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Applauding Dempsey

I would just like to comment on the columns appearing recently in The Daily Free Press. While they have been all varied in subject and talent, I would like to address one specific aspect: content. I read Neil Dempsey’s column on Monday, and I was very amused. At last, the black and white world of newsprint runs red with the blood of true patriots and smudges with the tears of a new generation of journalist. It is this kind of lively writing that has been lacking in the columns of The Daily Free Press for so long.

His dynamic, figurative language and coarse, violent sense of humor is highly entertaining. His opinions might be considered fringe or lurid, but when I pick up this paper, that’s what I want to see. I don’t even care that he is sharing autobiographical experiences. I don’t want the opinions page to turn into a piddling dear diary of black and gray drivel, but when someone has an experience of some magnitude to share, that’s what the University experience is all about.

I want columnists with interesting experiences and perspectives to share. I want the whispers in the barroom, the living-room philosophies and the lives of street rabble like myself splashed all over the pages of this paper. I want the establishment to be appalled at how politically incorrect we can be. It has become clear to me that in the last few years columnists have ridden the horse of common experience into the ground, shot it in the head and proceeded to beat it after it was dead. Then they take it to a glue factory where it is processed, and they sniff the finished product. Once high on the dead horse glue, they head for the nearest merry-go-round like a deranged ape in heat with every intention of starting the whole vicious cycle all over again using the plastic quadrupeds.

Thankfully, with Dempsey and his ilk, we will hear a minimal amount of harping on issues like riding the T, how useless the Student Union is, how crappy the Guest Policy is and so on. We all go to this University. We are very clear on all its pitfalls. Stop writing about it! These columns are certainly a forum for debating pertinent issues, in a comical way or not. Many good columns have been written on several good national issues, sociological observations and cultural phenomenon. I want to hear the perspectives and experiences of people my age, but I don’t want to hear about the stuff we share. That subject is tired. I tip my hat to the drug-crazed innuendo wrought upon the unsuspecting pages of The Daily Free Press by Neil Dempsey and those like him. Carry on!

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