for 9 April 2001. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Tim Cavanaugh
Special Guest Editor

Terry Colon
Art Director

Heather Havrilesky
Senior Editor

Joey Anuff
Publisher

It must really have galled you to admit that Horowitz is right about leftist fascists at major universities. And then you add, unbelievingly, in so many words that "who cares if there is free speech on campus or not". Ah, now I get it, academia is supposed to be fascist! Gee, all these years and I thought universities were supposed to encourage free exchange of ideas. Thanks for clearing that one up for me.

Another of your weird takes is your apparent lack of awareness of the enormous amount of speeches and articles gurgling out daily from the reparations for Blacks crowd i.e. just about every Black politician, and magazine and newspaper columnist. My own university UW-La Crosse just had a "symposium" on race which strongly accented this very issue as reported by my hometown newspaper. If you don't think it's being propagated by many as an important issue, tell it to those people. If Gore or Bradley had been elected, this would be front and center a huge issue in Congress. So Horowitz tries to counter this nefarious avalanche by race hustlers and poverty pimps preaching to the academically deluded by getting his counter-argument published, and of course to you he's just a self-aggrandizing rabble-rouser.

But at least you realize there are leftist fascists. You seem to be able to grasp a few things. There may be hope for you yet.

sincerely yours

John Butala
<DRIFTLESS@webtv.net>

Thanks, John. Although you've mastered the art of assuming every interlocutor is a leftist/liberal/democrat until proven innocent (which is also the MO of great Horowitz himself), I plead not guilty of any of those labels. Nothing galls me except the fact that you claim to be in college in the United States and have a pretty questionable grasp of how to write an English sentence.

Somehow, it's not too surprising that you hear plenty of speeches about slavery reparations. That, as I indicated, is because you are in college, where the population generally doesn't have to worry about putting food on the table and can indulge in flights of fancy.

Which brings me to your misuse of words: I believe you want to say "unbelievably" rather than "unbelievingly". Unless you're accusing me of being a non-believer. Or unless you think "supposably" is a word too. And the phrase "in so many words" means exactly the opposite of what you apparently meant for it to mean.

My advice: Can the student activism and hit the fucking books. It's a tough world out there.

yr pal,

Addison DeWit