When “The Colbert Report” first came out in 2005, I predicted it would be a failure. The Colbert persona, while funny, is exhausting in large doses, and I thought people would get sick of him. This turned out not to be true, for awhile.

Enter Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, which has just come out with the best example I’ve seen of what happens when you try to hijack something that people have already perhaps had a bit too much of and…completely ruin it.

The idea of the magazine’s article is that, since Colbert’s conservative alter-ego went to Dartmouth, wouldn’t it be a hoot to do a profile of him as though he really were an alum? Except, you know, make it just a tiny bit sarcastic so the VERY acute reader can get in on the joke?

The result is, to steal a phrase from the NYT’s A.O. Scott, “antifunny.”

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We’ve all fantasized about writing, ah, creatively to our respective alumni magazines on behalf of friends and, more likely, enemies. But very few of us have actually done it. (There was the time someone from our high school wrote in saying that a classmate — a gentleman of a certain girth — had hiked Everest.)

Well, Jonathan Nathanson, Yale ‘02, has lived the dream. And judging from the correction in the latest issue of Yale Alumni Magazine, it was well worth it:

Nathanson’s struggle teaches us much about the art of making stuff up about other people:

• Make it plausible. A friend’s coming out party is much more likely than, say, his getting hospitalized by a dray of furious squirrels.
• Go the extra mile. If they need an e-mail confirmation, create a dummy e-mail account. If they need verbal confirmation, phone them up. If they need the person to confirm in the flesh, develop Face/Off technology, kidnap him and adopt his life as if you were the real Yale alumnus. 
• Never, never own up. On this count, Nathanson failed miserably. He had plenty of excuses, too, starting with the obvious: that someone was in fact impersonating him, Jonathan Nathanson (which sounds like a fake name in the first place).

Now it’s your turn, Vogel. Revenge submission?

After slumming it up with flipping through a back issue of UVA’s alumni mag recently, we noted that it carried a few letters unlikely to appear in the Yale Alumni Magazine, an assertion we pulled halfway out of our ass. It got us thinking–what kind of letters do run in the nation’s oldest alumni publication? Are they really that different?

I am upset to read about the fate of “Geronimo’s” skull in Notebook (May/June). Whether or not it belongs to Geronimo, its continued presence demonstrates arrogance and insensitivity on the part of Skull and Bones toward other human beings, especially Native Americans.

By keeping this skull and other bones in their possession, Skull and Bones continues to venerate the original act of desecration by Prescott Bush and his friends. In 1983, I was given a short tour of the society. At that time, the skull was locked in a safe along with some other longish bones. There were also two or three smaller skulls on tables in the library, perhaps the plunder of other graves. How would Bonesmen feel today if a fraternity plundered Prescott Bush’s grave and kept his skull as a trophy for the next 90 years?

I suspect Mr. Bush and Mr. Davison never offered the Apache representative, Ned Anderson, what they believed to be Geronimo’s skull. According to the article, he was shown only the skull of a ten-year-old. The skull that was identified to me in 1983 as Geronimo’s belonged to an adult. Mr. Anderson, moreover, was never shown any femur bones. It is possible one of the smaller skulls sitting in the library was substituted.

The return of “Geronimo’s” skull and the other remains in Skull and Bones to the communities from where they came is long overdue. As the society has the chance to reflect on its past and present actions, I hope it will do so.

Stuart D. Sears ‘83
Westport, MA

Fuck yeah secret societies!!! That’s what I’m talking about in an alumni periodical!

Do The Right Thing [Yale Alumni Magazine]

While flipping through a discarded UVA alumni magazine at the gym [Ed.: They're letting Wahoos into Park Slope now?], we came across this charming letter to the editor:

It would seem there is a disturbing trend of pro-gay advocacy in Alumni News. In the class notes section, which I always look forward to reading, I was disturbed to read a proud “new parents” announcement of a girl to a pair of men.

Some on your editorial staff may think that this is progressive, politically correct and reflective of changing attitudes toward the family and marriage. To me, it is an insult to the core of society: the family. In the sad wake of the sexual revolution, there is already tons of data by sociologists that children raised in a home with a mother and father with whom they have a biological connection are the most stable, and less likely to fall into adolescent delinquency, substance abuse, teenage sex, etc. If the aim of the University is to serve society, then we need to foster an environment that helps strong citizens to grow and develop, and not just benchmark the steps taken by different persons as if any choice is equivalent.

I ask you if it is reasonable to endorse with normalcy the actions of a fringe of people that affect the foundations of society.

Barbara Ellen Spencer (Col ‘83)
New Delhi, India

Yes, yes, this could just be the regressive ramblings of one cranky alum. Except the previous letter happens to be from someone disputing the Big Bang theory on the grounds that it sounds too crazy. Looking good, UVA. Lookin’ good.