Think Again

So you want to be an editorialist. I don't blame you. I wanted exactly the same thing when I was a first-year. I understand--ever since Harvard sent you that packet of student publications before your first weeks here, you've wanted to be a leader of campus opinion, to be admired by your ideological peers and to be reviled by your enemies. You've wanted to see your fellow citizens reading your work and nodding in agreement or fuming in outrage.

As a gesture of good will, I've decided to play Yoda to your Luke. Here's an easy four-step program to make you the editorialist of your dreams.

Step One: Choose sides. At Harvard, there are more or less two voices in the editorial dialogue--the fanatically conservative and the self-righteously liberal. If you plan to be the former, make sure you live up to the titles homophobe, fundamentalist and sexist. If you plan to be the latter, make sure you can spell and pronounce the words homophobe, fundamentalist and sexist; these will most likely constitute a good part of your vocabulary.

This choice is not supposed to be a difficult step. Most Harvard students come to college knowing where they stand. If, however, you are unlucky enough to hold moderate views--neither conservative nor liberal--you may need to flip a coin to decide which side to join.

Step Two: Choose a medium of communication. You have three publications to choose from: Perspective, Harvard-Radcliffe's liberal monthly; Peninsula, Harvard-Radcliffe's conservative occasionally; or The Salient, Harvard-Radcliffe's conservative incoherently. Because these journals periodically attempt to saturate campus opinion by door-dropping to every dorm room, they are a better choice for the aspiring editorialist than the opinion pages of a certain student-run daily newspaper.

Step Three: Select a pet issue. All you need to do is choose some Very Bad Thing (VBT) to write ninety percent of your editorials about. The traditional choices by campus writers for VBTs have been things like homophobia, homosexuals, abortions, abortion rights and the status quo. Recently, however, the most popular choice has been The Liberal Menace, an entity supposedly made up of the student body, the administration, certain professors, the press and Satan.

Step Three is the last necessary criterion for becoming an editorialist, at least technically. After all, you've got your issues, your topics, and a vehicle for the transmission of your opinions unto the ignorant.

Nevertheless, if you want to be a quality editorialist--if you want your name and opinions remembered--the final step is the most important.

Step Four: Develop an attitude problem. This is the distinguishing characteristic of any Harvard editorialist. They are brash, loud, and opinionated. They delight in insulting those they disagree with. You must cultivate a sense of smug superiority over the other side (poor, misdirected fools that they are). You must be able to explode in moral outrage at the merest suggestion of your favorite VBT.

But most importantly, cultivate a "Help, I've been marginalized and I can't get up!" mind-set. Remember that you represent a disenfranchised minority of some sort or another, and everyone is out to prevent you from getting your constitutionally-guaranteed due. Even if you're a conservative, Christian, heterosexual white male, fear not! You, too, have been marginalized and discriminated against by minority-loving liberals who infest the media and the government.

Your attitude should extend beyond the sphere of your writing into your personal life. The paragon of Harvard opinion-makers, Rob Wasinger '94, was known by every student and administrator in his days at Peninsula. Wasinger led a one-man crusade against the Liberal Menace. Like him, you should remember that it's more important to be remembered than to be believed.

There is, of course, another way to become an editorialist. It involves avoiding the extremes--religious, but not fundamentalist; atheist, but not arrogant; liberal, but not bleeding heart; conservative, but not reactionary.

This last option requires you to create your own ideology, rather than swallowing the prefabricated platforms dictated by a party, publication, or organization. It produces editorialists with depth and breadth of concerns, whose writing is meant to be convincing, rather than memorable.

Then again, who ever said that editorials had to convince? As long as you can keep writing, it doesn't matter who takes you seriously. The real satisfaction comes in standing on that soapbox and spouting.

Tehshik P. Yoon '96 is currently being reprimanded for daring to question the supremacy of this wonderful publication.