Borowitz Report: so liberal a campus

I attended the Andy Borowitz event on Thursday night in Cecilian Hall, and I'm still trying to decide whether I was really glad to be there or whether I wish I hadn't gone at all. My fellow CRs, I'm glad none of you were there to experience this, though. It would have only brought your blood to a boil, and trust me, I hate dialing 911.

Mr. Borowitz began the evening with a cute sideways look at his performance at Seton Hill. He said that in the world of comedy, there's Caesar's Palace and then there's Seton Hill. This collected some laughter, so he pushed a little further. Apparently he eats breakfast on most Sundays with Jerry Seinfeld and Jon Stewart of the Daily Show. When they discussed upcoming gigs this past Sunday, Seinfeld said he was headed to L.A., Stewart said he was doing Leno since he just did the Oscars, and Borowitz said when it was his turn to say he said he had two options: brag about doing Seton Hill or play it low. He decided to play it low and said he just had a gig in Pennsylvania. Then he said, Seinfeld was like 'You're doing Seton Hill aren't you?' Okay, that's cute, haha.

Borowitz is from Cleveland originally, went to Harvard, and now lives in New York. He's a writer, actor, and humorist. He was the creator of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and also produced the film Pleasantville. He writes a daily internet column called The Borowitz Report and also contributes to CNN's American Morning and NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday. He has written the bestselling book Who Moved My Soap? The CEO's Guide to Surviving in Prison. He's everywhere in the media, basically. That says a lot about him without having been at the lecture, trust me.

Once the niceties were over, he delved into political issues, which is what he's known for. Borowitz said that when he needs to laugh he watched FOXNews, citing that they use different language on CNN. When we say bad economy on CNN, they're saying good on FOX. When we say Iraqi insurgents on CNN they're saying terrorists on FOX.

Of course, sooner or later the discussion would move to our President. Borowitz said he liked three things about President Bush. (Now I do admit that I thought the first one was pretty funny.)

1) The War on Terror - Borowitz said he liked Bush's ambition in the War on Terror because the President wasn't declaring war on "terrorism" or "terrorists," but instead, a human emotion. He continued by asking what was next: shyness? Oh, shyness is going down. It won't last for long. (This is the one I laughed at.)

2) The Victims' Apology Act - Naturally, the shooting incident with Vice President Dick Cheney isn't going to rest in peace any time soon. Borowitz brought us the fact that it was the person who got shot that was doing the most apologizing. Those victims have been getting away with this too long, Borowitz said.

3) No Child Left Behind - Borowitz gave his brief understanding of how he sees this act working in schools in America: more standardized testing, fewer unmerited promotions to the next grade, frustrated teachers. He said he thought this was good though, because if it would have been in place about fifty years ago where would Bush be then? ...

After that point, Borowitz explained that he was very good at predicting the future. We were instructed as an audience to ask questions to which he would respond with his projected outcome. This is when things got really ugly, in my opinion. It made me realize exactly what the climate of the room was and that I was an anomaly in the crowd.*(This is very uncomfortable; I'll get back to this at the end.)

Questions ranged from Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' "silent birth" to the situation in Iran. I don't recall all of the questions, but I do recall not laughing very much (which to me means that the weight was on the left foot, if you know what I mean).

I do appreciate that he showed some censure when someone asked a question about the Duke lacrosse team. Borowitz said that he did not think that the situation was funny nor should it be made fun of; he said he would made light of any questions that didn't involve rape. Thank you for some boundaries.

A couple of the last jokes he made were okay. About how there are too many Law & Order shows--that on one recent episode (he was making this up, of course) the show started with a murder and when the characters of that particular L&O show arrived at the scene there were characters from another L&O show already there. Haha.

All right, now let's analyze this. Here's what I promised about being the odd-one-out in the crowd. This fall, we were graced with the presence of Mr. Morgan Spurlock. He's not quite as openly liberal in his politics, but the influence is undeniably there. A liberal.

Now, Mr. Andy Borowitz: blatantly liberal. There's no denying this, not even if the guy tried (and he doesn't).

How is this a fair representation to the Seton Hill community? If the school wants to be diverse and encourage the cultural discussion that it so frequently lays out for students, why not include more political views than those that already run the campus? Sure, let's be racially diverse, religiously diverse (even though we can't properly observe Easter), linguistically diverse, etc. etc. But when it comes to any sort of diversity on the political spectrum there is but one shade that I see at our university.

Encouraging diversity has to be diversity in every aspect of life in order to be diverse. There can be no exceptions. Not even with politics. I stand behind the idea of diversity in our university and I think that I have learned a great deal from the experiences that I've had (including this one, with Mr. Borowitz)--but not so directly to say that I learned and accept what is given to me. If I swallowed everything that was presented to me here I wouldn't be a conservative. I couldn't possibly have Republican ideals. I wouldn't be me anymore, but rather, a smattering of what my university gives me to ingest.

I get tired of feeling like I have to hide the fact that I'm Republican, that I am a board member of the College Republicans, that I am going to intern for our Senator Rick Santorum, that I have conservative ideals and like them. Isn't college supposed to be about finding yourself and being that person? Well, I've found myself and I'm apprehensive to be that person because I feel like my viewpoints are shadowed and unwelcome.

I shouldn't have to feel this way. And I shouldn't have to see an entire lecture series at my university be overrun with liberal politics. Where's a conservative representative, please? Show me and I'll shut up. This may be a new crusade (like that petition wasn't enough?).

Diversity is good. But hypocrisy is bad. If you want to be fully diverse, people, that includes politics. Thank goodness next year's lecture series is musical...