Dearest Nasslings:

Welcome to Starbucks Coffee™ Presents: the Nassau Weekly’s Corporate, Consulting, Crass Consumer Culture Issue. We’ve made a wonderful friend from Seattle with a bone-crushing handshake, and boy-oh-boy if we aren’t rolling in it this week.

Now served up: a rich, steamy Triangle Club exposé penned by a current member; a piping-hot review of the Sundance Film Festival; two invigorating theatrical critiques; and so much more!

You might ask why in God’s name we’ve sold ourselves so utterly and unswervingly to the man. The answer, of course, is simple. I mean, we needed the money, like, totally, for one. And we figured, hell, we wanted to live in New York City. Just once, at least, because all our friends are there, and it’s such an exciting place to be after college . . . great built-in social network . . . and anyway, we’d wondered about travel or working for an NGO, but who needs it? And we wanted security. And they’re, you know, they’re totally good guys at McKinsey, your contract expires after two years, then you have enough cash to do what you want. Right?

Right.

In all seriousness, though—and as our outgoing USG President has pointed out—there are fewer than 120 days remaining in the Princeton lives of seniors. They include barely more than 23 or so-odd opportunities to get fall-down, break-a-tooth wasted, an entire thesis, and a series of other important events such as FristFest. It’s really very hard to believe. Princetonians become lawyers, doctors, politicians, and all forms of analyst, scribe, and scrivener under the sun. We fan out into the world to spread sweetness and light—the Imperial kind, just as Matthew Arnold intended. So this issue does its best to sweep through the muck of ‘liberal propaganda,’ of purported ‘high culture’ and other anathemas, in order to better understanding that Great American Mainstream we’ll soon be grasping by the genitals.

We figured, therefore, that wholesale corporate sponsorship was the way to go. Many publications—yeah, we hear you up there, Daily Princetonian—make some secret of the fact that they’re funded by the University (itself one of the world’s more effective conglomerates). And we here at the Nassau Weekly certainly don’t get to take two classes a term, like some Editors-in-Chief. We do the right honorable thing and flunk out, dammit, and on our way out the door, we might as whore ourselves to the highest bidder, if only for a buck or two.

But we digress.

Read this issue, in its entirety, twice. Then report back to us. Thoughts, responses. Questions. We’d like it on our desk by Monday.

And enjoy! We don’t consider it the end of an era. After all, supposed third-party, ‘independent’ journalism ceased to exist in the early-Seventies. Now we just have that creepy Bob Woodruff character, and the Senator from Alaska who broke The Pentagon Papers. What’s his name? Gavel? Gravel?

Whatever.

Shine on, you crazy diamonds.

Nass is forever,

The Eds.

Oh, and please don’t take the Starbucks thing seriously. The coupons really are fake. Don’t use them. Or if you do, don’t say the Nass sent you.