In “The Philadelphia Story,” Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn) asks Macauley Connor (James Stewart) why he didn’t make love to her when he’d been given the chance.  His answer: “You were somewhat the worse for wine, and there are rules about that.”

No doubt the two anonymous Wespeak writers who, last spring, declared that they had been assaulted, presumably while under the influence, now wish that the rules of engagement enacted by dead white males to keep females beneath them (the bedrock contention of Women’s Studies) hadn’t gone the way of the flesh.

That bears repeating: The way of the flesh, at least at Wes, is the way to go.  One fine autumn afternoon, as a couple strolled by, her swain was struck to lyric, “I don’t want to fuck you anymore.”  End of Love Story, a la Wes.  And in a recent issue, Argus blogger Abbey Francis relayed the tale of a sister whose introduction to anal sex had left her feeling (you won’t believe this) “degraded.”  Clearly, the course book is wanting a basic, introductory “MULTICULTURAL DIVERSITY 101: We shall ANALyze the missionary position… ”

Michael, would you get behind it?  You’d gotten behind that case of coals to Newcastle, PORNOCOPIA.  Now THERE’S a label designed to enhance the image and treatment of Wesleyan women, one of whom in a recent Wespeak dubbed your campus “hypersexualized.”  Should you venture to deny it, I daresay you’d be roundly disabused by the entire sugar-and-spice-and-all-that’s-nice cross section of the student body.

Not your body, evidently.  What is?  The body politic.  In the wake of Senator Kennedy’s death, you mounted your bully pulpit to urge the students, when home on break, to lobby their parents to embrace  universal healthcare.   Why?  Because it was the Senator’s dying wish – in other words, “Win one for the Nipper!”  Your pitch was a cogent example of “critical thinking.”

And when you aren’t preaching to the Wesleyan Student Choir, you’re preaching to choirs from off-campus pulpits (most pulpiteers get by with one): The Journal and Living Constitution in Tara Country; The Chinatown Examiner way out west in Bullitsburg (the turf of a former madam unbalanced by vertigo); and your go-to pulpit, the wolf-packed Huffing and Puffing Post.

There, in the aftermath of 11/2, you posted advice to Humpty Dumpty on how to get his shell game back together again and (mind if I mix my metaphors?) untomb his Second Coming.  Allow me to boil the thousand words of gruel you set before the Chief Dissembler down to two: dissemble better.

In a recent blog to the faithful on High, you channeled a Wes professor’s alert concerning a rash (he alleged) of anti-Chinese hate speech.  So Islamophobus Americanus (link to Chaplain Aly) now is a Sinophobus Americanus.

Alas, the leading Sinophobe is none other than (metaphorically speaking) your significant other.  Splitsville for you and Barry?  Not as long as you’re both on board in knowing “whose ass to kick.”  The words are your kick-ass President’s, the ass Uncle Sam’s.  What a pity it is that his defenders comprise the patriotic 80% who never neglect (as you, in your Thanksgiving blog, neglected) to thank the Pilgrims.

For, had it not been for them, your servant-amenitied mansion would be a lean-to short on cyberspace and long on outdoor plumbing.  So, until you return to the Noble Red Man the windfall gain you reaped at the hands of the Pilgrims, who got them dirty as they sowed, the moral high ground on which you presume to take your stand will shake, rattle, and roll.

Speaking of patriots, a number of them managed to beat Admissions’ fail-safe screening procedures, and now the Beta house is a veritable band of brothers, drinking grog instead of green tea, not even brown-bagging it as they swill their rot-gut on their deck and entice every heteronormative female strolling by to join them.  (Michael, be sure to add to the Betas’ list of offenses that of gender orientation discrimination.  Their rap sheet is a long one?  Not to brag, but mine is longer.)  As if all that were not enough, the Betas have slammed your every effort to get your foot in their off-campus door.  All your huffing and puffing (“Open, sezza me!”), to no avail.

Me, I simply would have changed the Office of Public Safety’s name to Committee of Public Safety, and taken it from there, but you, Sun Tzu (who knew?), preferred the indirect maneuver.  In “Casablanca” – you must have remembered this – the Nazi Major Strasser orders the Fishy Captain Reynaud to close Rick’s Place.  Reynaud: “But I have no reason.”  Strasser: “Find one.”  And so the captain did.  And so your devoted factotum did, discerning a “pattern” of alleged assaults on Wesleyan women.  A pattern?  Have Public Safety make public ALL its data on alleged assaults, both inside and outside your jurisdiction, so we could compare.

As for the campus’ low-level, everyday assaults on female sensibilities (“Yo bitch, suck my dick, you cunt!” – the words of Cordelia Hyland’s greeter; see her Dec. 7 Wespeak), whatever became of the job of protecting a woman’s right to choose a tonic realm of discourse over a verbal killing field?  Not your job.  Above your pay grade.  Should you be asked about the deep, abiding hurts endured by the fairer (I’m biased) half of the student body, I daresay you’d answer, “Obamacare.”

Benjamin is a member of the class of 1957.