Yoon first failed to see the sophisticated argument taking place behind this parody; it was a kind of "meta-editorial," if you will. He also failed to recognize that my parody was an embodiment of the laughter of the Bakhtinian carnivalesque, a laughter which observes few limits (as Bakhtin scholars Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson have pointed out). In fact, this irreverent Bakhtinian laughter is what our good friends Beavis and Butthead draw on so liberally.
Yoon's call for serious intellectual debate is nothing more than a call for didactic and patronizing writing. Instead of allowing editorialists to make complicated arguments in creative ways, Yoon wants us all to reject satire, wit and the fine traditions of Swift, Pope and Rabelais. Simply because he does not (or cannot) grasp more difficult genres doesn't mean that all writers must do away with them, however.
Yoon then urges editorialists to engage in self-censorship, to try as much as possible to avoid offending anyone. He claims that writers usually write offensive articles for the sheer purpose of offending people. Clearly this is wrong and intellectually irresponsible. But Yoon gives no concrete evidence for his accusation.
Yoon writes, "rational, well-argued editorials typically generate little mail and even less interest." No, Tehshik, you've confused them with the boring editorials. In this sentence, Yoon attempts to conflate the editorial that gets no mail with the "good" editorial. Yoon sets up a false dichotomy between "well-argued" editorials and funny editorials--failing to recognize that editorials can be both.
Yoon pathetically attempts to turn receiving no reader mail into a badge of merit. I see things differently. Getting no mail doesn't mean you persuaded everyone of your point; it means that nobody bothered to read your piece. Your words now sit in the fireplace of someone's common room, in a somewhat altered form.
Yoon states that the job of the editorialist is to "persuade, not to ridicule." As a member of the parliamentary debate team, if I have learned any thing, it's that ridiculing weak logic is one of the best ways to expose its flaws. I have a different vision of the editorialist's role in the intellectual community. Harvard students are so opinionated that persuasion is not only an extremely presumptuous goal for a writer, it's also an impossible one.
The editorialist's goals are to be read and to make people think about why they hold the beliefs they do. We may often say things which upset or offend people. We should have no regrets because we are simply saying what we believe--such is our right in a democracy and intellectual community. If we get a strong response and many letters, we have done our job. By forcing people to put their principles into writing, we have made them think about and perhaps even reconsider their values.
In an epigram contained in Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche writes, "Objections, digressions, gay mistrust, the delight in mockery are signs of health: everything unconditional belongs in pathology." In her most recent appearance at Harvard, controversial scholar Camille Paglia stated unequivocally that "Offensiveness is an American right."
The points made by Nietzsche and Paglia are well-taken. Satire, wit and ad hominem attacks have been and always will be essential to healthy, honest and vital discourse. Just because the people who don't excel in these areas want us to have pity on them doesn't mean we must give up the treasured rhetorical devices which make campus debate not only intelligent, but also entertaining--and therefore worth reading.