Another shocking Truth

According to Light & Truth, the media has a huge liberal bias. Score: Actual Truth 1, Light & Truth 0. Such rabid conservatives only serve to expose their own vast hypocrisy with the publication of blatantly biased rags such as L&T. If (alleged) liberal bias in the media is so wrong, what makes conservative bias any better? Just a little tobacco and scotch for thought.

The views expressed in L&T are the kind that give moderate conservatives such as myself a bad name. The hubris and hate which fill the pages of L&T aren't conservative at all. By examining just who and what L&T targets, one can get a clearer sense of its true philosophy.

Let's start with the cover. On the left hand edge, a Birkenstock-clad Yalie is depicted forcing the terrible burden of recycling onto the newly arrived Yalie who stands at center. This poor frosh, who (by sheer coincidence, I'm sure) happens to be a blond-haired, blue-eyed man, is also subject to the twin outrages of free birth control and exposure to different ethnic cultures. It is worth noting that L&T's idea of Mexican culture involves sombrero-wearing, sangria-swilling men and buxom women in tight clothing. How late twentieth century of them.

As one continues through L&T, homosexuals, rape victims, minorities, the Yale Forestry School, and various majors are ridiculed and rhetorically spat upon. What kind of world would we live in if no one recycled, managed our natural resources responsibly, or attempted to control population growth? Perhaps a visit to India or some other third world nation is in order for the staff of L&T.

In the end, though, L&T's frosh 1997 Survival Guide must not be judged on its (titanic) offensive content, but on its utility to those it aims to help. Is there truth in its advertising? Let's put it this way: any poor frosh who actually heeds the advice in L&T's guide will be only slightly more successful than those who followed the Donner party into the high Sierra. After all, L&T's words of wisdom are dispensed by one Robert Stulac. This is a person who made it his stated goal to become the most hated man at Yale, and who pursued his objective by ripping down posters for homosexual events in Yale Station.

Stulac's personal quest for enmity illustrates the central hypocrisy of L&T. They perversely use the excuse of oppression by a liberal majority to justify repeated attacks on other members of society associated with liberalism. What L&T's editors don't seem to realize is that by pushing their dogma of hate, they in essence take conservatism off the table, leaving only the very liberal homogeny that they rail against. It is incredibly unfortunate that, thanks in large part to L&T, conservatism at Yale has become equated with hate and intolerance. My liberal friends, once they've realized that my brand of conservatism is not rabid, enjoy having political discussions with me precisely because I'm not a liberal. It is this kind of debate, between reasonable people of opposing viewpoints, that is hampered by L&T's survival guide.

Fortunately for the freshmen (and for Yale) L&T's 1997 Survival Guide is incredibly boring. It took all my stamina to get through it. I doubt that many frosh will slog their way through. To be offensive is bad enough, but to be boring and offensive, now that's downright sinful. L&T better hope that Jonathan Edwards (and his angry god) aren't watching.

Dan Dudis is a junior in Pierson College.

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