Word: peninsulas
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After reading the most recent edition of that most vile publication known as Peninsula, I find myself, as an editor of The Crimson, proud to be included on that rag's "Official Enemies List." A handful of reactionaries--who use a post office box as a mailing address--have managed to single out some of the most intelligent and thoughtful persons and organizations on campus as enemies of Harvard. Why anyone other than the author would be proud of his or her association with the September cover story ("Know Your Enemy") is beyond me, yet it must be read...
...characterization of any groups on campus as "enemies" rather than opponents establishes a Gestapo-esque dichotomy between the base and the virtuous. (It's too bad that members of Peninsula's Council don't realize they're on the wrong side.) Bob Dole and Jack Kemp have taken to calling President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore '69 their "opponents." Peninsula, on the other hand, explains that its agenda is "in keeping with the time-honored practice of making a list and checking it twice in order to ensure when the coup comes around the firing squad knows...
...first people to receive Peninsula's scorn are all those who are non-heterosexual. The Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Student Association (BGLSA) and its sometimes political arm, the Strategic Offense Society, are deemed evil because they are "manifestly opposed to traditional Christian values," not to mention "their never-ending quest for special privileges...such as office space." Christian values according to whom? And where in the Christian Bible is hatred considered laudatory? Isn't the Golden Rule to "love thy neighbor?" It seems that Peninsula's world view, like that of the Catholic Church during the Spanish Inquisition, comprehends legitimacy...
...second flank of Peninsula's invective attacks three of the most respected professors on campus: Robert Coles '50, Alan M. Dershowitz and Stephen J. Gould. That these are vocal, public intellectuals is surely at the heart of Peninsula's insecurity. But I think that is there is a deeper question of (hypocritical) religious "sincerity" which Peninsula raises. Coles, who through his lectures makes evident the profound impact the words of Jesus Christ have had on his life, is the model Christian--humble, God-fearing and wholly concerned for his fellow man--yet Peninsula castigates his compassionate oratory as "dron...
Constituting the third target for Peninsula are: conservatives? Yes, well, Gov. William F. Weld '66 and the Harvard-Radcliffe Republican Alliance obviously aren't authoritarian enough for these brutes, to say nothing of the "liberal" Undergraduate Council or President Clinton. It seems as if Peninsula is still fighting the Cold War, making cracks about Clinton "guarding the hallowed halls of Oxford University from a Vietcong sneak attack" and the council's political slicksters opting under a hypothetical transplant to "communist" China "to curry favor with the butchers of Beijing." This is how out there the Peninsula is, how so removed...