THE EMOTIONAL COST
Unhappy kids can skip this part.
Let me ask you this: why were you happier were when you were a kid?
Because you didn’t know anything.
The more you know, the sadder you get.
Don’t Believe Me? By the time you finish reading this chapter, over a hundred dogs and cats in animal shelters around the nation will have been euthanized.
Don’t know if this is true
Bet you wish you could erase that knowledge. But it’s too late. You learned a New Idea, and it made you sad. College is just more of the same.
THE PHYSICAL COST
Pain is the body’s way of telling the brain it’s in trouble. Similarly, confusion is the brain’s way of telling the body, “All right, buddy, drop that book.”
Let’s try a little experiment. Look at this equation:
What you’re feeling right now is your body rejecting an idea that is trying to make you learn it. Don’t fight the confusion. That’s just your mind scabbing over in a desperate attempt to protect you from that unnatural co-mingling of numbers and letters up there. You can’t add it, and you can’t read it. Useless.
Numbers and letters? That’s a “Catch-22!”
* * *
GUT-CHECK: Son of Sam killer David Berkowitz was a well-adjusted member of society until his neighbor’s dog started filling his head with a bunch of New Ideas.
* * *
While it’s true that you encounter New Ideas in colleges and universities, they aren’t the real problem. Some of the buildings are nice, and the lawns are quite lush. It’s what infests these hives of higher learning that is the source of the real poison.
Writing fans: Watch for this bee metaphor to reappear later!
I’m talking about Academics.
Not a day goes by without a news of some anti-American statement made by a lunatic in a mortar board and elbow patches.
* * *
HERE’S A QUESTION: Elbow patches? Just what are these lecherous lecturers doing behind their lecterns that wears out their elbows so fast? I’ve got twenty-year-old suits, and the elbows are pristine.
* * *
“edu-bator” ©Stephen Colbert 2007
Why can’t we fire these “edu-bators”? These men and (all too frequently) women who actually give credit for learning a foreign language? Because of a little thing called tenure. Well, I have a modest proposal for changing all that. Doctors don’t get tenure. Plumbers don’t. Can you imagine if baseball players got tenure, and we had to sit there watching them round the bases in a wheelchair?
I can imagine this.
I propose that we do away with tenure on campus once and for all and replace it with a series of clear-cut requirements for professors. In no particular order:
Actually, in this particular order.
I may have dreamt it.
Cognitive skills test: Prospective faculty can demonstrate mental competence by memorizing a small passage of text, say, a secret loyalty oath.
U.S. History: Name the winner of the 1943 World Series. I got this idea from an old World War II movie about a squadron that had been infiltrated by a spy. I can’t actually answer this question myself, but I’m not the one whose patriotism is in question.
Penmanship: Can a professor legibly write a brief paragraph? For instance, a secret loyalty oath?
Eat a bug: Prove you love your country as much as the contestants on Fear Factor.
Public speaking: Can the faculty member enunciate the secret loyalty oath when they are called upon to do so by a tribunal?
Good-faith attempts at heterosexuality: Prospective professors would be required to produce evidence of at least five years’ worth of heterosexual congress. (I’m open-minded. I don’t say you must be straight to teach our youth. I only ask that you try.)
Loyalty: If they fell into enemy hands, could the professor keep the loyalty oath secret? No matter what unspeakable act be visited upon them?
Essay: Why Ayn Rand would thrash Shakespeare in a fair fight. This isn’t a metaphor for the disparity in the receptions afforded their differing philosophies in today’s left-leaning universities. Professors would be required to describe how she’d kick his ass in a bar.
It involves a glass rod and a hammer!
FROM BAD TO WORDS
The easiest way for college professor “bees” to administer their “idea poison” is through their “thought-stingers,” commonly called “books.”
Told you it was coming back
* * *
WAKEUP CALL: Think books aren’t scary? Well, think about this: You can’t spell “Book” without “Boo!”
* * *
The only good book is the Good Book. Come on, the word “Good” is right there in the title. And if there’s one thing you can learn from the Bible, it’s that books are responsible for the Fall of Man. Look at the story of Adam and Eve. Their lives were pretty great—until they ate fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.
Now, you don’t have to be a biblical scholar to see that the fruit clearly represents a book. First, both come from a tree. Second, if my first point didn’t convince you, I’m not going to waste my breath with another.
God’s point: Ignorance isn’t just bliss, it’s Paradise.
Unfortunately, Paradise is Lost, and Ignorance may no longer be an option. The Sad Truth is Knowledge has become a racket, and these days it’s nearly impossible for the uneducated to break into the world of highly paid professionals. Doctors and lawyers (even some dentists) have to go college. So to live in the gated communities to which you’d like to become accustomed, you’ve got to play ball. College Ball.
GETTING IN
First off, if you’re going to squander your youth in the Ivory Jungle, at least shoot for the Top Schools. They provide something the best firms look for, called cachet.
Note: The “t” is silent. Classy.
Rule of Thumb: If they’re not in the first two pages of U.S. News and World Report College Guide, all they offer is information and the possibility of drunken sex with your suitemate—a dangerous potential that will gnaw at you for the rest of your life.
Did your suitemate gnaw on you?
The ultimate goal of going to a Top School is the quiet satisfaction of whipping out your Alma Mater at opportune moments. At first blush, most would peg me as an average Joe, and I’m proud of that. But my sheepskin announces to all assembled that though I may be a man of the people, I also have the keys to the clubhouse. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard the phrase, “You went to Dartmouth? I find that hard to believe.”
Heard it while at Dartmouth, too
THE BAD NEWS
Admissions is an arbitrary and demoralizing process, and no matter how hard you work, the outcome is often determined by personal connections. You know what else is like that?
Life.
Also, love-tester machines. No way I’m a “Cold Fish.”
I’m at least a “Pretty Spicy.”
THE GOOD NEWS
There’s an entire industry in this country devoted to getting kids into college.
And while you may not need Kaplan’s or The Princeton Review to get into a decent school, you should pay for them anyway. We live in a capitalist society. Love it or leave it.
Applying to college teaches youngsters résumé-building, a.k.a.: lying. Here’s how it works, kids. Let’s say one day you’re bored in class, so to pass the time, you make out with the Danish exchange student across the aisle. Now, on your college application, you can say that you carried out an Independent Study in Foreign Tongues.
“Hands” Christian Andersen
I went to Dartmouth.
* * *
BY THE NUMBERS: Even the least-padded résumé can be overcome with a solid application essay. Here’s the one that got me into Dartmouth:
* * *
There are two secrets that make this essay great.
Secret number one: A Thesaurus. Egghead
s love the words, so the more you jam in there, the better. Think of it as a verb sausage.
Secret number two: The last sentence. All it takes is a little research, and you can find the campus library, dormitory, or stadium that most plausibly could have been donated by your family. You’d be surprised how rarely these folks check into your background if you show up to the interview wearing an ascot.
CHASE CUTTING: You got in! Feel good? It should. You were deemed worthy, while your high school rival is going to his safety school.
NOW WHAT?
When you get to college you’ll be on your own, maybe for the first time in your life. You will soon learn that peer pressure is a terrible thing. You’re going to be tempted to go follow the crowd—into a classroom. Fight it. Because there’s no need to attend a single lecture.
Baghdad State
Don’t believe me? Professor Colbert is going to tell you all you need to know.
You’re about to get four years’ worth of college in five minutes. I went through the course catalogue for a prestigious university—I won’t say which, because I might have a shot at an honorary doctorate there—and I found that I could reduce the pertinent content of every class into one sentence. I didn’t include graduate classes, because if you’re even considering an advanced degree, I’ve already lost you.
Now you that you have your education covered, what will you do with all that free time? Well, luckily, college is good for one thing. Can you guess what it is? I’ll give you a hint: it starts with “secret” and ends with “societies.”
Whether they be Fraternities or Eating Clubs or (in Louisiana) Parishes, universities are the best places a young man can meet and bond with, through an elaborate hazing process, those who can give him a leg up for the rest of his life.
I cemented my lasting relationships with America’s future movers and shakers by being forced to strip naked with half my fellow pledges and pass a greased 45 rpm record of Foreigner’s “Hot Blooded” from ass crack to ass crack. It could have been worse. The other half of the pledges were passing a greased turntable.
Still played post-crack. Let’s see an MP3 do that.
Don’t believe me? While most of his peers at Yale were writing essays about the tension between stasis and dynamism in Mariana in the Moated Grange, young George W. Bush was making the connections that would eventually lead to him becoming the most Powerful Man in the World.™
In your face, whoever’s in charge of China!
I speak, of course, of Skull and Bones, a shadowy organization that admits only the most deserving Yalesmen. Its members swear an oath of secrecy, and use their wealth and access to power to promote one another once they graduate into the “real world.” For well over a century, Skull and Bones has provided a safe and brotherly environment where future Supreme Court Justices, Presidents, and Captains of Industry can gather to urinate on Geronimo’s bones.
* * *
THE TAKEAWAY: Contrary to what you’ll be taught in college, evolution is a farce, but Darwin did have one good idea: Social Darwinism. You see, in the animal kingdom, God grants long life to whichever lion He thinks is prettiest. But in the world of human society, only the strongest, boldest, and worthiest individuals have the most sex, get the most power, and live the longest. College is the place to meet those people, and once you do, find out their darkest secret.
It may come in handy some day.
* * *
It probably involves their suitemate…and some New Ideas!
* * *
STEPHEN SPEAKS FOR ME
A CHANCE FOR AVERAGE AMERICANS TO AGREE WITH WHAT I THINK
Doctor Bernard Brunner Distinguished Professor
March the 13th, this two thousand and seventh year of what some may consider Our Lord.
I am Doctor Bernard Brunner, distinguished professor at a well-known and esteemed liberal arts university. Some may query, “Of what are you scholarly?” Tragically, even I am not quite certain of that which is my endeavor. It ends in –ology?
I am certain only of this—that life is fleeting and that much of my own has been wasted within the confines of small rooms and even smaller minds. I have spooled the thread of my life arguing meaningless rhetorical questions with unformed, untried brains and vainly pressing nimble, young flesh into service.
Oh, to feel the biting wind on my face. To wake in the early, still dark morn and milk a barn full of swelled cows. Or perhaps to live in the rough city, grasping steel work parts in my hard-calloused hands, the merit badge of the working man!
But alack, harsh fate has decreed that none of these paths will be mine. For I have tenure, and she is far too comforting a mistress to loose me from her grasp for long.
I lay in her arms and suck from her teat, fat and oily.
And here I sit. And here I shall sit.
And like a sneaky merman singing on the rocks, I try to lure young sailors away from the charted waters to a harsh and certain doom. Plug your ears, and though you be young, be wise! Listen not to me, and distrust me upon first sight! I will trap you in the learnings of the past. Look to the future! Away! Good sea!
You must live to learn. Pray live. Whilst I, like all unnecessary things, do but shrivel…
Dry out…And turn to dust.
With the most sincere of wishes,
Dr. Bernard Brunner, Ph.D.
* * *
* * *
Name The Aca-demon Lurking Behind The Beard
Ted Kaczynski
Gloria Steinem
Charlie Manson
Evil Spock
* * *
HINTS
1. He led a small coven of fanatical followers who called themselves “The Family.” Often called the “Fifth Beatle.”
2. Has led a large coven of fanatical followers who called themselves “The Lesbians.” I had a three-way with her and Jane Fonda.
3. His cold logic, or “book-thinking,” masks a sociopathic indifference to human emotion. Bonus Hint: he tortured the mirror-world version of Mr. Chekhov in an “agony booth” in “Mirror, Mirror” (episode #33, original airdate 10/6/67).
4. Enjoyed blowing people up through the mail.
fig 11. STEPHEN COLBERT
CHAPTER 9
HOLLYWOOD
“Those Hollywood nights, those Hollywood Hills.”
–Bob Seger, Rocker Laureate of General Motors
NOTHING CAN MATCH THE EXHILARATION OF SETTLING INTO YOUR SEAT IN A DARK MOVIE THEATER, HEADY WITH ANTICIPATION. THE SCREEN LIGHTS UP! FINALLY, THERE IT IS: THE FIRST PRE-TRAILER ADVERTISEMENT. WILL THE HERO BE ABLE TO DODGE THE MYRIAD OBSTACLES ON HIS WAY TO THE Pepsi machine? Will the girl-next-door fall for the arrogant pretty-boy with the substandard wireless service or the lovable goof with America’s most reliable network, Verizon? That’s what they call the “magic” of the big screen. Bravo!
Then the feature starts and the evening quickly turns sour. Within minutes, you find yourself ushering your children out the exit while you desperately try to explain to them that God is not Black.
TOO FAR!
I DON’T UNDERSTAND movies today. They romanticize the liberal lifestyle, cram gays into our living rooms, and make children believe it’s safe to spend time with Robin Williams.
I am America (and so can You!) Page 12