year the Voice has had such confusion over a clearly labeled and clearly satirical article. In their Jan. 21 issue, the Voice ran a story about The Columbian changing its name to The Fort Vancouver Tribune. Apparently this caused some mental anguish for their readers, and Ossie had to formulate a very obvious, simply-worded note for his slower readers that read, We’d like to state that this was not quite real news–as in, we made it up.”
In any case Ossie said, “From an outsider’s view, this is pretty funny. But for Big Al’s, a locally owned business that works hard to keep a family friendly image, not so funny.” But Ossie’s wrong, isn’t he? It’s not funny.
In a recent press release to the Elections Committee and general student body, Tony Mecum announced the creation of the Students for Responsible Government. SRG, according to Mecum, is “a watchdog group to monitor campaign promises and rules by creating awareness about this year’s student government elections.”
Mecum, who resigned today from the EMU board, declares that he is tired of the elections being a “giant circus show” and that “for too long have special interest groups poisoned the democratic free allocation process.” He plans to wage this ASUO war with “every constitutional power granted to free paying members of this association.” The group is “nothing short of excited” and has received support from leaders across campus, according to Mecum. SRG is looking forward to the coming weeks, and is already analyzing wire tips.
Well all I can say is that it’s hight time that the UO finally has a group to keep an eye on the ASUO. Despite their stunning effectiveness as a governing body, you never know when the ASUO might misallocate hundreds of thousands of dollars to some kind of shady lobbyist group, or potentially break constitutional law. It’s great that we have upstanding men people in our student body willing to speak out against these abuses. I can rest easy tonight knowing that though ASUO elections loom on the horizon, Mecum and his group “are committed to this cause. Justice will be served.”
According to a Tomcat article published in the Emerald on Friday, the ASUO Elections board — the same that threatened the Commentator with punishment for Cpt. Peter Freedom Lesiak’s poster – decided against doing so late last Thursday night “unless a student formally files a complaint against him.”
Of course, any student filing a complaint against Lesiak would have to take into consideration that all of the other presidential candidates have had posters on this website as well. Twice. Since Lesiak did not post his flyers under his own volition, filing a complaint against Lesiak would require filing a complaint against all the other candidates as well.
Of course, the real lesson here is that the ASUO Elections Rules have some pretty asinine provisions. Coupled with vague language, the rules that punish candidates for separate entities actions is fucking stupid. Glad to hear the ASUO Elections Board came to their senses.
I noticed this personal ad in the Emerald yesterday. It’s eerily similar to the one that appeared on our own back cover, and indeed to the one that I placed in the Emeraldjust last week.
I’m not sure who’s responsible for the ad (I haven’t asked the whole staff yet) but whoever is, I salute you.
We at the University of Oregon unfortunately do not have the day off, but if you would like to spend the day wasting time here are some presidential links to wet your whistle.
Those lovable scamps down at our campus newspaper, the Daily Emerald, decided to offer up a little Valentine’s Day gift to students by giving out free personal ads to celebrate the holiday. Wanting to fully take advantage of such an offer, the Oregon Commentator decided to run a personal ad of our own, which ran in today’s edition of the Emerald. The image is above, but the text reads:
Let’s meet for a drink
You: Fair skin, temperament to match. Hair and eyebrows like midnight. Powerful. Me: Golden complexion, rotund, a little white on top. Smoking enthusiast. Let’s stop playing games. Be my Valentine.
Anyone want to take a stab at who “You” and “Me” is?
Yesterday our blog received its highest one-day traffic count ever. The site received 1,880 views yesterday, mostly due in part to two wonderous events that, by themselves, are merely disasters.
Of course, I’m talking about the neverending debacle that is the Pacifica Forum coupled with Daily Emerald sports writer Jonathan Marx ’s decision to run a story accusing beloved campus figure Jeremiah Masoli of stealing.
So, on behalf of the Oregon Commentator, here is staffer Pete Lesiak to present the “Golden Clusterfuck Award” to Marx and the PF respectively.
It seems that James O’Keefe, the pimp in the ACORN prostitution scandal, has been arrested for trying to tap the phones of a Democratic Senator from Louisiana.
Of course, as I reported in our Holiday Issue, I’ve seen O’Keefe speak in person. Oddly enough, he spoke during an “Ethics in Journalism” portion of the seminar. The consensus between Drew, Guy and I was that O’Keefe had a loose concept of journalistic integrity. That or he chose to ignore it. Either way, he advocated asinine concepts like, “Start insane student groups that your student government wouldn’t want to fund. Then report them to your students when they do fund something like ‘Students for Beastiality’ ” as the Dartmouth Review did in the 80’s. Other gems of wisdom from the disgraced O’Keefe? “Kill your Dean’s dog. That’s a headline!”
Obviously O’Keefe was never respected for his moral compass. Even the nature of his ACORN scandal was still more along the lines of manufacture than of investigation. Now, with O’Keefe facing criminal charges it’s hard to wonder how anyone took him seriously in the first place.
As a lover of all things “jerky” I find vegetarians and vegans impossibly difficult to understand. Lucky for me, there’s some sane people still out there who console my straying conscious back into the right.
In a particularly interesting article written a few days ago, science columnist Natalie Angier wrote about the viability of ethics-based veganism – a topic I’m sure we’re all familiar with given our own geographical location. In her article, Angier noted that vegans often argue the ethical way of consumption is choosing not to eat meat. In the opinion of Angier (and myself), the choice hits a few snags. Angier highlighted the more ridiculous points of the argument:
“Before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot.”
Sometimes, living in the Pacific Northwest, it’s easy to forget just how loathsome and malignant hipsters are. They are, after all, nearly as ubiquitous as such similarly squishy and useless northwest fixtures as “fog” and “moss” [Fog is not squishy. -ed], not to mention their close namesakes, hippies. We observe with embarrassed disgust these irritating, unimaginative raiders-of-long-dead-pop-culture pedaling around town on their fixed-gear bicycles, frequently sporting absurd facial hair and 1980’s garb — though neon-colored early-1990’s clothing has in recent years begun to creep into “fashion”.
But lest we forget how miserable and, ultimately, brainless and malevolent hipsterism is, one need only take a glance at the sorts of antics International Hipsterdom routinely engages in, specifically the marketing of designer jeans produced in such transgressive, counter-culture places like North Korea. According to the Swedish hipster at the center of all of this:
The idea for the project was born out of curiosity for North Korea, which has grown increasingly isolated in recent years under Western criticism of its human rights record and nuclear ambitions. “The reason we did this was to come closer to a country that was very difficult to get into contact with.” [emphasis added... also, die a painful death of syphilis, or something, you putrid sore]
Frankly, I agree. Damn the West for “isolating” North Korea by “criticizing” its human rights record. I guess when you’ve had the collapse of Enron happen on your soil, you’ve got no place pointing fingers at all those gulags. After all, it isn’t as if North Korea hasn’t walled itself off from the rest of the world since the 1950’s. Then again, no one ever accused hipsters of having any sense of history — unless you’re talking about what sorts of clothes were trendy from about 1978 until sometime in the 1990’s, that is.
Thankfully, it seems like non-hipster factions in Swedish society have come to their senses, refusing to allow shelf-space to so-called “NOKO” branded designer clothes (if you didn’t hate hipsters before, just take a look at the wastes of sperm pictured in the BBC report). At least one of the founders of “NOKO Jeans” admits that North Korea “sometimes treats its citizens terribly.” Huh. You don’t say. Well, it’s a good thing, then, that a gaggle of well-intentioned young lads decided to give it the good old college try and did what they could to fix the situation by… err… peddling North Korean-made clothing at exorbitant prices in Swedish luxury boutiques (the jeans were reputedly slated to be sold for $215). I’m sure that they really would’ve made a difference if the forces of international capital hadn’t forced their wares off the shelves.
The game’s just so loaded, you know?
At any rate, the next time you see some hipster galavanting around campus, cocksure in his faux-Mercury mustache or her unconvincing “nerd-girl” attire, just remember to ask that person if they’d buy the latest, hippest “NOKO” jeans if given the chance. At the very least, it’ll make them feel uncomfortable, defensive, and most importantly, unfashionable. What’s certain is that the those of us who don’t necessarily mind being used as marionettes by the forces of international capital need to take every advantage over this vile sub-species that we can afford, even if it means making them feel that they’re not decked out in the most transgressive and “avant” of duds.
The original publisher of the Oregon Commentator, Dane Claussen, once said that the OC’s purpose was to print the news that, “the other publications are unable to tell you because of inexperience, incompetence or the narrow-mindedness of their staffs.” That was some 26 years ago and it seems the OC still has purpose. Not to continue to toot our own horn or anything but, as any regular reader of the blog knows (because we’ve been pimping it hard), the OC has recently published a 25th anniversary book edited by the current publisher Timothy Dane Carbaugh.
Call me crazy, but it seems to me students creating, printing and selling a 300-page hard bound history book completely on their own volition about a student organization that’s survived significant adversity for more than 25 years would be a newsworthy event. Which is why I am glad to finally announce that, now just about a month after the book was released, the Daily Emerald has gotten around to publishing a story.
You’d think that this would be the sort of thing that would hit the front page of any daily student newspaper, but here at the University of Oregon you’d be wrong. Instead, the story was buried deep in the “scene” insert. I would link to the article, but it is suspiciously absent from their online content. Luckily for them, we’ve published the article here.
I wonder if ol’ Mr. Claussen would chock this up to simple narrow-mindedness or gross incompetence? I can’t say, but you take a look at this editorial cartoon about Sarah Palin’s book recently published by the Emerald and you will probably agree that it is a real chicken shit outfit over there.
Do not ridicule someone’s “intellectual substance” if you are going to screw up the spelling of “rogue”.
