My comeback

Hi, Calvin. I’ll make this quick.

1.) You describe articles with a political slant as whiny and boring. However, this is only your own subjective interpretation. One person’s whiny and boring piece of crap is another person’s interesting, thoughtful piece of polemic. In my previous WesSpeak I never said that any of the columns flat-out sucked; you seemed to think this was my intention. I merely wanted to SUGGEST that in the future, maybe a few columnists could pretty please think about tackling some more political issues. This is because at the moment, a lot of them are trying to be entertaining in the same way. It’s not for me or you to say whether entertaining columns serve a better purpose than more analytical ones. Again, that all comes down to individual opinion. That’s what makes this piddling little discussion of ours so interesting, don’t you think?

2.) Even if you already believe (and I don’t) that there are already enough “political” articles in the Argus, that doesn’t mean it still wouldn’t be nice for columnists to tread that kind of territory.

3.) I didn’t mean you should suddenly start writing about starving children in Africa. However, last semester I remember reading articles about Tony Blair, the war in Iraq, gender identity, hot-topic works of literature, etc. I’m sorry your imagination is so limited as to limit “political” issues to starving children.

4.) I predicted somebody would use that oh-so-easy comeback, “why don’t you just write a column yourself?” Excuse my non-P.C.-ness, but this line of argument is retarded. If you criticize a movie, that doesn’t mean you think you can make a better one yourself. If you criticize a book, that doesn’t mean in order for your criticism to be justified, you have to first write one yourself. In my experience, an audience doesn’t criticize things because they think they personally would do a better job, it’s usually because they already have high expectations for their columnists/movie directors/jugglers/mimes/whatever.

5.) Really, what’s wrong with wondering what our talented Argus columnists have to say about Hurricane Katrina rather than Wesleyan social life? Excuse me for being fucking curious.