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Oregon Magazine

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Now I know why Washington State regularly elects lunatics to office

An Open Letter to University of Washington Community Members -Jill Edwards, Alex Kim, Ashley Miller

Feb 2006 --I am an independent journalist who just got a good laugh over the latest "courageous stance" adopted by your student senate. Growing up in Oregon, I was always puzzled by why the lovely neighboring state of Washington seemed so heavily influenced by what I thought was a lunatic fringe. On the one hand William Gates and his baby boy Bill had produced two obscene monopolies, Boeing and Microsoft, and on the other your assorted elected officials seemed more at home in 1960s Communist Albania than the Wobblies "One Big Union" of sainted memory in the Northwest.

Now I know what the problem is. I don't know how I could have missed it for so long.

Your action --through something no intelligent student pays any attention to--"student government" --to deny former student, notorious Marine aviation hero, Pappy Boyington a place in "The University of Washington Hall of Fame" says it all. I gather you think he is not a proper role model for today's U of W student. Defending the US in a declared war initiated by a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor seems to be a problem for you. You may well be right. I don't think he has anything in common with you either.

(Pappy, winner of the CMOH, led the famed Black Sheep in WWII, and was a member of the China Volunteers -- the Flying Tigers -- before that. Photo is a hotlink to a page about him.)

You know, if you checked his student records I am more than certain you would have found the kind of letters from the Deans of his day that would have confirmed your thinking: "Boyington thinks too much on his own.he is undependable. while demonstrating occasional flashes of inspired initiative he lacks proper respect for higher authorities and the social norms of our day." His efficiency reports from the Navy no doubt contain much the same language. Boyington was a colossal pain in the ass all his life, thank God. And if you weren't all acting like a uniform little pile of maggots, fit only for eating what is left of the rotting flesh of a once great university, you might learn something from him.

Fortunately America produces pains in the ass like Pappy Boyington in what is generally its most conformist institution--- the US Military---on a fairly regular basis. Mad Anthony Wayne, Andy Jackson, John Paul Jones, William Tecumseh Sherman, George Patton etc. But the military has nothing for sheer lock step ignorance on academia today as you have so ably demonstrated, and all it seems to be able to produce is people like--- you.

Clearly the main problem is that what I thought was a "lunatic fringe" is the mainstream in Washington State these days and its source is the University of Washington itself. Acknowledging that at last, I have some suggestions in line with your decision on Boyington---first, you should immediately consider a motion in your student government to change your mascot from the noble
husky which is far too quarrelsome and individualistic for the current institution. rather like Pappy Boyington himself.

In fact. I think a cocker spaniel might be more appropriate. It is in-bred, feeble minded, submissive, has a weak bladder, and is kinda cute. In the event of anything out of the ordinary, the cocker spaniel runs and hides, peeing all the way. In fact given the state of academia at the University of Washington. how bout an out and out fraud like "Chief Seattle?" I mean maybe he didn't say that famous statement, but he should have. right? Dan Rather would approve. And that is what counts in your post-modern world these days.

But there is another opportunity that occurs to me. Since the U of W now sucks in money and energy and pumps out intellectual pollution, why not replace it with an institution that can use all that convenient water in Lake Washington to create energy, make money, and may blow up someday and solve the whole problem. like a badly-designed nuclear power plant?

IF we can get the "best minds" of the U of Wash to design it, and the Gates Foundation to finance it, the whole problem will be self-correcting.

In fact I think this is such a good idea it may even be a column someone may publish somewhere. I am indebted to you all for the inspiration..and Oregon will roll on unvexed to the sea.

GO DUCKS!

Thomas Lipscomb, an Oregon lad who is a frequent contributor to this magazine (and its Berlin Bureau Chief). He is a (or possibly the) senior fellow at the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future (USC). He was the founding president of (New York) Times Books. He is living proof that the tail never slaps far from the beaver. After all these years, like any proper Oregonian, he still despises the damned dawgs. We have not informed him that our esteemed editor, Fred (Pigskin Pete) Delkin, after a year playing for Woody Hayes at an obscure midwest college, was a Fifties defensive back for the Huskies.