A disclaimer on the front page of the Hoya’s annual spring joke issue advises its readers to proceed with caution. “Chill out, tight-ass,” it reads. “This issue is a joke.” Ah, so Jack the Bulldog didn’t actually have an affair with the West Virginia Mountaineer.
“The material is fictitious, meant only to amuse you, the reader, and to show the humor of news in general,” the notice goes on. “No harm is intended in the issue so before taking offense, please read the issue with a good sense of humor.”
I’ve read through the joke issue and I’ve got a confession to make: that tight-ass is me. I tried to approach the issue with a sense of humor. (I like to think it’s a good one, but my friends might tell you otherwise.) Yet, I found myself offended at numerous portions of the issue, some that were politically incorrect, to say the least, some that were in exceptionally poor taste and some that were simply mean-spirited.
Before I specify what in particular offended me, I should note that I know where the staff of the Hoya is coming from. Having served as the humor editor of my high school’s weekly paper for a year, I know how difficult it is to write satire that is funny, makes a statement, and is not outrageously offensive. A general rule of thumb: as long as you satisfy the first criterion, you can usually settle for one out of the other two.
I’m not criticizing the Hoya’s joke issue because I didn’t find it funny, with the exception of the letter from the Whale (“Eeeeeeooooo … Huhhhhhhhh … “) and the “President DeGioia Announces Plans to Visit Main Campus Next Month” article. The occasionally excessive profanity didn’t upset me either, such as this passage from a “ranting” editorial: “No one deserves more blame than Jack. Except maybe leprechauns. Or Belgium. Fuck Belgium. They had a fucking civil war over break.” (The rule here: profanity can enhance content that’s already funny, but it can’t create humor by itself.)
No, my real problem is that when the issue’s writers couldn’t think of anything funny, clever or satirical, they too often settled for humorless, odious content, some of it targeting members of the Georgetown community.
Consider the opinion piece headlined “I’m Not a Bitch, I’m Just PMSing,” intended to satirize Emily Liner’s feminist column “Skirting the Issues.” Or the blurb suggesting that Vice President of Safety and Security “Rocky ‘Godfather Bambino’ DelMonocco [sic]” is involved in organized crime, presumably because of his Italian surname. Or the advice column mocking a seemingly gay student desiring to become a Jesuit. I know better than to casually throw around words like misogynistic, racist and homophobic, but if I didn’t, that’s how I would describe these articles.
If the joke about DelMonaco’s last name doesn’t strike you as racially insensitive, perhaps the article on the bottom of the front page headlined “Vikings Vow to Vanquish Bias” does. A clumsy parody of the protest regarding the Hoya’s coverage of the Jena 6 controversy, the article demeans the legitimate questions that the episode raised about race on our campus, as well as the student groups involved. Extra points to whoever figures out whom the “National Association for the Advancement of Norwegian Warlords” is supposed to represent.
Though the Hoya did manage a shot at Associate Vice President for Auxiliary Services Margie Bryant with a 0.2 “hotness” rating in their trading card section, the Campus Opinion section is the main offender on the personal insult front. The section suggested that DeGioia, who lives with his wife of 13 years and their young son, would like to participate in three-way sex with University spokesperson Julie Green Bataille and “that hot girl from MUG.” In a spurious JT III quote, an anonymous Hoya writer also declared, “All the [Georgetown] cheerleaders are ugly.”
I doubt that any of these parties will publicly speak out against the joke issue to avoid drawing undue attention to it, but I think the Hoya owes them an apology regardless. The Bryant insult is mean, the DeGioia statement is in incredibly poor taste, and the quote about the cheerleaders is simply cruel, not to mention untrue. And don’t forget about DelMonaco.
Before concluding this critique of the joke issue, I feel I must mention the article headlined, “Corp Opens Abortion Clinic: Goal to Provide Inexpensive, Speedy Service.” Rather than explain the obvious, I’ll let this appalling headline, and the following passage, speak for themselves: “Wade said that the Corp will save even more money by continuing to ignore things like customer service by using coat hangers rather than the traditional ‘squish the children into a stew and suck them with a vaginal vacuum’ technique.”
Unsurprisingly, the Hoya didn’t attach real names to any of the joke issue’s content, thereby dodging personal accountability. They also declined to post the issue on their webpage, perhaps to avoid archiving their cheap insults for posterity or opening themselves up to scrutiny on the internet.
Doubtless, some will think I’m taking the joke issue too seriously; maybe I should lighten up and not be so politically correct. I’d respond to these people that I enjoy a good joke when I see one, but that personal insults and tasteless remarks do not qualify. When it comes to satire, the line between what’s acceptable and what’s unacceptable is very flexible. The Hoya snapped this line in half. I can only hope that their staff, Editor-in-Chief John Swan (COL ‘09) in particular, will remedy the wrongs done by this issue and that, when April 1 rolls around next year, they’ll think twice about publishing something which reflects poorly on themselves, their newspaper and the entire Georgetown community.
