In light of Comma’s ongoing obsession, falsely accusing me of stealing or defacing the obnoxious, racist, far right wing alternative campus paper, the Morris Northstar, I thought you might be interested in the status of that rag. Here’s one of their racks:
Yep, empty. They haven’t published a single issue since last spring, when it finally dribbled off into irrelevant dissolution. I think it’s dead.
Meanwhile, the official campus newspaper, the University Register, is going strong with an edition every week. I have some gripes with the quality of that paper, but it’s a bit more representative of the campus. This week:
-
The front page story is about Morris students participating in the Fourth Precinct occupation in Minneapolis, with Black Lives Matter.
-
Second page has an article about the student efforts to encourage more diversity among the faculty.
-
Third page is about our search for a new chancellor. Let’s hope we’ve learned from the Harreld’s debacle down south in Iowa!
-
Fourth and fifth page are about local entertainment: our dance ensemble had a performance, and there’s a positive review of Jessica Jones.
-
Sixth and seventh pages are advice to students about finals week. Yes, it’s coming!
-
Eighth page: an article on internalized misogyny. Feminists are everywhere.
-
Ninth page: science news on the declining Monarch butterfly population.
-
Tenth page: “Queer corner”, advocating respect for transgender students.
-
Eleventh page: two articles by Christian students on how you don’t have to be an intolerant dumbass to have faith.
-
Twelfth page: Poetry. The end is nigh.
I hate to break the news to you, fanatical right wingnuts, but on the Morris campus, you’ve totally lost, and the liberals are dominating.
If it’ll make you feel better, you can always claim it was because some students vandalized the front page of a couple of copies of your racist rag with a sharpie. Yeah, that’s what killed it. It couldn’t possibly because it was vile filth that the majority of the student body despised.
How do we know you didn’t take them?
Somebody sprayed them with an invisibility potion?
You know I didn’t take them because the expensive drone I ordered specifically to flit in and steal papers one by one is currently out of commission with broken propellers (new props have been ordered and will arrive tomorrow, and then I can go crazy pilfering newspapers…if there are any to steal, that is.)
My university’s conservative rag is usually sneaked into classrooms and set up on the desks. That’s actually their motto on the front page; “It’s on your desk, you have to read it.”
Thankfully, I haven’t seen a copy of it all year. Not that I’d read it even if I had. I did once, and the fact that there was so many racists and homophobes willing to attach their names and faces to their articles messed me up for like a week.
Vivec:
Fuck’s sake, how old are they, eight?
Well, their website is frozen and the last post on their facebook is from like last year, so I guess they went under.
But here, have a taste:
I wonder if the empty racks can be collected and returned to the ‘editor’? Or re-purposed for some useful task?
jeez PZ
How many times have you crashed the drone?
We’ve gone through a couple of these right-wing alternative papers while I’ve been here. They flare up like a rash of acne, ooze pus for a while, and then fade away. Those racks will probably just get a new label for the next shitstain to get outside money.
I’m curious about that rack – why does it have two little shelf dealies (yes I believe that is the technical term)?
What goes on the lower shelf – some less popular sister publication? Some liberal rag (thereby allowing Northstar to indicate that such politics are both figuratively and literally below them)?
The mystery will consume me for the remainder of the day.
Hey, I’ve only crashed it once, and then once I clipped an obstacle — those propellers are really brittle and shatter easily, especially at sub-zero temperatures.
Just relabeled it: THE UNIVERSITY REGISTER
with a little footnote: “Donated by Morris Northstar”
why not?
oh… Morris will be charged with theft.
nevermind…
They’re generic racks — the same style are scattered all over campus. They’re usually used for the University Register + the sporadic eruptions of stupid alternatives. The one in the photo is in a high traffic area of the student union, so I guess they thought they’d need a dedicated Northstar rack.
They didn’t. And now I suspect that the real student newspaper avoids that labeled rack like it was poisonous.
Maybe somebody should just remove the sign. Not me, though, because I’d probably be handcuffed and arrested and beaten in the police car on the way to prison.
Damnit – the rack is now disappointingly less mysterious – and so once more the romance is gone from life.
It is still your fault, PZ. Obviously all those papers that you stole crippled their profitability and sent it into a tailspin from which it never recovered. I hope you feel ashamed.
it’s empty cuz the high traffic area was all the students were, to instantly grab up the entire stash, deposited in that rack.
(or so Northstar will claim. 3… 2… 1… *crickets*)
The mildly deranged penguin is running around (as usual) in circles (also fairly usual) shouting (very usual) “I told you so!”, eating cheese (quite usual), repeat ad infinitum (also quite usual), at least until the cheese suffers a temporary case of needing restocking (moar quite usual, along with the moar cheese!). Apparently, instead of the propellers, you should have gone for the Saturn V powered model: Greater lifting capacity, can deliver cheese to the Orbital Cheese Vault, faster, and most importantly — so she says — LOUD.
@Vivec #4:
Redistribute them to the toilets and suggest a change of motto.
OK, look, somebody had to go there…
Has Comma explained the present lack of Morris Northstars?
Morris Northstar sounds like a cousin of Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer!
‘Johnny, what do you make out of this?’ ‘Oh, I can make a hat, or a brooch, or a pterodactyl…’
Hey, I like Othar, narcissistic clown though he might be. Anyone who can speak in flowing script as he does, deserves a modicum of tolerance.
Well someone’s certainly stolen something. Who took the squidly themed wallpaper off PZ’s play pen?
Ah.. That takes me back to my younger, stupider days as an opinion writer for my university’s right-wing rag… Who was also stuck pushing a cart around campus to deliver the damn things.
Looking back, I’m so glad we eventually pissed off enough people that it went out of business.
Al Dente @ 19
You’d dare compare a hero to a insipid right-wing fish wrap?
FOUL!
@lofty#22: “Well someone’s certainly stolen something. Who took the squidly themed wallpaper off PZ’s play pen?”
Today’s wallpaper honors Erick Erickson; it’s a fish with all the proto-sashimi carefully removed.
So I’m not the only one looking at all the whiteness, I thought it was snow.
Thankfully, once you leave college, you’ll be back in the regressive dystopia that we call “the rest of the world”, which will prove much more amenable to your personal ugliness.
You still have the military, the police, churches, most houses of government…
carlie: There’s a sale at Penney’s!
It’s hard to keep a conservative alternative paper in business when you don’t have a creepy cult bankroller like Ed Theil funding it.
It’s really rather brilliant. I just DON’T publish a right wing newspaper, claim a liberal professor stole all the copies, and then wait for the stupid RWers to give me money, or at least sue and get a small out-of-court settlement from the university.