Withering heights

In response to the column by Ms. Banter, here quoted for clarification:

"I've got something important to say. I, Emily Banter, am a liberal-Democrat-activist-feminist on campus and proud of it. All right, so maybe I find bra-burning distasteful, unless it's part of a really hot sorority initiation. And maybe I really did burn a few bras, so to speak, at the Phi Kappa Sigma Beta Zeta Dada Libra Alpha Centauri initiation, but we sure make up for our actions by holding charity man-auctions or whatever it is we do near Christmas time. Go Santa! I'm so proud to be at Princeton, because I am convinced that I have important things to do and say. For instance, I have these important liberal ideas. Like when Saddam was executed, I told all my friends: That's just not right. Sure, he was a genocidal dictator, but we can't suspend our beliefs in the moral impermissibility of the death sentence just because he killed so many people. Sure, it's not as if I'm saying this to, like, Kofi Annan, and sure these conversations tend to be over delicious Pernod aperitifs before dinner, but I really talk the talk. As the Christians say, 'in the beginning was the Word.' No, I'm not Christian, and I'm not saying that I'm God, but you should keep in mind that I do look divine at Houseparties. Or so the nice cashier at Ralph Lauren tells me.

"Anyway, it's all about optimism and good faith. I mean, we are Princeton students, and we're at an apotheosis. There are no shoes we can't fill. Out of our mouths flow the wise words of — of college students. Yes. It's not as if optimism and good faith has ever been wrong — I mean, it's not as if it led to Iraq or whatever. That's the thing I hate the most — critics. Especially those who rant in endless diatribes about culture. Can't they see that culture, politics and ideology are completely separate entities? And don't they know that Princeton isn't a microcosm of the culture of the elite? Idiots! Fools! Rhodes Scholars! Come on, let's be optimistic, let's be progressive! I've got news for you — you're privileged to be here, so stop complaining. Open your eyes instead of your mouths! Unless you're at a football game, because the heavenly sound of spirited voices ascending to the skies is reminiscent of the doleful pitter-patter of children's feet in the cancer ward I volunteer at. Yes!"

I am sorely disappointed by the feverish and sloppy words used by such so-called liberal-Democrat-activist-feminists. While Ms. Banter makes no reference to it in her column, it's clear that all feminists are baby-killers and that gay rights are a step away from marrying sperm whales. We conservatives prefer to conclude, using the relevant material, for instance bibles of the King James variety, oh dear, I've forgotten what I meant to say. Wait, the axioms are returning to me. Yes. I remember now. The truths of mankind, inscribed upon tablets of stone, declare that we ought to preserve the sanctity of mankind. Deviance is devilish. Chastity is next to godliness — literally. My friend, Chastity, sits next to her boyfriend, Godliness, in The Society of Economists and Bankers where we throw eggs at pictures of Stiglitz. Oh, how I long for the Middle Ages, when the chiaroscuro of good and evil had not yet been supplanted by the kitschy Fauvism of liberal, er, man-cow-manure.

Come to think of it, Ms. Banter and I aren't really all that different. We, the schizophrenic Herr Doctors of good society, prescribe constructive ways of behaving that function as imperatives. Before we began to speak, the world had already spoken through us, as though we were the nosey puppets of warring factions in which every "yes" is replied to with a "no, hear me speak." We're actually enjoying our differences, she and I, in which people are considered the pawns of politics, means to ends, to be fought over and won. Yes, the faceless crowd at the Dinky, orange petals on a black flag. Those who speak the loudest broadcast themselves at the speed of light, and everywhere the silent uncertain masses, reifications of this wave-particle duality, shuffle through the slits into the slaughterhouses, projecting patterns of light and dark. Nice work if you can get it.

Sincerely, Bill Summers Class of '68 Johann Loh is a sophomore from Singapore. He can be reached at loh@princeton.edu.