The Commercialism Issue

April 27, 2006

Politics and the Precept

One of the proclaimed ‘hallmarks’ of a Princeton education is the preceptorial session and, at first glance, it seems to be a model institution. The precept is an opportunity to engage closely with a course’s material in the company of … Read More

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The Wrath of the Fatherland

It is Spanish medieval history meets German 20th century history. It is Heart of Darkness meets Mein Kampf. It is glory meets madness. It is conquest meets greed. It is Herzog meets Kinski. It is abjection meets addiction. This is … Read More

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Loud Noises

It was the first dance of the year, and we were eighth graders, the cream of the crop, the big kahunas, the head honchos…you get it. We were on top, and it was our year. Pulling up in our now … Read More

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Bid Every Care Withdraw

“Are you going to the James Baker lecture?” a guy sitting across the table from me recently asked his friends over dinner. “Who’s James Baker?” one of the friends answered. “You know – an important person who went here.” “Oh. … Read More

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Other People’s Holocausts

Elie Wiesel got mad at me once.
In 1996, I was attending Harvard Divinity School and taking a seminar with Wiesel at Boston University on “Literature of Prison.” The room was packed with fawning, silent, ‘participants’ who took down Wiesel’s pronouncements like they were revelation. We were reading books written from or about prison life: Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden, Danilo Kis’ A Tomb for Boris Davidovich; a fantastic syllabus. After a while, one’s literary experience of prison becomes numbing, all bondage seems the same: the harsh labor, the capricious cruelty of guards, the rock-hardened souls

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Culture Goes Commercial

Devon Avenue is the one of the northernmost major thoroughfares running east-west across the numbered grid of Chicago’s city streets. East-west streets are numbered at hundreds by their distance from latitude line zero, Madison Street, which cuts through the heart … Read More

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Candy, Cones & Customers

But reversion to infancy is normal in Ricky’s Candy, Cones & Chaos. “I had a kid in Morristown just standing with a rat in his mouth,” Jeff calls out to a couple perusing the gummy rodents. “Just standing there, the whole head in his mouth, gnawing on it. It’s this big!” He waits for me to look up. “This big!” he cries, holding his hands a foot and a half apart. “You get to see stupid things because people get stupid in here. You pick up just about everything.”

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Natural Highs (and Lows?)

Through the grass I slowly slide to a great big stone. The sun is shining, I am warm, and I hope I’m left alone. He’s flying. His mouth makes a happy triangle, widening over toothy blips. One dimple stretches into … Read More

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Not a Chance

My mission, since I chose to accept it, was to see whether or not there was a way to survive comfortably in the town of Princeton – eat two meals and maybe go on one interesting excursion – while spending … Read More

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Meet Nadine

Nadine Jordan will be working late tonight. She does so every night, often from five in the afternoon until two in the morning, handling the steady and familiar flow of customers at the U-2. “It’s usually pretty busy here throughout my shift,” she says. “I hardly get a chance to catch my breath.”
But this is a job she needs. The sandy-haired, former stay-at-home mother took this job, with all its drama and tedium, because she needs the paycheck. Yet like most who appear to live simple, unencumbered lives, there is more behind this cashier than just cigarettes and beef jerky. She has a long and heartbreaking past.

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Race and The Sopranos

I was watching an episode of The Sopranos in the TV room in Terrace last week, when a friend of mine made a comment that never fails to make me groan: “Dude, this show treats Italian-Americans so bad…” I doubt … Read More

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In Living Color

Spring! And with it, the advent of this season’s crop of light, sugary pop albums designed to serve as background music as you luxuriate in the sun. At the fore of this season’s harvest are The Concretes, a Swedish octet … Read More

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Drop-kick me, Jesus

It certainly looks like things cannot get any worse for the Little Sisters of Hoboken, New Jersey, when two-thirds of the nuns die from ingesting a tainted soup prepared by Sister Julia (Child of God). When the play opens, the … Read More

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Don’t Look Now

A few years ago the song “Fortunate Son” was used in a commercial for Wrangler Jeans. To many this seemed yet another belated obituary for the 60’s, yet another testament to the casual victory of the Establishment. After all, here … Read More

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Verbatim

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Overheard in Prospect House

Jeff Nunokawa: Ed White makes me look like John Fleming

Overheard at Cloister

Male Junior 1: Yeah, I passed out once at TI and didn't wake up until after lunch the next day.
Male Junior 2: Wow, I'm suprised no one jerked off on your face.

Overheard outside Wu

Sorority girl: And the BEST thing about campus is that you can, like, keep your alcohol in a bag or whatever and drink it and they can't do anything to you!
Prefrosh: [awkwardly] Ummm, oh cool.