Dear Readers,
Please respond to this little poll. List your top five coolest (famous) people as a comment below. If you’d like to identify your gender, for the purpose of general interest in whom men and women think of as cool men and women, please do. But do consider entering your list. Or just one name. Or a hundred. Thanks.
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Okay, so this week I’m back at it, scoring them UMass incoming frosh writing placement tests. The boys are still angry, the girls are still diplomatic and have pretty handwriting. As you may recall, one of the prompts for the writers involved the Patriot Act and wiretapping, privacy, etc. One clever lad came up with the essay title “I’d Tap That.” For those of you not as down with youth slang of the day, “tap” is the latest euphemism for having sex. It follows heels of “hit” and the phrase, “I’d hit that,” usually spoken by a young man about either a young woman or her backside. In thinking about writing this post, I realized that it’s not the “hit” but the “that” that’s most objectionable, as it has to be the most understated and yet blatant objectification of women I’ve heard in quite some time. I’d hit that thing over there. Now, it’s become softer: I’d tap that. Progresss? After hearing about that double-entend-ed title for an essay, I became very self-conscious every time I saw “tap” thereafter, and found this passage especially juicy: “Under current standings, the government can tap whoever they want, whenever they want, for whatever they want. You or I could be getting tapped right now and have no idea . . . .”
I’m guessing the young woman who wrote that was not so hip to the lingo.
I’ve yet to read a single essay that didn’t spell ludicrous “ludacris.”
“When I was a young boy, one of my favorite toys was the tin-can telephone. Since then technology has come such a long way.” (Must be one of those “returning” students)
One student quoted King Whitney, Jr., whom I’d never heard of before. Live and learn.
One student referred five times in his four page paper to “the atrocities that global warming causes.”
Several along these lines, but this was the scariest: “If one is associated with the wrong person or protesting the wrong war [a reference to the essay they read that mentioned that someone could be persecuted for “protesting the wrong war”] one should be found guilty by association.” (Remember, these kids were 10 or so on 9/11/01.)
“Day by day, hour by hour, men, women, and children are getting smarter and smarter each day.”
And, from the same lad:
“I believe the people in this world nowadays [why do they all write “nowadays”?] are flat out sick, sick enough to kill their wives or children, sexually molest or rape a young female and throw her in the woods, kill someone over their color, and many many more.” (one of those angry young men)
One student referred to “George Orwell, a good friend of mine.”
And finally, a ray of hope: “The only way to destroy the privacy of an individual is to probe their mind, which the government has not, will not, and can not possibly do.”
Fight the power.
So, then, once you all send in your coolest, we’ll get back to talking about cool and hip, with gender thrown into the mix. For now, though, I gotta go – I’m tapped out.
