Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Sacrilege!
Warning! I am not going to provide the customary Digi Imp "Warning." This is happening on your campuses, and being dumped on your teenage and early-twenties college students.
This is too funny to be made up. We are, of course, all too familiar with that "artistic" monstrosity that is The Vagina Chronicles. But what I don't think we've all be aware of is the startling impact it's had on college campuses. The changes wrought by the advent of that play is in fact rather impressive when viewed sans passion, or a working sense of outrage.
I found out about this via a National Review Online story by Christina Hoff Sommers, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. So, I'll let her describe what's been going on of late as a result of The Vagina Monologs:
First, the play itself:
Now the impact of the play:
Back to Ms Sommers:
This is how the Commissars, er, I mean the campus administrators first found out about the CR's insidious and sacrilegious buffoonery:
Maybe the hippies were on to something after all: tweaking the noses of Officialdom can be fun!
But, never having fully remembered why the Left's tactics worked (trying to remember things 35 years removed can be difficult with drug-addled brains - but the colors are awesome, man!) the Roger (LOL)Williams administration has inadvertently played right into the hands of the Penis Warriors:
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Warning! I am not going to provide the customary Digi Imp "Warning." This is happening on your campuses, and being dumped on your teenage and early-twenties college students.
This is too funny to be made up. We are, of course, all too familiar with that "artistic" monstrosity that is The Vagina Chronicles. But what I don't think we've all be aware of is the startling impact it's had on college campuses. The changes wrought by the advent of that play is in fact rather impressive when viewed sans passion, or a working sense of outrage.
I found out about this via a National Review Online story by Christina Hoff Sommers, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. So, I'll let her describe what's been going on of late as a result of The Vagina Monologs:
First, the play itself:
(The play) ...which consists of various women talking in graphic, and I mean graphic, terms about their intimate anatomy. The play is poisonously anti-male. Its only romantic scene, if you can call it that, takes place when a 24-year-old woman seduces a young girl (in the original version she was 13 years old, but in a more recent version is played as a 16-year-old.) The woman invites the girl into her car, takes her to her house, plies her with vodka, and seduces her. What might seem like a scene from a public-service kidnapping-prevention video shown to schoolchildren becomes, in Ensler's play "a kind of heaven."
Now the impact of the play:
College administrators have been enthusiastic supporters Eve Ensler's play The Vagina Monologues and schools across the nation celebrate "V-Day" (short for Vagina Day) every year.And:
V-Day has now replaced Valentine's Day on more than 500 college campuses (including Catholic ones).And
The week before V-Day, the Roger Williams campus was plastered with flyers emblazoned with slogans such as "My Vagina is Flirty" and "My Vagina is Huggable." There was a widely publicized "orgasm workshop." On the day of the play, the V-warriors sold lollipops in the in the shape of--guess what? Last year, the student union was flooded with questionnaires asking unsuspecting students questions like "What does your Vagina smell like?" None of this offended the administration or elicited any reprimands, probations, or confiscations.And...
Wesleyan College hosted a "C***" workshop; Penn State held a "C***"-fest. At Arizona State, students displayed a 40-foot inflatable plastic vagina. It was not confiscated and no one was ever threatened with probation.Predictably... well, it's not actually predicable, or wasn't in years past, but I suppose it is predictable now. So, predictably the Campus Republicans at Roger Williams University (our Brit friends should be on their butts in a state of uncontrolled hilarity once the see the irony of that particular location) could not resist a good parody.
Back to Ms Sommers:
But when the College Republicans at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island rained on the celebrations of V-Day by inaugurating Penis Day and staging a satire called The Penis Monologues, the official reaction was horror. Two participating students, Monique Stuart and Andy Mainiero, have just received sharp letters of reprimand and have been placed on probation by the Office of Judicial Affairs. The costume of the P-Day "mascot" - a friendly looking "penis" named Testaclese, has been confiscated and is under lock and key in the office of the assistant dean of student affairs, John King.Ahh, the fresh wind of open debate in the marketplace of ideas. Don't you just love it?
This is how the Commissars, er, I mean the campus administrators first found out about the CR's insidious and sacrilegious buffoonery:
"Testaclese" tipped the scales when he approached the university Provost, Edward J. Kavanagh, outside the student union. Apparently taking him/it for a giant mushroom, Provost Kavanagh cheerfully greeted him. But when Testaclese presented him with an honorary award as a campus "Penis Warrior," the stunned official realized that it was no mushroom. After this incident, which was recorded on videotape, the promoters of P-Day were ordered to cease circulating their flyers and to keep Testaclese off campus grounds.Come on. Admit it. You'd absolutely love to see that video tape. That moment, when a typical University Provost, no doubt wearing the de rigueur sweater with elbow patches, encounters the friendly, though enormous mushroom. Then that classic instant of Shock and Awe when realization strikes. I only hope that the CRs are documenting this. Maybe edit it together and market it (in true NeoCon form) as Reps Gone Wild: a video collage of PC-nicks caught in moments of Official Horror and Disapproval.
Maybe the hippies were on to something after all: tweaking the noses of Officialdom can be fun!
But, never having fully remembered why the Left's tactics worked (trying to remember things 35 years removed can be difficult with drug-addled brains - but the colors are awesome, man!) the Roger (LOL)Williams administration has inadvertently played right into the hands of the Penis Warriors:
But for the short term, college administrators should brace themselves. The rebels at Roger Williams are talking about a Free Testaclese Fund. And word is spreading to other campuses. P-Day and Testaclese will be back next year. And not just in Rhode Island.Michael Moore: your office is calling.
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