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Monday, April 23, 2007

Oh, boy...

The University of Western Ontario's newspaper, the Gazette, is in trouble because of a "humorous" article published last April Fool's day. It seems that a (pseudonymously credited) writer decided that it would be great fun to "spoof" anti-sexual assualt events like "Take Back The Night" marches and "women's" plays like the Vagina Monologues.

The way he-I'm just guessing-did this was through such laff-inspiring conceits as postulating that a woman's vagina might take on a life of its own, "[crawl} from under [a] flowing white nightie, [steal] a loudspeaker and [go] on a rampage."

This is called fun. Oh, and the woman with the lively vagina turns out to have a name similar to that of a member of a women's group on campus.

Zuzu at Feministe is irked because of the various phobias and isms she believes the piece relies upon, as am I. But first of all, I'm dismayed because the piece is so , as Zuzu also puts it, "unfunny and confused."

Come on, guys, you're Canadians, for god's sake, you're from the land of SCTV.

(The show that gave us Libby Wolfson's "I'm Taking My Own Head, Screwing It On Right, and No Guy's Gonna Tell Me That It Aint." And other genuinely scathing, brilliant and funny satires of feminism at it's most self-righteous.)

This is the best you can do?

To make matters worse, these funnyboys have insured that no one will ever be likely to try satire at the paper again, including those who might be better at it.


...editor-in-chief Ian Van Den Hurk...says that the newspaper’s goal was to create satire...

Apparently the university has allowed Van Den Hurk to keep his position as editor-in-chief, but is working with him to “implement several changes for the next publishing year,” including a new study group that will take students’ concerns and suggestions when publishing each issue.
(From Feministing)


Nice work, boys. To paraphrase Spider-Man's slogan, with great power of the press comes great responsibility. Editors of student newspapers (and hell, real newspapers) ought to have that on a plaque over their layout desk.

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