
Editor’s note: This piece contains strong language that somehow escaped the censorial clutches of Amara Kwiatkowski, the perennially incompetent Editor in Chief of the Texas Orator.
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The Texas Orator is a pointless university publication that offers little value to students.
Compared to stellar publications like the Daily Texan, which publishes student writing of the highest possible quality, the Texas Orator is doomed to fail because its guiding principles of free speech, multi-partisanship, and style are dumb.
In this essay, I will rebut each of these principles in the most anti-Orator way possible. Without further adieu, I dare you to read it all the way through.
1.) Free Speech is stupid
Loosely speaking, free speech is the idea that people have the right to express their opinions without government sanction, barring some necessary exceptions. It is clear that this concept is stupid for three reasons.
First, free speech is vulnerable to attack by free speech. In other words, one could argue that free speech shouldn’t exist (it shouldn’t) and that would be perfectly permitted under free speech. If such statements shouldn’t be allowed, then the free speech advocate must concede that free speech shouldn’t exist.
Second, it is clear that every single man-made horror of the past two centuries – from the Hindenburg to the live action remake of “Avatar: The Last Airbender” – emerged from people expressing themselves freely. Had free speech not existed, countless lives would have been saved.
Third, studies show that higher frequencies of moronic statements among the population is positively correlated with relaxed speech laws. At the end of the day, a free and stupid society is worse than one that is not-free but smart.
Overall, the pointlessness of free speech is perhaps best encapsulated in an old Buddhist story about a five-legged dog:
“And then the Buddha came across a five-legged dog blocking the road. As the Buddha walked by, the dog started barking.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ the Buddha said.
The dog shut up and never barked at anyone ever again. The lousy thing died from emotional trauma within a year.”
2.) Multi-partisanship is dumb
Multi-partisanship is the idea that a single platform can support opposing viewpoints. This notion is clearly even stupider than free speech.
First, any platform must enforce standards of behavior and journalistic integrity. This necessarily prevents certain viewpoints, such as those of the extreme left or right, from being expressed.
But wait a minute! Why stop there? Why not hold up all views to a higher standard? If I myself know that my views are right, why not bend the platform to express only those views? It’s only morally justified, right?
Second, civility is overrated. It’s way more fun to trash-talk, dogpile and troll the other side. As a strict capitalist, I must say that promoting “across-the-aisle” conversations is a bad business model. The market has spoken and it wants vitriol! Give me the discourse on any social media platform, from Instagram to 8Chan, and I will show you that this is the rule.
Overall, the dumbness of multi-partisanship is best expressed in the following story from Tolkien’s “Peube de Heube:”
A young man from Estonia sought an apprenticeship as an artist. He first went to the cave of the Oh-Raturz, a tribe known for its open-mindedness to artistic expression. Looking upon their canvas, the young man shuddered; it was a gaudy mess filled with doodles and incompatible color schemes.
Then, he went to see the castle of the BigBrainz, a tribe known for their exacting standards of art. What he saw there shook him to his core: a unified painting on canvas of a golden pear tree in a swimming pool – beautiful beyond belief. The young man fell to his knees and pleaded to be accepted into the castle. The BigBrainz said yes and gladly took him.
Many years later, the young man came back across the Tribe of the Oh-Raturz – only this time as King of the BigBrainz. The tribe was still busy adding more colors and doodles to the very same canvas they were working on before. And so it was that Ferdinand, King of the BigBrainz, etched his name into history by slaughtering the thirty heathens, burning their canvas, and painting the most glorious depiction of the events (which still hangs to this day in the Louvre).
3.) Style is bad
The concept of style contradicts the Orator’s primary value of free speech because it is effectively a form of literary censorship.
Style is the outdated notion that writing should conform to certain standards. This notion is clearly horrible; some of the greatest writing ever produced, such as the works of South Park and Bob Ross, eschewed style and writing standards.
It is also well known that bands such as the Beatles not only didn’t know music theory, but were also illiterate and therefore strung random words together to make up their lyrics.
Songs such as “Hey Jude” by McCartney and “The State and Revolution” by Lennon were made irrespective of style guides. In fact, it could be argued that the imposition of style on these songs would have ruined them completely.
True art needs style not. This is best demonstrated in this short excerpt from Hunter S. Thompson’s sex diary:
“Gaaaaaahhhh
Poppin’ Poppins popped a pop
Ilyim nadovish COCAINE let’s gooooooo whoopee!
Spaghettiee, Spaghettiee, seize the propertoli – Carl Marks.”
In conclusion:
The Orator is a stupid, dumb, trite and frankly racist paper that stands for everything wrong with society today. The sooner this fledgling shithole of a publication crashes and burns under the glorious might of the Daily Texan, the sooner the world can accept the second coming of Hillary Clinton.
In the end, free speech, multi-partisanship and style are all terrible and will never win. Anyone telling you otherwise is deranged.
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— Penned by some hack at the Daily Texan
Categories: Satire