Good morning, Boston University. My name is Ethan Rosenberg, one of your Wednesday columnists for the semester. Over the past few months, you and I have shared many experiences, adventures, bike-rides and candlelit dinners. We’ve lived through many important events in our nation’s history, like … uh … well, there was … filing our taxes. Wasn’t that exciting? Personally, I’m titillated by the mere thought. Give me a moment. All right, I’m OK. We’ve been through good times and bad times, and parsley-sage-rosemary-and-thymes. We’ve had ups and downs. Some of us have even had uppers. Others of us have been ABC anchorman Hugh Downs. And I’ve shared a lot of words with you. Nearly 10,000. And only a few hundred dealt with quantum mechanics.

So this week, the last week of the semester, I’d like to share someone else’s words, with a foray into the elusive world of little-known superheroes. This week, we’ll take a look at an excerpt from Marvin Haberdasher’s startlingly prophetic 1967 graphic novel, Captain Equality, set in the year 2006:

I am Captain Equality, defender of justice, righter of wrongs and wearer of spandex. Not to be confused with the artificial sweetener of similar nomenclature. Like all good superheroes, I have a sidekick and an agenda. My sidekick is a pimply 12-year-old boy I found on the street on his way to the grocery store. He was bit by a radiologist who drove a 2003 Mitsubishi Spyder. My agenda is equality.

I seek equality in all men. And women. I apologize. I seek equality in all people — the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the tall and the short. Also, the middle-aged, the moderately wealthy and the average-of-height. Oh, and hermaphrodites.

Like all good superheroes of political noteworthiness, I have friends in Washington. Powerful friends. Friends with ties and comb-overs and ridiculously hot wives, but no sidekicks. Unless you count interns, which most people do not, as they are too numerous. These politicians help me with my own superhero super-agenda.

The first steps toward universal equality have been power-walked by the machine of euphemism. This fantastic and innovative system has paved the way for a new language of fairness and justice — Political Correctness. As everyone knows, when something is said in the mainstream media, it immediately becomes true. Therefore, calling short people vertically challenged stops them from being short. Now they are more equal. Similarly, calling someone economically marginalized means they aren’t poor anymore. Equality. And just watch as a serial-killing, white-supremacist squirrel rapist becomes an afterlife-valuing own-race enthusiast with a penchant for small woodland creature use. The man’s an aficionado. Now he can rejoin society. And it’s all thanks to language. Fair, equal use of language.

In 2002, my super-agenda got a huge leg-up by none other than the First Mate of Equality, George W. Bush. He signed the No Child Left Behind Act, making a giant leap for my cause. For those of you who haven’t read it, allow me to summarize. It basically says that all students are at different levels of intelligence and ability, so it’s hard to teach them all. Therefore, we should aim for the lowest common denominator to ensure that even the dumbest of kids are educated. This is much easier than the old way of trying to get the low-achievement kids up to the speed of their classmates, and it still makes everyone equal. By moving at the speed of the slowest kid in the class — nay, the nation — we can remain certain that no student will be left feeling stupid. The dimmest little light bulb won’t be so glum if we dim the other lights. Of course, no one will be able to see, but no matter. And as for the children who aren’t extremely dumb — to hell with them. Don’t they want to be equal to everyone else? They can sit patiently and wait for the rest of the class to catch up with them, or they can kindly leave America and stop whining.

Mr. Bush has also gone a long way in the fight for global equality, a job so big it requires both a superhero and a superpower. George and I have been working very closely together since the first year of his presidency to ensure that people all around the world are equal. With his help, we’ve been able to start the spread of democracy, a two-fold bundle of equality. 1) By going to the Middle East and killing everyone we can find who doesn’t believe in democracy, we’ve been able to give everyone the same viewpoint, thus ending all political argument. Which is what they really wanted in the first place, right? 2) Everyone knows that all citizens of representative democracies have an equal vote. Their views are listened to by their respective representatives, and their thoughts count just the same as everyone else’s, regardless of who they know or how much money they have. Universally.

Perhaps someday, if we all work together, the world will truly be equal. We can all have the same political views, the same government, the same language, even the same sneakers. That’s right; we’ll all dress alike so no one will feel unstylish. All the really attractive or smart people will also have to be killed, of course, so no one will feel ugly or unintelligent. And if there’s one country that can do it, you can be damn sure it’s America, land of the free and home of the brave. If we’re all brave enough to shed our individuality and interests, we can be free of unfairness and inequity for the rest of time. Oh, and ownership of personal property. We’ll have to shed that too. For democracy.

Ethan Rosenberg, a freshman in the College of Fine Arts, has been a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at [email protected].