As it turns out, it was just a clever ad for cigarettes.

"According to Friendly, the journalist’s job is ‘to make the agony of decision-making so intense that you can only escape it by thinking.’ Given his view of the crucial role of the media within a functioning democracy, there was witness-bearing consistency in his decision to resign his position, in 1966, when network executives cancelled live broadcasts of testimony on the subject of Vietnam before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, opting instead to air sitcom reruns.

Like Rod Serling, Friendly believed that television was an almost unimaginably powerful tool for positive social change, but it also had to potential to become nothing more than a hi-tech totem pole of mass hypnosis that could serve the ends of multinational corporations and the nation-states that serve them, with airtime handed over to whatever forces will pay the most to colonize brainspace.”

Dark, The Gospel According to America

Organa's Record is Exemplary

Last week, Calvin's weekly student newspaper, The Chimes, filled up some whitespace with this facetious news brief:

Princess called to apologize for ‘hurtful’ comments

Leia Organa, candidate for Chief of State of the Rebel Alliance, came under fire Tuesday, once again accused of making “insensitive” and “elitist” comments.

Organa, formerly the princess of Alderaan, reportedly claimed that nerf herders were “stuck up,” “half-witted” and “scruffy-looking” in an offhand conversation with newly commissioned Rebel officer Capt. Han Solo.

“This just shows, once again, that Princess Leia is completely out of touch with the working classes,” said Taarek Bel’noor, president of the Fennessa Nerf Herding Council. “Her comments are especially hurtful, considering Alderaan was the birthplace of nerfs.”

This is the second major public relations snafu for Organa in the last week. On Sunday, the princess made an official visit to Kashyyyk and apologized to the Wookie ambassador for comparing his species to “walking carpet[s].”

According to the latest polls, Organa trails incumbent Mon Mothma by 14 percentage points.

In response, I wrote this letter to the editor. We'll see if it gets published.

Organa's Record Exemplary

I would like to express my deep displeasure at the underhanded mischaracterizations of Princess Leia Organa in last week's Chimes. In this time of galactic upheaval and uncertainty, Organa is providing the Rebellion with the visionary leadership that will bring liberty from the Empire's machinations. We all know the sacrifices that the Princess has made for the sake of her cause, giving up a life of privilege on Alderaan and her position as an Imperial Senator to fight in the trenches for the cause of freedom. In light of her track record, the Chimes' backhanded attack on the Princess is disgraceful in this time of crisis. Now is not the time to play petty semantic games, but to unite and work tirelessly for the overthrow of the Emperor's corrupt regime.