The Michigan Review

Serpent's Tooth

We'd like to congratulate MSA President-suspect, er, elect Trent "Hop on Chopp" Thompson for his record­breaking time of 3.8 days in achieving negative press for the Assembly! This handily beat the previous 5.1 day record set in 1996 by then President-elect Flint Wainess! Congratulations! Your plaque will be in the mail!

Recently the Daily in a stroke of editorial incompetence that surprised even us, ran an editorial demanding that minority authors be included with the ranks of dead white men in curriculum. Unfortunately, the Daily apparently hasn't even read those, considering that they said that JOHN STEINBECK'S "The Grapes of Wrath" was written by one "Ernest Hemmingway." In addition, the Daily also thought people had read "Stickwick Stapers" by Charles Dikkens, and "Rarnaby Budge" by Darles Chickens, and "Great Expectations" with four M's and a silent Q!!

Thank you, thank you, Monty Python.

In other MSA news, students recently passed a fee increase that will tack on $4 for the next three semesters to pay for an attempt to get Ye Olde Student Regent, apparently because every other Big Ten school has one, and so should we. We're looking forward to having the next U­M student regent/MSA politico hack talk about the importance of whiteskin privilege and helping wretched laborers in Indonesia and Nicaragua when they face the Regents for the first time with voting power!

The next National Day of Inaction has been set for: April Fool's Day! April Fool's Day! Are they always this stupid, or do they purposely play into our hands every single time they do something?

Today's new Latin slogan: Veni, Vidi, Vichy: "I came, I saw, I surrendered to the Germans."

Recently, MSA Pres candidate Ferris Hussein said that victorious Students Party candidates Trent "Hop On Chopp" Thompson and Sarah "Storms Are Brewing In Your Eyes" Chopp owe them a gift basket for diverting votes away from Ryan Friedrichs and Al Garcia. What can we say? We owe Sarah and Trent a gift basket for making Serpents fodder so very easy for this upcoming year.

Paul Serilla, in a recent installment of his vomitous column, said that Americans flat out do not get art. Actually, Paul, the true fact of the matter is that Americans do not get you.

Undoubtedly, Trent Thompson is going to feel a little stabbed in the back this issue because he was told by the Editor of this fine publication that we generally gave the candidates three weeks of breathing room, that we wouldn't rag on them before they took office. April Fools ...

We'd like to thank University Housing for being SO very much ON TIME this year with the re-application materials and handling the matter SO professionally! Thank you, University Housing, for being our friendly landlady with the slippers, curlers, and pink bathrobes who won't let us play loud music after 8, smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol in the privacy of our own rooms! What's next? Security cameras in the hallways? How about a police sentry on each hallway so we don't hurt ourselves?

In other campus journalism news, the Daily has announced that they will no longer rely on sources willing to go on the record, but instead run with anonymous sources and base stories completely on hearsay. According to Daily Editor Laurie Mayk, "we can't compete with other news sources the old­fashioned way, so we're going to try it like Matt Drudge and see what happens. Instant turnaround, baby!"

Furthermore, why does the Daily editorial staff insist on putting the fact that alcohol was served at a party in every single bloody news story they do? In their latest gaffe, they proclaim about how alcohol was served at a party they don't even say "allegedly," surprising for them but the story had nothing to do with alcohol. It was about the recent MSA campaign allegations. What, does the Daily also feel it necessary to insinuate that gullible sorority girls would also get yummy rum punch in return for voting for Trent Thompson? Good God.

As it turns out, El Nino, the weather phenom wreaking havoc across the world, is in fact a student at the University of Michigan. He was tracked by meteorologists to a recent BAMN rally, where an unusual amount of hot air was present. According to BAMN spokespeople, El Nino was granted admission to Michigan over the traditionally "white" weather phenomena, such as blizzards and tornadoes, who are now suing the University, demanding that they are more qualified than El Nino to cause chaos and devastation throughout the State of Michigan. Stay tuned for more updates, tonight at 11 ...

We were really surprised to see that President Clinton was mobbed by hundreds and thousands of people in Accra, Ghana, on the first stop of his African tour. The man causes trouble everywhere he goes, doesn't he? In an unrelated incident, President Lee "Mophead" Bollinger had a total of 13 students appear at his latest Fireside Chat and felt "stifled and nauseated" at having to be with so many students at one time in such close quarters.

Reprinted from National Review's The Week page: Bill Clinton's Actual Sworn Response as to what he told Monica Lewinsky about testifying in the Paula Jones case: "And I said that you­all might call every woman I ever talked to and ask them that, and so I said you would qualify, or something like that. I don't, I don't think we ever had more of a conversation than that about it, but I might have mentioned something to her about it, because when I saw how long the witness list was, or I heard about it, before I saw, but actually by the time I saw it her name was in it, but I think that was after all this had happened. I might have said something like that, so I don't want to say for sure I didn't, because I might have said something like that ... "

A Classic Reprint from Serpent's Tooth, February, 1990:
"Betsy Esch and Amy Harmon sure know how to go out in style. In their final days as Daily opinion page editors, the pair capped off their reign with an article containing so many inaccuracies that it elicited a response from President Duderstadt, Regent Power, and Dr. Amnon Rosenthal, Chair of the Board of Student Publications. The dynamic duo also printed a fake letter from Rep. Carl Pursell, R­Plymouth, knowing that his signature had been forged. Way to go, ladies. We hope you get real jobs now."

Well, the Daily certainly has improved since then. We think.

This article was published in the 1 April 1998 edition of The Michigan Review (Volume 16, Number 9).
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