St. Joe’s Students Have Horrible Taste In Music

I’m on the mailing list for The Hawk, the official student newspaper of the St. Joe’s. I can’t really remember anything the paper has done since calling Cardinal Rigali gay in last year’s joke issue, but it turns out the paper has a horrible taste in music. Just look!

Yes, that’s Coldplay, leading The Hawk’s albums of the year section. It’s apparently just a random assortment of staff picks, which is why one of the albums of the year is also the Jonas Brothers. I’ll admit I’m not much of a music fan; I believe I broke my girlfriend’s ears with my constant playing of the 10-disc NFL Films soundtrack. Brian is definitely the one who should be tackling this. But whatever, I particularly liked the first sentence to the review of the Seasick Steve album, which is a person and/or band I believe was made up, and I wanted to note it:

In a world full of cute Stevie Ray Vaughn impersonators, Seasick Steve is a return to the gritty roadhouse sound of John Lee Hooker and Hound Dog Taylor.

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]