People searching for that term on Google has led to an explosion of visits to this blog, via this post.
Look kids, the Heckler is here to help. Just give me your information, I’ll go over to the admissions office to argue your case, and they will be sure to not let you in.
Now scram. You’ll love it at Tufts.
Also, can the person who googled “provost georgetown beanie baby” shoot me an e-mail? I really, really want one of those.
I generally dislike MyAccess (can’t they at least put up the old-style Schedule of Classes if they’re going to put up the old-style Course Catalog?), but it can see what your schedule will look like up to THE END OF TIME:
In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos,
while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb.
The third big war will begin when you decide to take ARTP-080, Public Speaking.
NOTE: There is no humor in the following rant. Move along.
This blog’s annoying need (on my part, and probably yours) to call The Hoya on their endless bullshit and lapse of duty as our “newspaper of record” can perhaps finally come to an end. They fucked up big time.
On Wednesday I first tried to write this post, but it’s really hard for us to respond to The Hoya’s April Fools’ issue. First, one of our writers was asked to write most of the thing for them in 2006, and The Hoya couldn’t manage to find a place between making in-jokes about themselves on their masthead to at all acknowledge him. Second, their crude “jokes” have been hypocritically allowed to be printed once a year despite us being denied the permission to become an official student organization in part because we wouldn’t be allowed to write any strong satire. Third, the issue is a clear embarrassment to The Hoya and is demeaning to Georgetown and the art of humor in general.
This issue has for years been a reflection of The Hoya’s bizarre but previously concealed views about what they have covered for the past year and their contempt for certain groups and people on campus, but somehow the issue has always come and passed without widespread outrage (especially easy last year, as they released the issue weeks late when people were starting to study for finals).
The Hoya generally defends the April Fools’ issue, as many have this year, as a “joke” that everyone should “chill out” about. Satire, however, is more than just a joke. Whether The Hoya realizes it or not, it has a point, and if you’re going to write it, you have to be ready to defend that point, because it’s yours. I think they put together what they thought were jokes without realizing, in these articles, the latent racist and insensitive assumptions and ideas that made them funny to them.
We shouldn’t be surprised that these notions exist in the writers of The Hoya. I’ve seen it a lot in certain members of the Long Island-New Jersey triangle, the great mass of the student body that to a high degree defines what Georgetown is at the present. I would hazard a guess that some of it comes from of their parents and a lot of it from a general isolation from people who are different from them. This is not to say that all students from that area are like this, or that all students with such racial notions are from that area, but I think that these notions are out there in the student culture, and that culture is largely defined by them.
It doesn’t surprise me at all that The Hoya wrote these articles because we’ve received so many submissions to the Heckler that I’ve found to be not only unfunny, but also racist. One particularly baffling article that we like to pass around amongst ourselves was about Tiger Woods being arrested for rape. The reason he won so many trophies, the article alleged, was not golf skills, but raping people. On at least two occasions, I’ve had to rewrite an article I thought had a good premise but seemed racist or homophobic in how it was carried out.
Another striking thing about this April Fools’ issue, one that relates to charges of racism, is The Hoya’s obsession with vigilante justice. It’s something I’ve also noticed in the culture here. I don’t know if it’s fueled by superhero movies, Catholic ideas about justice and punishment for straying from a code of acceptable practices, or a suburban fear of outsiders and the need to purge them. But it is a rampant belief, displayed in the comments here and here and elsewhere over my three years on campus.
And in this same vein, it has surfaced that some in GUSA are trying to find a way to get The Hoya punished for what they did.
As much as I detest what The Hoya did, that may be even more distressing than latent racism bursting onto its pages. The Hoya’s freedom of speech may have been used hatefully, but we cannot let our selves or the powers that be get in the habit of punishing people for this type or any type of speech, save the extreme cases of slander and libel.
And hopefully, journalists will learn to stay out of humor. It’s a bad idea.
NOTE: We’re lazy, but we are planning a new issue of the Heckler in the next few weeks. One that, as always, we can stand by, and one that hopefully has real jokes.
So this happened. It was remarkably close given the traditional model of GUSA elections: The Hoya endorses a ticket, and students who vote, i.e. freshmen, sign off on The Hoya’s choice. The last time The Hoya’s endorsed ticket did not gone on to win the election was back in Bush’s first term of office. And that only happened because the ticket that narrowly won had fines (something they had back then?) that exceeded the $75 limit on campaign spending and had the balls to put flyers refuting the Hoya endorsement inside of each copy of The Hoya, but their disqualification was overturned months after the election. Current seniors have never seen an election in which the Hoya-endorsed ticket did not win, and neither did the class graduating before them.
We may all think the Hoya Ed Board made a strange decision this year on their endorsement, but we have to remember it’s our duty to vote how they say to vote, no matter how bad a choice it may seem. So Georgetown, enjoy your new GUSA executives:
You deserve them.
And thus our beloved Ed Board continues its silence on the biggest news of the year.
I understand, though. We printed our print issue with Silver Communications last year, and our shipment somehow ended up at somebody’s house on 36th St. Luckily somebody at the house knew what the Heckler was and correctly guessed that 2,000 issues of the Heckler were not meant only for him.
Well, it looks as if what it looked like was going to happen with the GUSA election happened. The disqualified tickets are back on the ballot. And boy, they sure have the momentum going for them! Who can name another ticket in the race now? It’s all Lamb-Breen and Dagher-Ibrahim, Dagher-Ibrahim and Lamb-Breen. There’s no oxygen left in this race for the tickets who weren’t disqualified.
One of these two tickets would certainly win, but Nick “19 Years In The Making” Troiano’s hilarious decision to re-instate instant-runoff voting was enacted for next year’s election. Now that we have a regular ol’ plurality election here for this year (or is this one a Cajun-style runoff? who knows), their high profile won’t matter as much, but I think all the attention will still probably bring one of them the victory. That is, if the Hoya Ed Board doesn’t strike again with its annual pick, although I have a hard time seeing how anyone but the Ed Board would like their pick this year.
I think the key to this race, though, will be who gets disqualified next. Will it be Lamb-Breen? I think so. They seem like the favorites, and they know that the attention of another disqualification, this time without some of it being diverted to a second ticket, would probably seal a win for them. I’m guessing the weaker Dagher-Ibrahim will hang back and hope that Lamb-Breen’s second disqualification won’t be overturned, because even a second disqualification for Dagher-Ibrahim may not be enough to raise their name ID to winning level. But who knows? It’s anyone’s race. After seeing these two tickets get all the attention, tickets who were too shy to get disqualified last time might do it this time. Maybe every ticket but Dagher-Ibrahim will get themselves disqualified. Who knows?
However it plays out, the important thing to remember that it is your duty as a student to vote in this election, which is more important than national elections, because it takes all of us working together to keep this charade going. Do it for the douchebags who want to be Bill Clinton.
On a side note, has anyone been following the Hoya’s coverage of this? They’ve had all the developments from the past week slopped together in one article that is getting extremely long and incoherent. It’s great. And check out the comments, which now stand at over 50. One guy alleges that friend of the Heckler Will Dreher is a member the leader of a secret society called the Wolf’s Head Union, which the poster says is in an eternal struggle with the (Second? Sixth? Sexless?) Stewards and of which I’ve never heard. Can that crazy guy comment here on what this wolf taxidermists’ guild is? Are they these guys who capture wolves and make them sit on boxes of motor oil? Because wolves hate that.
Just look at that wolf howl. Wolves fucking hate fossil fuels. Or maybe the other Stewards finally just gave in and rename themselves. Who knows? Who cares? Well, yeah, obviously me.
Finally, can we please tack a superfluous keg ban referendum onto this ballot? That was so much fun.
Play this as you read this post. I MEAN IT.
Wow, how long has it been since we had election disqualifications? Twistah? That was like three years ago! Anyway, the happy news came late Monday night that two tickets were disqualified for illegal flyering! Yay! Usually we have to wait until after the election for issues to flare up that question the legitimacy of the election, but here we are, on election eve, getting to open our presents early. Does this mean we get to have additional problems with the election after students vote today too? A boy can only hope!
Really, though, I have to thank the Election Commission. I wasn’t sure it was worth it for me to take Lamb and Dagher posters and stealthily put them up in Darnall, ICC, Village B, and Leo’s in the dark of night, but the Election Commission showed us that dreams do come true, and now I have blog material.
I am sure the Hoya Ed Board will back up this decision. “On the national political scene, putting campaign posters in places where they aren’t allowed does not disqualify a candidate; in student goverment, however, we believe such rules are necessary so that nobody sees a campaign sign within 500 feet of a tray of chicken fingers because, as science tells us, those people will invariably vote for the names on that sign. The smell of chicken fingers is just to strong for us to perform our democratic duty.”
Unfortunately, the Hoya website seems to have exploded in the wake of this GUSA news:
So I will have to wait until they can compose themselves.
EDIT: Well, the site is back up, but there’s nothing from the Ed Board. I guess they’re pretty backed up over there, because the two editorials this week are about stuff that was news a couple weeks ago. AND SO WE WAIT.
Hey, look at that. It’s a new issue of the Heckler. I’m not sure how it got here, but be nice to it. It tried.
Last year’s Hoya Ed Board struck the correct note in their GUSA endorsement:
GUSA is a joke. A tragically, hilariously, hyperbolically, theatrically side-splitting joke. A joke whose punch line we will never fully understand.
Correct. But this year’s Ed Board is not going to give up the enormous power they have to pick a GUSA president so easily:
About a year ago, the editorial board of The Hoya (then differently composed) offered an answer of its own — not much.
OOOH! BURN! BURN! ED BOARD FIGHT! ED BOARD FIGHT!
Then differently composed. BAM! Take that, old Ed Board! You want to go, old Ed Board?! Huh? You think you can just call GUSA a joke and undermine the goose bumps we get interviewing GUSA candidates and arbitrarily picking a pair of them?!
Vitamin Water drinking contest.
ICC 116.
6:45 P.M.
Monday night if you guys don’t have a midterm to study for or anything.
OLD ED BOARD, YOU’RE GOING DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!
As much as I love the hilarious intrigue of a Hoya Ed Board fight (hold my North Face fleece, Marissa, it’s time last year’s Ed Board meets Mr. Old Pocketknife My Grandfather Gave Me), we have to move on to the endorsement:
Calen Angert (MSB ’11) and Jason Kluger (MSB ’11).
Okay, despite this Ed Board TRYING TO DENY THE GLORIOUS CLASS OF 2010 A GUSA PRESIDENCY OF ITS OWN, there is admittedly one good part of their platform:
They also aim to enliven extracurricular life on campus by asking the GUSA Senate to devote half of the $60,000 GUSA budget to a “Georgetown Fund,” which would enable student groups to host events that SAC couldn’t or wouldn’t fund.
Hey, maybe then we could have Heckler parties besides that one earlier this year that quickly became too crowded and everything, but actually, this funding thing will never fucking happen.
But let’s move on to the real reason the Ed Board picked them (depsite, of course, the MSB and FUCKING SOPHOMORES TRYING TO KEEP 2010 FROM A GUSA PREZ biases):
Both men know student government well. Angert has served in the GUSA Senate and as secretary of student life in the GUSA Executive Cabinet … Kluger has served in the Executive Cabinet as director of advertising, and has helped to organize successful events like “May the Best Man Win” (a panel discussion and subsequent presidential debate watch) and an Energia lecture.
I don’t think these positions seem very impressive, and I don’t remember that election thing happening. Or what the hell an “Energia lecture” even is. Neither of them turn up anything in searches of the archives of my Georgetown e-mails for the past year, so I call bullshit. But anyway, you were talking about experience?
Angert and Kluger’s experience in student government will prove valuable if they are elected. On the national political scene, outsiders are often welcome; in student government, however, we believe that experienced leaders with the skills necessary to meet achievable goals are ideal.
YES! They just basically said that Obama was okay to become the leader of the free world with little experience because, you know, the ability to handle the U.S. presidency pales in comparison to the skills needed to run GUSA. What?!
And the editorial ends:
They are ready to lead, and we endorse their candidacy.
Ready to lead… Ready to lead… Where have I heard that one?
Oh right.
McCain-Palin-Angert-Kluger ‘09. COUNTRY FIRST.
Ed Board, please go back to writing syllabi for wine-tasting classes.
Also, on a side note, look at their abomination of a campaign video:
Classic MSB creativity! (Our MSB readers, uh, you’re cool, though. Really. Just don’t go making a collegey homepage web-portal thing.)
Now, it’s pretty unoriginal for you to just change around the words of that viral Lonely Island dick-in-a-box video to suit your GUSA campaign, but the winning campaign two years ago weren’t comedy writers, and they were at least able to kind of sing their own song without it sounding like a cross between an Alban Berg opera and a bad American Idol audition. But it’s very, very unorginial, though highly business-minded, to try to do the same thing with the most recent polymorphously perverse Lonely Island video, which seemed like it just became sort of viral because media outlets assumed it had to be another dick-in-a-box thing, and they would have to report on it one way or another.
Angert has even used this ripped-off idea as evidence that he is not a Pat Dowd Manchurian Candidate (McCain!).
The best part of this video, though, is this comment underneath it:
darktrinity1911 (1 day ago)
This video sucks. Poor audio quality, poor candidates dancing like douches.
And the candidates’, shall we say, douchey reply:
calenandjason (1 day ago)
haha you’re right darktrinity we will do a much better job representing the student body than we could ever do dancing
haha ed board you’re right ready to lead country first haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha
NEW HECKLER ISSUE SOMETIME MONDAY. I PROMISE. PROBABLY.
This admittedly ridiculously long rant I wrote last week upset some people in the comments and our inbox, but I thought I had heard the last of these failure-bound college-homepage-peddlers until this evening, when I returned from class to find this banner hanging between the first- and second-floor windows of my apartment:
Hey look, it’s somehow yet another stupid college homepage thing, this time set up by Campus Corner Connection, Inc., whose website, at first glance, adorably manages to look like one of those search-engine infested abandoned URL-address placeholders. “For the People, By the People…”
Wait, what does that ellipsis mean? Oh right, the mysterious terror of their unauthorized banners appearing on the outer walls of your apartment. By the people.
I have to say though, this doomed college homepage thing looks a little better than the others. Look, pretty animated GIFs! Links to your two favorite newspapers, The Hoya and The Georgetown Independent! A forum where you can chat with the people who run Hoya Connection and their various aliases! Promotional pens, calendars, magnets and t-shirts with images that also appear to be from a URL placeholder site and which may or may not be free!
Now, I am flattered that this Brand Ambassador or “marketing intern” must have decided that the attention I’ve given to these stupid things were worth bothering me by putting up a banner on my and my roommates’ apartment without our permission, but this marketing stunt made me angry.
Next time, please make your marketing even more extreme by doing the ultimate desecration-to-a-Village-A-apartment stunt, throwing a brick through our window. At least then I’d achieve my dream of being in a Public Safety Alert.
