Verily, Iowa State ruffians, you may think your vulgar chalk drawings on the pavements of Iowa State entreating and commanding your fellow knowledge seekers in the life of the mind to vote for one Barack Obama are a call to action for ‘civic duty,’ but ur totes bumming out your college newspaper editorial board, man!
The clouds that bore down on Iowa State on Wednesday have a silver lining. Although many of us may very well have murmured to ourselves, “Rain rain go away / Come again another day,” the drops of water that fell from the sky in an on-again, off-again kind of way have one great virtue.
They had the effect of erasing some of the chalk that directed — nay, commanded — us to vote for President Barack Obama, and to do so by taking advantage of the early voting at the Memorial Union.
Those phrases, you may have noticed, were everywhere. And it was an egregious abuse of the privilege students have to decorate our sidewalks with public service announcements about upcoming events and support the clubs in which they hold membership. There is more to student life than the Obama campaign, yet the Obama for America crew has almost monopolized the sidewalks.
NAY, not MONOPOLIZING THE SIDEWALKS! We shake our fists to the heavens! How, G_d, how could you have let this injustice stand, with the scalawags, abusing the privilege of chalk! But do, by all means, fine fellow or fellowette, please, please, do go on and on and on!
As important as it is to vote and perform our civic duty, this is not how it is done. Campaigns should not bludgeon potential voters with their presence. There ought to be some moderation, lest politics — as we have seen in this case — be everywhere. Unfortunately, however, not even the steps of one of our most noted campus landmarks, Curtis Hall, could escape defacement with directives to vote for Obama at the Memorial Union.
Is nothing sacred anymore?
Fuck, dude, they got Curtis Hall! THIS. WILL. NOT. STAND.
A thriving political world, even if it consists solely of hollow slogans and commands rather than arguments, requires a thriving private world into which politics does not intrude. Any noun — be it a person, place or thing — requires other nouns to be distinct. The public world in which the actions of politics take place requires a private world, a refuge, from political action to keep from becoming an amorphous blob.
A noun is a person or a place or thing and it needs a noun of opposition to be a noun. Verily, what is man without woman? What is heaven without hell? Should a man’s reach exceed his grasp? Did someone take a class in semiotics, or was it in shitty analogies? STFU, undergrad. We happen to have Umberto Eco right here, and he says you know nothing of his work!
Blah blah blah there is some more (mostly about how chalk is just a step above graffiti in terms of “taste”) which we will skip because we are bored. BUT KNOW THIS!
Showing off celebrities such as actor Justin Long and rock star Bruce Springsteen aren’t much better, but we can wait to comment on that until tomorrow.
Fuckin’ can’t wait, dude. Clicking RIGHT. NOW.
[IowaStateDaily, via Wonket operative "thoughtsicles"]
{ 178 comments }
“Rain rain go away / Come again another day,”
In college, who knows that much less cops to knowing that rhyme any longer?
Dude, do more drugs, mmmmmmmmmmmmK? Take a page from Scott Adams here.
Also, WORST LEDE EVER.
Let me guess, the chalk was COLORED?! For shame.
Calcite diversity?????? Everyone knows, chalk is WHITE!
multicalcification is killing this country.
It's killing my knees, that's for sure.
Chalk of Color, thank you very much.
Black Chalk sounds like a good name for a cosmetics line.
"I warned you! Didn't I warn you? That colored chalk was forged by Lucifer himself." — Groundskeeper Willie
I know that when I first saw a teacher use colored chalk I thought to myself: "Now I don't know what to think. Have I been taught nothing but lies?"
Worse. It was Muslin.
Verily, I doth say, Peggy Noonington would approve.
Though apparently she once mated with Tucker Carlson and their offspring suffers from FAS. But managed to get into college at least.
Duh, state school.
Some of my best me's went to state school!!
Who knew little girls everywhere drawin' on sidewalks with chalk were actually gangbanger wannabes graffitin' up our world.
HANG 'EM!
And worse, the little sluts will end up single moms who give birth to the next generation of violent gun lords.
And Presidents.
As important as it is to vote and perform our civic duty, this is not how it is done. Campaigns should not bludgeon potential voters with their presence. There ought to be some moderation, lest politics — as we have seen in this case — be everywhere. Unfortunately, however, not even the steps of one of our most noted campus landmarks, Curtis Hall, could escape defacement with directives to vote for Obama at the Memorial Union.
Is nothing sacred anymore?
"Good day, sir, I said, GOOD DAY!"
"Good day, sir, I said… oh, no! Not another atomic wedgie! Come on, you guys, I don't want to have to tell the Campus Disciplinary Action Committee on you! Ow! Ow!"
"And most recently of all, a "Chalk Party" was held from which we have received more than two dozen reports of individual acts of perversion SO profound and disgusting that decorum prohibits listing them here. "
"fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life"
Hitchens said that the answer to the question "Is nothing sacred?" is always "no."
We've found the next Tucker Carlson!
D'Oh!
Play D'oh?
Tucker Carlson trifecta is in play I see
As long is not the next Karl Rove…
No, the horns would have budded out by now.
Hey little girls, you do your hopscotching in private you little hooligans. Get off my sidewalk!
How dare you, small children! This is a sacred space! Be ladylike!
Hopscotch? That's Obama's 10 point socialist skipping plan.
I see Tucker Carlson has a protege
It's the chalk of the town.
Really? CHALK?
Somebody's soon gonna find out the journo job market is even tougher than expected.
Carlson's Daily Asshole might still be an option.
Dude lives in Iowa, and apparently, does not own a teevee.
There was this congressional race in Sacramento 2010, between Democratic challenger Ami Bera and incumbent Republican Dan Lungren. Bera was kind of a dark horse candidate who almost won, except the Crossroads super PAC made a big ad buy like two weeks from election day.
In an interview for This American Life, Bera went on to describe his most prominent memory from that time: his daughter telling him "Hey dad, you're on television again!" This was thanks to Crossroads running a negative commercial ad nauseum (something like the average viewer would see it 16 times a week).
tl;dr – Dude you know NOTHING about bludgeoning.
Whoever wrote that just earned their BS in pretentiousness.
Forsooth, I posit the editorial writer in question possesses a specimen of wood in his rectum.
Have you seen http://www.abevigoda.com/ ? Everytime you refresh the page it provides the current date, time and current life/death status. Also some music I guess as my speaker icon was flashing and a page of 'premortums'.
Verily!
Whose?
Possession of chalk with intent to spell. Sentence: 3 years
3 yaers.
OH YEAH, I get to be superior, FOR ONCE, because they actually do have people that write VOTE OBAMA, like as a command and everything! on the sidewalks! at the UNIVERSITY OF ALA-STANDING IN THE SCHOOLHOUSE DOOR-ABAMA and nobody says a thing, or even pees on it, it's true! Of course, people also eat chalk here, but whatever.
Go Bama!
Roll Tide.
Dammit you know that's like tourettes, I can't not say it. Also, Heehaw it's Tennessee weekend, so you know, even though they suck on ice this year again, I hope we win…(Yeah, I was going to say something terrible, but I am worried about my game Karma. Go Gators, beat the Cocks, also fun to say)
I needs to see what deadspin says about this shit, Bama number one, Gators number two, in the BCS. Its a fucking thing, though, ain't it? Symbolic of something, I think. Beating a top 5 team, that gives ya credibility, should that happen. Some of those deadspin guys I like, I don't know why there's so much hostility toward them from so many people.
They do have some funny stuff, like that one caustic American Dude Dad that writes once a week. But why do they have shit like million-word descriptions of Hulk Hogan's sex tape, and pictures of athlete's dicks? That stuff is just the Gawker taint. They also are big apologists for PED-users, which is their way of being different, I guess, but kind of b.s.
Hey, from Vol Cuntry, let me tell you: Nothing sucks like a Big Orange.
And it was so so cool that I got to work for Nicholas "stand aside I am the fucking law motherfucker plus, troops" Katzenbach when I was a pup.
"It was a dark and stormy night, but damn if those clouds didn't have a silver lining". There, much better. You're welcome.
God. This dude is probably still analyzing Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance with his fellow chess club members.
Chess club libel!!!!
I threw that sucker out as soon as I found out it did not record how many times you fold a Zig Zag to gap the points on a Harley. Can never remember whether its three or four.
Chess club? No way – straw hat-wearing Young Republican d-bag.
Must be all the chalksters were grad students who got their baccalaureates at Iowa or Oklahoma.
I like to walk one of the trails near my apartment. Often there are leftover chalk markings used to direct people doing charity walk/runs which way to go. Fuck those people. The public world in which the actions of charities take place requires a private world, a refuge, from charitable action to keep from becoming an amorphous blob.
They're violating your free speech by speaking freely! Those monsters!
Charity is a good walk spoiled!!
Well at least the chalk isn't as distracting as the old dude jogging about in nothing but speedos.
College lesbian experimenting is still ok though, obviously.
totes. obvs.
if only there were pics or videos of such encounters available somewhere.
Which dorm, did you say? Oh, it's for my next college news article…um, yeah, newspaper, you know?
Equal chalk for women, and body paint.
"Campaigns should not bludgeon potential voters with their presence."
Sooo, campaigns can't, um, campaign, then?
That's also my favorite part. Where the fuck these kids been the last election cycle or 12? Jesus Christ.
♫ Rain, rain
Go Away
You should vote Romney
Anyway ♫
So, this is where the Peggy Noonan School of Journalism is located?
"Unfortunately, however, not even the steps of one of our most noted campus landmarks, Curtis Hall, could escape defacement with directives to vote for Obama at the Memorial Union.
Is nothing sacred anymore?"
CURTIS HALL 10/19/12 NEVER FORGET!!11!
Wow, someone bought a new thesaurus, huh?
Zounds! Those kids have a bigger stick up their collective ass than that crusty old dean!
Dean Wormer approves.
A thriving political world, even if it consists solely of hollow slogans and commands rather than arguments, requires a thriving private world into which politics does not intrude.
Is that possible?
Frack no. It's a political event even when two shoppers approach the check out line at approximately the same time.
Particularly if food stamps are brought out…
I doubt it. I can't even play Team Fortress 2 without seeing a server called "Ron Paul 2012" for whatever fucking reason.
No, no, it doesn't, you fucking half wit.
Filing belated lawsuit against my kindergarten teacher for bludgeoning the alphabet into my head, with chalk.
A chalk line on the ground usually means someone’s grand illusion has died there.
We used to do that at Duquesne along Academic Walk. A friend and I did it once or twice and it grew into dozens showing up on Sunday morning as everyone was walking to church.
Hopscotch uber alles!
Chalk that up to good old Iowawegian stupidity.
I don't want to believe the children are our future.
Are these fuckers fucking serious? This is what a college newspaper bitches about these days? Maybe we should bring back the draft.
We need another Vietnam to thin out their ranks a little.
– Bart Simpson
Curb the free speech kids. That's for Super PACs only.
Was this written by Travis Bickle? "Thank God for the rain which has helped wash away the garbage and trash off the sidewalks."
I say give the guy a job writing for Newsweek's print edition.
With clips like that, he could work at the New York Herald.
or the Weekly World News!
It's OK as long as it's a Caucasian Chalk Circle.
Thanks for making Brecht spin in his grave.
My brain has 'sploded trying to imagine how many undecided voters (A.K.A. Morons) have been swayed by the chalkers literally taking it to the streets. Feets do your stuff, stomp out this transgression on the public walkways.
http://www.boskolives.wordpress.com
Poor kid is in dire need of a blow job.
Yeah but he can't find anyone who is willing to drop trou in front of him.
I'm sure he'll like the taste.
Do you remember your first blow job?
Enough whiskey will wash any taste out of you mouth. I'm told.
"Your comment must be approved by the site admins before it will appear publicly."
Help! Wonkette is profiling people with Middle-Aged Millionaire White Guy Avatars!
Lovey, bring me to the fainting couch!
Someone is getting a little uppity with their schoolhouse rock learnin.
But, but, they used the IMPERATIVE!
I'd be pissed about the sidewalk monopolization, too.
Do you know how much it costs to land on Boardwalk with chalk campaign ads on it?
Needz more "fie!" and "to wit…".
Zounds!
*waahhmbulance.jpg*
Somebody is vaguely aware that "hell is other people", but wasn't paying attention when it was explained why.
In other college news news
Arizona Daily Wildcat Apologizes for ‘Fruit Roll Up’ Cartoon Depicting Homophobia, Child Abuse
http://collegemediamatters.com/2012/10/18/arizona…
Maybe I'm Hitler today, but I think it's snark.
Chalk is the new box cutter of terrorism.
As someone who at 50 now only wishes he ever had the fucking balls to ever really just TRY to do the thing he most of all ever dreamed of doing with his life, which would be, writing, I must say that bad writing enrages me, as it seems to Ms. Rebecca as well. Yes, here I am having never even really tried to achieve my dream because I talked myself into believing I was not good enough, and then I see these fuckers getting published (even fucking college paper alright, thats how pitiful I am I am jealous even of this fucking pinhead) so it especially fucking irks me to see bad fucking writing that I know I could do so so so much better and here I threw away my fucking life from lack of confidence and I was wrong. Look at what this bad-writing fucking little twerp has done to me now. Fucker.
FUCK that fucker for fucking with you!
Lapdance.
Also, YOU'RE 50? Dang. It's too bad they don't let you write stuff at that age.
You were right about the lapdance, all those 22 weeks ago, totally fucking right. It was absolutley exactly what was called for. I know, I know, I have memorized the phrase, "You're right, ______." You only always ever have been.
50 is the new old.
Wait, that wasn't encouraging.
Bad fucking writing totally sucks.
Um, that's kind of a run-on sentence there.
*ducks*
Go tell William Faulkner that shit. I have run-on thoughts, with lots of parentheticals too, fuck yes I recognize my own self every time I read David Foster Wallace. Much less suicidey, though.
Hey, the run-on sentence is the highest form of typing. Prommie, git yerse'f one of them web-log things & start running on. And on.
Take your Legal Lemons and make Grisham Lemonade!! Write yourself a series of fish-out-of-water legal crime thrillers about a Jersey Mouthpiece in Alabama. "Roll Crimson Tide" would make a great first title.
James Joyce wrote some amazing run on sentences. Not that either of these dudes is anywhere fucking NEAR a James Joyce.
Do you really want to fuck with Big Chalk? Do you?
"Showing off celebrities such as…."
Between this and that Corsi piece where some idiot thinks of Obama purely as "famous", I'm beginning to think these tools don't think much of Obama as leader of the free world…except maybe all the time.
He's only the leader of the free world when he can "let our troops get killed in Libya", and such.
Down came the rain and wiped poor Hussein out…
Is nothing sacred anymore?
No, chalk free sidewalks was the last thing God gave up before he checked out.
Editrix, I'll see you an unread Umberto Eco and raise you an unread Thomas Pynchon. Ungrateful little college weenies. Probably think Gravity's Rainbow is about the attraction of the ghey.
No, only about pederasty and shooting teenage boys off in V2 rockets.
Does Life begin at conception?? No, Life begins at 50!!!
Life begins at puberty. All before was the merest imagining.
Editrix left nothing but a chalk outline of the author on the sidewalk .
Have you seen what people look like in Iowa with all that high fructose corn syrup they produce there? Amorphous blob, indeed.
Do these dipshits obsess about the chalk drawings outside of Starbucks? Or is that just a Chicago thing?
The clouds that bore down on Iowa State on Wednesday have a silver lining. Although many of us may very well have murmured to ourselves, “Rain rain go away / Come again another day,” the drops of water that fell from the sky in an on-again, off-again kind of way have one great virtue.
Worst. Faulkner/DeLillo/Shakespeare. Mashup. EVER.
No dirt stained panties, can't be Faulkner.
Faulkner and the Dirt Stained Panties.
Didn’t they cut an album in Mussel Shoals in ’71?
Biggest asshole I ever met in college was the guy "running" the radio station as if he were working a real fucking job. GOD he was an asshole. Same goes for most kids who blithely sacrifice their youthful years pursuing some icky simulacrum of the life they think adults lead. Assholes all.
I'll see your asshole running the college radio station and raise you an asshole running the college radio station whose father is the Dean.
My guy went on to actually have a career in radio. Decisive proof as to his asshole status.
My guy went on to getting caught sneaking around and peering into window in the shower of the girl’s dorm. When the Jersey Girls decided justice was not properly administered they did.
A real writer would have set the verse off on lines by itself:
Although many of us may very well have murmured to ourselves,
the drops of water that fell from the sky…
________________
*Anon
How, you ask, did God allow this to happen? The answer is communicated to you by the very egregiousness of the crime committed. God has died. Obama knows this and so strikes at this most opportune moment. Abandon all hope, ye gentle bitches of Iowa.
Holy shit, did English 101 give out some extra credit or something?
I went to college in Chicago and the many Iowans I met there were all, without exception, the most insufferable sanctimonious prigs I've ever known. I don't know why Iowans suck but they do.
You should try driving here. You'd swear people are having heart attacks behind the wheel.
You know who else monopolized the sidewalks?
Huge, fetid piles of garbage bags that have been sitting there so long that they actually have wavy stink lines coming off of them?
Or is that only in NYC?
That guy the other day, and when I stepped left, HE stepped left, and when I stepped right, HE stepped right?
I hate that, don't you?
When that happens you scream, "They're coming! They're coming!" and squat down covering your head. When you stand up you will have a clear path for the rest of the block, even down 42nd. Street.
Oh dear. Sounds like the editor is still mighty pissed that he got rejected by the Iowa Writer's Workshop.
WHAT?? Democrats getting out the vote during open polling by using CHALK on SIDEWALKS!!! This is an outrage. Why next they will be telephoning people and encouraging them to vote!! Why don't they do what the GOP does – route the vote tabulations through servers you control and create the results you want.
If you think this was scathing, just wait until you see his editorial in next month's edition.
It's all about how Christmas has gotten away from its Christian origins.
Just guessing, but this person has the New Yorker poster of the guy in the top hat looking at a butterfly through a monacle in his/her dorm room. Dude, replace with dogs playing poker.
He's clearly unfamiliar with the Chalk United ruling, which states that chalk is speech. Brought to you by the Chalk Brothers.
"They had the effect of erasing some of the chalk that directed — nay, commanded — us to vote for President Barack Obama"
So, if the chalk slogans had said something like:
"Could you consider voting for President Barack Obama? I mean, if you've thought it over and decided that's OK with you"
that would have been OK with Little Lord Fuckpants, then?
Or "Please, may I have some more Kenyan Muslin Communist?"
I'll bet he's memorized every Monty Python sketch ever.
Wonkette commenter libel!
"Campaigns should not bludgeon potential voters with their presence. There ought to be some moderation"
Translation: That Cullid boy and his unseemly supporters should just shut up and let us take over.
So they wanna privatize the sidewalks? I smell some badly digested Kant.
Is that how they spell "cunt" up that away?
This is a surprisingly literary conversation coming out of Ames (where ISU resides).
Was this written by fucking Snoopy hunched over his keyboard with a fedora on?!
Or Woodstock.
The Obamamamas got Curtis Hall? Maybe if they could get Rich Hall they could put this election away.
Who are these Greg Marmalards in charge of our college papers and who the fuck let them out?
Meanwhile, for those of us in Ames whose world extends further than six blocks, it's nothing but signs supporting Steve King.
There are 30,000 of you motherlovers on that campus, far more than the margin of victory for Christie Vilsack. If she doesn't win, NO democrat will ever win. Just wait 10 years till the state loses more people and maybe you'll win when you incorporate Cedar Rapids. GOTV!
Having had the misfortune of being in the 5th District since returning to Iowa 10 years ago, I'm so, so sorry. It's a sad day in Podunk when the prospect of being represented by Tom Latham (re-districting has put me in the 4th) is an improvement. I'm not wild about Leonard Boswell, but I may actually do a dance of joy if he manages to beat Latham.
Has the Daily been taken over by right-wing morons, then? Haven't paid attention to it since I graduated.
You'd think his tears of butthurtedness would wash most of these away, way before the rain did.
Is corporate chalk, people?
okay, you guys. you have ALL given me the most pleasant afternoon of chuckles and chortles ever. i love when my brain synapses crackle into action with off-handed references by this illustrious crew.
thank yew.
Chalktober Revolution.
First they came for the Number Two lead pencils, and I said nothing, then they came for the crayons, and I said nothing, then they came for the chalk and I freaked the fuck out like Prommie.
Now, they know how many holes it takes to fill the Curtis Hall…
Chalk is cheap!
gotta love those college students.
"booooo, people are campaigning, in an election year, no less! we shall not be exposed to this!"
What a dumb editorial. Who says "nay…?" Who says "egregious?" And what's wrong with chalk statements campaigning for President Obama? Nothing!! What a dumb editorial!
Well I do only read one article in 5, true, I just ignore the chaff. The weekly pro football rundown in which there is no mention of football whatsoever except to take knocks at Greggggg Easterbrook tickles me every time.
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