Duke: Why Bother?

WORD HAS IT that the undergraduate organization of budding politicos, the Institute of Politics, is considering inviting the Wizard of La, David Duke, to stink up the K-School Forum.

Those who were not worn out by the various brouhahas of the past year or so--Confederate flags, swastikas,. exploding pink triangles, blue squares--are already heatedly hashing this one out over tater tots in the dining halls. The arguments for both sides are not particularly edifying or even fun.

Pro: Free speech (this principle must be ritually invoked ever since someone in the national media decided the PC hordes, whoever they are, were dripping slime on the First Amendment). Duke is as much a presidential candidate as non-entity Larry Agran, who spoke at the K-School earlier this year, the argument goes. If only someone had invited Hitler to the K-School Forum in 1932 then maybe we'd still be dealing with the Second Reich instead of the Fourth, etc.

Con: Legitimization of a guy who wears a sheet. Go read up on Weimar. The K-School fails to invite lots of controversial people, and this particular neo-Nazi is particularly revolting and particularly sneaky, etc.

And if, quite understandably, you didn't enjoy that listing of arguments, imagine it writ large all over this page for the dizzying span of about three weeks, which is the average half-life of a controversy with racial implications around here.

Let's not and say we did.

THIS CONTROVERSY could waste a lot of time. IOP pols have to polish their quotes for The Crimson, ace reporters Ira E. Stoll '94 and Joanna M. Weiss '94 have to do a four-part series on said IOP pols, President Rudenstine has to write a thoughtful yet sensitive open letter to the community, the Dems and Republicans have to play less-Nazi-than-thou, someone around here has to write a wryly-disapproving-but-above-it-all staff editorial, countless well-meaning souls have to flood The Crimson with countless well-meaning letters to the editors, the Black Students Association and Hillel have to do their New Deal coalition trick again, and everyone--everyone--has to demonstrate and eat-in and be-in and sit-in.

We all know this script cold. Just change the words "Confederate flag" to "flagrant Confederate" and repeat last spring's controversy. So why bother actually doing the whole rigamarole? There are not a lot of valuable life lessons to be learned here, and we all (claim to) have better things to do than watch history repeat itself--especially when it was a farce the first time around.

COMMUNISM, if anyone other than 1.1 billion Chinese remembers what that is, used to work something like this: You pretend to work, and we pretend to pay you. Let's do the same for this embryonic snit: The IOP pretends to bring Duke, and we pretend to freak out. It's efficient, satisfying and over in a flash.

There are only two convincing arguments for actually going through with the controversy. First, it stokes the inflamed egos of campus bigwigs who like seeing their names in the paper. There's nothing really wrong with that; as compensation, have The Crimson print all their names in a corner of the paper near "Doonesbury" for a week or so. It's either that or have the paper run another front-page story about a first-year student getting hit on the head by a falling ceiling tile while he was on the john. Complete with a picture.

Second, maybe in the course of The Affair, someone will do something profoundly goofy and therefore entertaining. So far, at least one thing has happened that boggles the mind: IOP Chair Kimberley D. Harris '92 transcended chutzpah by asking the BSA and Hillel to co-sponsor the speech.

Best thing to happen since Jacinda T. Townsend '92--who wound up in Newsweek for protesting the Confederate flag with creative logic by hanging a swastika from her window--became the Undergraduate Council's publicity chair. Presumably because the unimaginative bigot who scrawled "Faggot" on a Lowell House resident's room was otherwise engaged.

Admittedly, the prospect of another semester of monumental idiocy is appealing. But not appealing enough to slog through the entire tedious business of a campus convulsion. With the time saved, we could rent a movie; possibly, but not definitely, Mississippi Burning.

Lots of folks will go ballistic. There will be letters, marches, protests, general hysteria. It's boring already.