Thank you, diligent readers, for the recent influx of letters to Broadside regarding the vulgar and apparently hard-to-love columnist duo, Michatalie. There hasn’t been this much buzz surrounding Broadside since Alan Moore began penning columns for us.
So far, the pair has made us laugh, cringe and drop our jaws as they let freshmen know the major do’s and don’ts of college and told readers how to achieve the perfect ChipOrgasm — much to the chagrin of many of you readers.
Here’s what we think our readers are missing about Michatalie’s column: they are not being serious.
Yes, they are vulgar, use foul language and aim to shock, but they do it all for laughs. So when they say you should attend every fraternity party in one night or not purchase $5 veggie cups, they want you to laugh with them and have enough sense to know you shouldn’t actually aim to be the latest girl in a guy’s beer-stained bed.
In a letter to the editor this week, John Morgan questions Broadside’s standards since we choose to print this column. Yes, we do have standards, ones that we try to uphold vehemently every week. We swear by our style rules, spend countless hours editing stories and putting together a paper every week for George Mason University students that reflects the things students care about and want to read.
We’re not always perfect.
Michatalie may not be everybody’s cup of tea, and we don’t expect it to be.
As editors we accept that we will inevitably print things not everybody will love, but then, when was the last time you picked up a newspaper or magazine and liked every single thing the publication printed or had an opinion on?
Catherine Brusseau, in her letter to the editor this week, writes that Michatalie’s column is degrading to the image of the Mason student body. However, never does Michatalie claim to represent anybody but Michatalie.
Brusseau also points out that Mason is ranked within the top five “Up-and-Coming Universities” on U.S. News and World Report’s annual list. We too, take pride in that fact, but we believe that the two have nothing to do with one another. We don’t think Michatalie or Broadside has it within our power to reverse any of the progress made by the university in academics, faculty, students, campus life, diversity or facilities simply by printing certain content.
Despite threats to the contrary, we hope people will still choose to read Broadside.
Just as you respect our right to print what we want, we will respect your right to read what you want.
We hope somewhere within our pages there is an article that gave you information you wanted, agreed with or simply read for pleasure that will drive you to pick up next week’s edition.
Some of you have questioned what purpose Michatalie’s column serves, and our answer is it serves as entertainment.
In his letter to the editor this week, Morgan says that there is a difference between Michatalie and other “explicit” yet “still valuable” content, like that printed by The Onion. We contend both are created equally as parody and exist solely to entertain. Generally, there isn’t any value in watching TV, surfing Facebook or texting a friend, but these are things people do for entertainment all the time.
For your reference, Michatalie haters, the column will be printed biweekly in the style section under the picture some of you know and have learned to hate.
If Michatalie doesn’t make you laugh, we implore you to not read it, but want to remind you that it’s not representative of all the content Broadside has to offer.
Lastly, we want to keep hearing from you readers, because Broadside exists to serve the interests and opinions of Mason students.
All the letters we have gotten about Michatalie have been negative, but we want to hear from Michatalie lovers as well.
We know you exist and would love to hear your defense of the new addition to the Broadside team.
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