College Journalists Apologize For Expressing Free Speech, Saying Catholic Church Wants To Prevent AIDS

The student journalists at The Hawk are in trouble! In last week’s issue, the paper published its annual joke issue, The Squawk, which got them in a bit of hot water. And now, forced with an army of angry Jesuits, the paper has apologized for the joke issue. And university spokeswoman Harriet Goodheart told the Inquirer she couldnt’ say whether the students would be punished. (Sigh.)

Among the content people were offended: the president of St. Joe’s, the Rev. Timothy Lannon, endorsing condom use; an article saying the only St. Joe’s women’s basketball fan had been murdered; an article describing Cardinal Rigali as gay; and, of course, the comparison of Jesuits to Nazis.

That last one, obviously, is ridiculous. Everyone knows Jesuits are way more totalitarian than Nazis. But the paper’s Editor-in-Chief posted an apology to the St. Joe’s community, which prompted a commenter to respond with this: “This isn’t MadTV, folks. I hope everyone associated with this debacle learned something.” That’s right; Even if it was offensive, The Squawk might have actually made people laugh.

But the letters to the editor in this week’s Hawk shed some more light on the situation. Four seniors wrote an up-in-arms letter saying, “Plainly, it is inappropriate to attach the President’s name and photo to a condom ad.” Hey, that works for the president of St. Joe’s or of the United States!

The letter also revealed a few days ago someone (presumably from St. Joe’s) dumped a case of beer on Cardinal Rigali’s lawn. No word if the archbishop is a Natty Ice fan.

But the best letter comes from — who else — Tom Brennan, a Jesuit priest and English teacher, who proves that, well, maybe Jesuits aren’t much like Nazis after all:

Thank you for publishing last week’s Squawk. I laughed my head off at it. Of course, I imagine that some did not, but perhaps Geoffrey Chaucer’s lines from the “Prologue to The Miller’s Tale” are worth repeating: “And eek men shall nat make ernest of game” (l.78). (We teach Chaucer, by the way, in Texts and Contexts - one of our very canonical selections for that course.)

Preach on, father. And eek men shall not make ernest of game indeed.

College journalists apologize for satire [Inquirer]
St. Joe’s Apologizes for April Fool’s Parody [KYW 1060]
The Hawk apologizes for squawk content [The Hawk]
Letter: Squawk succeeds in amusing [The Hawk]
Letter: Parody paper not amusing [The Hawk]

Philadelphia’s Green Monster

In case you didn’t know, the Comcast Center is supposed to be a certified “green” building, which means it will release oxygen or something. In fact, it will be the tallest green building in the United States, something we Philadelphians can, I suppose, be mighty proud of. Perhaps people will come from all over to see our tall building!

That being said, the plumbers’ union is against one of the cornerstones of the green building, waterless urinals. They’re against them because, obviously, they cost less money to maintain and less money to install. That means, uh, less money for plumbers.

And now, as noted earlier, John Street and Vince Fumo are both making a push to pretty much tell the plumbers’ union to, uhh, flush it. And, Sunday, there’s even a protest at Love Park at 1 p.m. that will also be telling the plumbers’ union the same thing.

Presumably, the protesters on Sunday will be there because they want to highlight the fact that the waterless urinals in the Comcast Center will save 1.6 million gallons of water a year. You might think that Vince Fumo is hoping to broker a deal with the plumbers’ union for the same reason. You also might have the brain of a gerbil.

While Fumo may love the water savings, he’s also in it for this reason:

Without the code change, it might be harder for Liberty to win a certificate from the Green Building Council. In that case, New York and its 945-foot-tall Bank of America tower would capture the title of America’s tallest green building.

Fumo “would love to see us beat New York on something like this,” Tuma said. “It’s all about the city’s image. The more good press we get, the more construction the city is going to get.”

And they say we don’t have an inferiority complex!

Fumo, Street join the push for waterless urinals [Inky]

Full protest info after the jump.

More »

Quickies: He’s outta here!

• Little late on this one, but Phillies organist Paul Richardson is retiring after 35 years. It was nice to see him in the CBP concourse the first two years of the park, though. [AP/Yahoo!]

• In Bucks County, things are going so well people are still up in arms over a bad video game nobody’s heard of except for people protesting it. If I ever have a really bad idea that I want to sell, I’m just pepper it with references to killing cops, eating babies and gutting puppies. Hmm, maybe I should do that here. [Bucks County Courier Times]

• Of course, the cops did just catch two eighth graders who made bomb threats. So maybe everything is safe up there. Seriously, though: Bomb threats? How 1999. [Bucks County Courier Times]

• And, hey, the U.S. men’s hockey team managed to advance to the gold medal round of the Olympics without even playing. Now that’s sport! U-S-A! U-S-A! [AP/Philly.com]

Robbing Andre to pay Nate

Despite the Flyers and Sixers going undefeated this weekend (they were both 0-0), it wasn’t a great weekend for Philadelphia sports — although the Soul did win. Put simply, Andre Iguodala got screwed. Iggy (or Dre or AI2, take your pick) should have won the dunk contest.

Seriously. Look at where he is in the photo. You see how his head’s about to slam into the backboard? Yeah, he ducked and dunked on a reverse after taking a pass from Allen Iverson off the backboard. He dunked from behind the backboard. I seriously am still unsure of how it happened.

The trophy went to 5-foot-9 Nate Robinson, who did have some impressive dunks — including one over shortest-dunk-contest-winner Spud Webb, but if you dunk it from behind the backboard, you deserve to win. There was a rumbling that Kenny “The Jet” Smith changed his vote so Robinson would win, but that’s not true. He did, though, give Iggy too low of a score.

If you missed Dre’s dunk, video’s available at NBA.com, though it’s not really loading for me, so before it disappears, you can check out the dunk over at YouTube.

Dwarves suck (Politically correct title alteration by me) [The 700 Level]
Rim Shot [DN]
Win puts Soul in a tie for first place [Inky]

Looking for a conversation? Go to the strip club!

The controversial Center City strip club Signatures is in the news again, but this time it’s for not having any naked girls on stage. The Liquor Control Board ruled early last year not to renew the club’s license it needed to operate a strip club, so the only bare thing inside Signatures right now is the stage. (The LCB banned dancing? This is just like Footloose! Somebody get Kevin Bacon in here, STAT.)

The LCB’s ruling cited consistent “lewd conduct” at Signatures, which begs the question: What else do people go to strip clubs for?

Still, it’s not like Signatures hasn’t been in the news before. Fellow PW writer Steve Volk details all the previous aspects of this controversy: the club’s hiring of a consultant who was linked to a federal racketeering case with the notorious Gold Club in Atlanta (that’s where all the pro athletes went, so you know there was a lot of lewd conduct going on), the protests of the East of Broad Improvment Association and the building itself, which is owned by Common Pleas Court Judge Frank Palumbo Jr.

The club hasn’t closed, though, having dancers meet people for “conversation” and trying to entice customers to buy lap dances. (I’d guess any customers not buying lap dances won’t last too long in there.) And having private lap dances might not be legal, anyway, so it looks like the club could be on its last legs.

But you kind of have to admire a club that loses its stripping license, yet remains open. That’s some good old-fashioned American capitalist spirit. Horatio Alger would be proud.

No More Stripping? [PW]

It’s the season for marketing backlash!

We just passed the holiday devoted to the celebration of commercialism in this country, conveniently placed on a day when a carpenter many consider to be the Christ was born over 2,000 years ago. And, during the run up to this big ol’ commercialism holiday, there are plenty of ads. Too many to really attract everyone’s attention.

And so the ad wizards at big companies come up with these pseudo-underground campaigns that try to be all hip and edgy and, of course, fail. Sony recently launched a campaign for the PSP, the portable video game console, that uses graffiti art, like the image at left (which I took with my camera phone at Good Dog, I think).

Once the pseudo-underground campaign launches, there’s the oh-so-predictable backlash. It seems silly to me. It’s like when someone in the media makes fun of bloggers and every third person with a blog has to weigh in about how the media doesn’t respect this more pure form of “citizen journalism” and blah blah blah. (It’s no surprise that bloggers have been bashing this.) Who really cares if Sony is using an art form usually done by people just for fun to promote their product? If you really hate it, just ignore it. Or, you know, deface it. That’s kinda funny, at least.

Either way, the backlash has extended past the usual “corporation infringing on our counter-culture” argument. The Society Created To Reduce Urban Blight called the ads “very arrogant and very disrespectful.” And the city’s managing director accused Sony of encouraging graffiti. All well and good, I guess. But the real graffiti artists are only going to find Sony’s ads stupid at best. And anyone inspired to tag somewhere else by an ad for a PSP is, well — there’s not really much to be done with someone that receptive to messages.

So don’t worry. These stupid ads will disappear in a few weeks and we can all move back to complaining about more important things — namely, the Eagles.

Sony ads draw public ire [Inky]

Stop snitchin’ not just a t-shirt fad?

As you may know, I’ve largely stayed out of commenting on the “Stop Snitchin’” t-shirt fad. (Though I did suggest a replacement fad.) You know why? Because the furor was largely over by the time I started blogging here in late August.

But, though, it still creeps up every once in a while. There was a recent piece in Slate about the stop snitchin’ tees, which covered the points that maybe these t-shirts might be sending a message instead:

Critics of the T-shirts tend to dismiss the “stop snitching” sentiment as pro-criminal and antisocial; a subcultural expression of misplaced loyalty. But the T-shirts should be heeded as evidence of a failed public policy. Snitching is an entrenched law-enforcement practice that has become pervasive due to its crucial role in the war on drugs. … But the policy has turned out to be a double-edged sword. Nearly every drug offense involves a snitch, and snitching is increasingly displacing more traditional police work, such as undercover operations and independent investigation. [...]

And while the government’s snitching policy has gone mostly unchallenged, it is both damaging to the justice system and socially expensive. Snitches are famously unreliable: A 2004 study by the Northwestern University Law School’s Center on Wrongful Convictions reveals that 46 percent of wrongful death penalty convictions are due to snitch misinformation—making snitches the leading cause of wrongful conviction in capital cases.

While I sincerely doubt the stop snitchin’ shirts were commenting on the study that showed 46 percent of wrongful death penalty convictions are due to lying snitches, the essay brings up some good points. But I don’t want to ask any questions about the validity of the author’s argument.

What I want to ask is: What other secret meanings to t-shirts hold? I mean, that one that just says COLLEGE, what does that mean? And those early 1990s bootleg Taz shirts? What did they mean? What did the bootleg Taz shirts with Phillies caps on them truly mean? The possibilities are endless.

Bait and Snitch [Slate]
Sept. 12: The last word on the ‘John Street hat’