Hack Attack

The Damned Thing

There are colors in this world that man cannot see--the Damned Thing is such a color!
--"The Damned Thing," by Ambrose Bierce

BY ANDREW OBERRITER

The Register-Guard is an awful morass. What sort of morass? Of course. The R-G (or "R-G" as I like to call it) dispenses news to thousands of people throughout west central Oregon. Often there are graphics that accompany the news pieces (called "stories".)

Now that we have established the context of the R-G, we can move on to our main thesis: Genetically engineered tomatoes are evil and a threat to the domestic tranquility of the United States and to the sovereignty of this great nation's borders. Right now tomatoes endowed with super-intelligence by well-meaning but misguided scientists are plotting to overthrow humanity and set in place a vegitocracy in which humans (or "meat sacks" as the villainous tomatoes derisively refer to us) are slaves to barbarous leafy green overlords.

To illustrate this point, let us look at the recent coverage of campus goings-on by the Register-Guard.

Freshest in the minds of students who can read will most likely be the case of alleged rapist Donta Graham-Preston, which generated not only plenty of column inches of news stories, but also a pair of highly controversial editorials.

The editorials called into question the validity of the charges as well as the proceedings, although for reasons that many found entirely offensive. The R-G editorials seemed to buy into the notion that a man and a woman merely sleeping together was, as one of Graham-Preston's attorneys put it, "tempting nature." Further, the editorial position of the paper was that a two year suspension (with an expunged record at the end of that period) was far too harsh a penalty for being found guilty of forcibly penetrating two women.

Don Robinson, R-G Editorial Editor and author of those editorials, defended them at a panel discussion concerning media coverage of the case held on campus March 4th. Robinson stated that he stood behind the editorials because neither case would have stood up in court. Robinson cited Oregon's legal definition of rape to support his case, saying that the alleged crimes did not exactly fit the criteria detailed by the law. Most remained unconvinced.

Editorials aside, the news coverage of the Graham-Preston case by the R-G seemed to border on the rabid. All of the stories dealing with the alleged sexual misconduct (as it is classified by the Student Conduct Code) delved into the details about the prior sexual activities of Graham-Preston and his alleged victims. And reporters eagerly jumped on the bandwagon when less-than-vehement charges that the proceedings were racially biased against the accused (Graham-Preston is black, his accusers white) were leveled. Despite the fact that the R-G devoted a large portion of a day's City section to the allegations, neither Graham-Preston nor his attorneys ever brought the race card into play against the University.

In light of the basically competent but certainly not superior coverage of the Graham-Preston case, can you still deny that the tomatoes walk amongst us, dreaming of the day that humanity is but a memory, known only as monsters in a horror story used to keep the green, unripe youngsters quiet on the vine? Not convinced, eh?

Then perhaps we should remember all the way back to last term, when a pair of "riots" broke out in the vicinity of the University. The first one, a modestly out of control party involving some University students, was reported by the R-G, although it did not draw anything more than a single story.

The second, much larger and more destructive riot on Halloween night, brought down the house as far as the R-G was concerned. Pictures of the decimated section of Alder Street were run next to a story laying out the horrible chain of events that lead to the brutal uprooting of several innocent street signs--street signs with a wife and children at home, street signs who had never hurt a soul in their years of thankless service to Eugene's motorists.

By the time the R-G was done, it seemed as though the mob had been comprised solely of vicious, booze-addled University students and that indeed all University of Oregon students were part of a doomed generation, addicted to beer, bent upon wanton violence and afflicted with a seething, irrepressible disrespect for authority.

In fact, the hosts of the party, who were UO students, were the ones who called the cops for help. In addition, students were in the vast minority of those arrested that night. Many of the revelers were from out of town or simply not students.

Nevertheless, the R-G felt the need to run several stories on the riot, including several follow-up pieces chronicling dangerous binge-drinking habits, the travails of other universities dealing with similar problems and even a story about a UO student who, as a freshman, nearly ruined her life by drinking; a story which may safely be deemed atypical, especially by those of us who get seriously shit-faced drunk on a regular basis and still manage to somehow dress ourselves in the morning.

The whole debacle lent to a dangerous air of distrust between the City and the University. This was so much on everyone's minds that the City pressured the University (and the UO administration briefly considered) to adopt serious sanctions against students charged with drinking-related crimes.

And if the R-G's somewhat spotty record in dealing well with campus news doesn't make you wonder about who these wierdos are and what they do in that big new facility they built outside of town (which is most likely a front for the tomatoes), then please consider two additional factors: Don Bishoff and the 20 Below staff.

Don Bishoff does a "human interest" column three days a week. The column, which is homespun and folksy and deals with "real people" (i.e. someone completely unlike you who may or may not exist), is mainly insipid. Bishoff, obviously a well meaning guy who considers himself to have an eye for the type of quirky tales that explain the human condition, is a tool of the tomatoes.

The 20 Below staff, on the other hand, is a good example of something that basically cries out for the tomatoes to hurry up and obliterate humanity, if only to spare everyone from the scribblings of these stupid and boring high school kids. It seems unfair--almost cruel--to these kids to have the R-G encouraging them to be such universally bad journalists.

Trite, banal, the aforementioned insipidity, stale, cliched, hackneyed, really lacking in any intelligence or insight or vision, vapid, uninspired, vacuous, frighteningly ugly young people, really truly completely irredeemably totally shitty, shitty writing: all these things and any other invectives one is able to muster can and should be used to describe how poorly these Satanspawn acquit themselves every time Tony Baker III decides to unlock their squalid cage and allow them to write.

It is rumored that Tony Baker III may be one of the tomatoes himself. If this is true, it would explain a lot of the poopy-caca set forth here.

We're through the looking-glass, people. God help us all.

Andrew Oberriter, a Senior majoring in English, is Editor Emeritus for the Oregon Commentator.