A joke column?

I was sure I should laugh at Ross Anderson’s Wednesday column, “Drawing
Lines of Division,” but I suddenly became unsure whether I was
laughing for the right reason. Up until about halfway through the article, I found myself nodding, happy that someone had chosen to speak out on the rank partisanship that has putrefied this election cycle and insulted the intelligence of the American people. Besides Bachmann’s comments about pro-Americanism and the right’s stand-bys like baby-killers versus baby-protectors, we have endured an election cycle in which the left has told us that the election is a battle between racists and non-racists, rich people and poor people, minorities and Caucasians, smart people and stupid people, baby-killers and peace-lovers and virtually every other conceivable example of absurd, dangerous, antagonistic and divisive false dichotomy. It was about time, I thought that people — and their press — should be fed up, not just with the other party but with their own as well.
Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that, in the end, Anderson’s column was nothing more than common partisan screed dressed up (poorly) as an objective statement on the condition of national politics.
An ostensibly nonpartisan column that feigns disdain for the balkanization of American politics and then proceeds to offer obsessive criticisms of one party while failing to make a single specific indictment of the other is either a clumsy attempt at irony or a naked act of hypocrisy.
Either way, Anderson’s column is a joke, and the only question that remains is whether I should be laughing with him or at him.

Becky Palapala
University student