Aristotle was a great thinker. But I'm not sure his ideas about homosexuality are particularly relevant to modern American society. They're certainly no more relevant than his ideas about slavery: "A slave is a particular species of property..." (The Politics, Chapter VIII) Or his ideas about women: "the male is by nature superior to the female..." (The Politics, Chapter XII)
You know, if Aristotle ever read Peninsula's spin on his philosophy, he'd probably eat earth or pluck out his hair, too.
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If They Just Don't Get It, Slap 'Em: In the recent issue of Lighthouse, Yvette C. Alt '92 wrote an interesting article about the violent aspects of Thelma and Louise. Alt speculated that her strong distaste for the felonies perpetrated by the movie's protagonists had something to do with her own summer job at the Illinois Department of Criminal Justice.
All of which makes Alt's description of her reaction to a National Public Radio talk show rather confusing.
"One of the callers, a young-sounding woman, was waxing eloquent about the ennobling capacity of crime in Thelma and Louise," Alt recalled. "I considered how lucky that caller was that only her voice was in my office, instead of her face, which I felt like slapping" (emphasis mine).
Now, now. Hitting people is not a very nice thing to do. I don't think it's particularly legal in Illinois.
As Alt says herself one long paragraph later, "the result of escalating crime--female or otherwise--is always negative; it is always increased violence, and there can be nothing positive about this."
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You Can't Spell KnUCkleheads...: As promised, Undergraduate Council chair David A. Aronberg '93 has appointed a public relations officer to help improve the UC's image. (In an editorial last month filled with parenthetical phrases like this, I poked a bit of fun at this idea, and at the entire council. I apologize abjectly to the selfless UC members who took offense.)
Anyway, congratulations to the UC's new publicity chair, Jacinda T. Townsend '92. Townsend's claim to publicity fame: She pissed off the entire campus by hanging a swastika from her window last spring to protest Confederate flags hung by Bridget Kerrigan '91 and Timothy McCormack '92. (McCormack now chairs the UC's adhoc committee on ROTC.)
As UC flak, Townsend will organize responses to UC-bashers like me.
"It's not a big deal," Aronberg said. "She was very eager. She wanted to do it very badly. I'm sure she'll do a great job. She's no stranger to the campus press, right?"
I have nothing further to say about this matter.