In the style of William Faulkner

Well, we are finally here.

My first, what I would consider to be, pointless column.

I used to be irrationally hypercritical of the Indiana Daily Student’s opinion page before I was hired onto the staff in January. Not as much anymore, although I still have a few specific grievances.      

Do you ever find yourself mimicking the writing styles of authors you are at present reading? I am currently rereading Kurt Vonnegut’s small collection of “mini-memoirs” titled “A Man Without A Country.” Such short and simple, yet wonderful sentences.

Whoops.  

Vonnegut’s analysis of particular segments of American life is pretty accurate. Here is a little sample of the text for those of you who have not had the opportunity to read it yet.

“For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the 10 Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.”

“‘Blessed are the merciful’ in a courtroom? ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”

Did anybody see Watson, the IBM supercomputer, on Jeopardy! a couple of weeks ago? The supercomputer, or artificial intelligence software, was named after IBM’s first president, Thomas J. Watson.

Sell punched card tabulating machines to Nazi Germany so they are capable of managing their concentration camps more efficiently and have a picture taken of you drinking tea with Adolf Hitler, and you get a supercomputer named after you, I guess.  

Anyways, it did not appear like Watson really understood much of anything going on. Maybe I was expecting too much. A.M. Turing, in his short paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” postulated (pretentious diction ... not as bad as the term ‘didactic,’ though) that the question of “Can machines think?” was “too meaningless to deserve discussion.”   

Turing was a pretty smart person. Times Magazine named him one of the “100 Most Important People of the 20th Century” for his contributions to the modern computer. He died from cyanide poisoning. An investigation ruled it suicide.  

Two years before his death, Turing was charged with gross indecency for acknowledging that he had a sexual relationship with another man. At the time, 1952, it was illegal to be homosexual in the United Kingdom. Because of his conviction, Turing underwent “hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido” and “accepted chemical castration via oestrogen hormone injections.”

To be honest, I probably only added the part about Turing being a homosexual to agitate some of our particular online commenters, who complain about us publishing excessive amounts of pieces regarding gay rights.  

In the ‘Column Writing Tips’ section of our ‘Spring Opinion Staff Orientation’ handout, tip number 17 advises us, “If your main goal is to prompt angry responses, you’re writing for the wrong reason.” Whoops.

The section under that is titled ‘Column Format’, which is where they, the editors, at least I suspect it is the editors, tell you to “provide suggested headlines for your column.”

The editors hardly ever use any of my suggested headlines. Not sure I really blame them. One a couple of weeks ago was pretty good, though. It was “Too Little to Help.” Cornell West used the phrase during a radio interview, referring to the lack of government assistance to poor and urban communities.  

Brother West is a pretty smart person, just like Turing and Vonnegut were. I’ve name-dropped and wasted enough, though.

I wonder, “How much of this column are the editors going to be forced to cut out?”   


E-mail: mardunba@indiana.edu