If you don’t think my comic is funny, don’t hang it on the wall of your cubicle.

Oh, golly, Molly, where to start? Tedious as it seems, I suppose a line-by-line examination of your “Rearbuttal” in last month’s Spectator is in order.

“…but believe me when I say it’s offensive.”

My, how thickly the dirt of the reprehensible is packed beneath your righteous feet! Pardon me for questioning your absolutism, but I think that PSU students have the right to determine for themselves what is and isn’t offensive. I, for instance, find bad writing and sensationalist scandal-mongering, especially under the guise of journalism, to be far more offensive than anything that has ever been drawn in twenty minutes with colored pencils—but I would never say that such atrocities should prevent the production of your (or of any) publication.

“I know that the Spectator has already done a fair share of talking about how the Rearguard fails to live up to journalistic standards…”

That’s hardly a fair statement. I think you’re using the dumb humor pieces I write as a representation for the paper as a whole. In reality, all our writers, save one (me), do a decent job covering the various comings and goings of this campus and PDX as a whole. Please don’t insult their efforts because you want to exploit some trivial controversy you caught wind of.

“…and this conversation, takes things to a whole new level of nausea. This isn’t just the opinion of The Spectator; members of the PSU student body have made it clear, in no uncertain terms: what The Rearguard is doing is unacceptable.”

When you refer to “members of the PSU student body,” what you mean is a “member.” One guy who sent an email and posted photocopies of the comic. We get emails all the time from one person who is unhappy with one issue. Were we to worry too much about what one person thinks before printing our paper, we would have nothing but a boring, watered-down periodical, that regurgitates months-old talking points. Uppity “progressives” will always find something to rail against in their perceived battle for the good of society, but political correctness does not actually solve anything. Case in point: we received far more complaints about our use of the term “hearing-impaired” in the last issue, a term we only used because we thought it was the politically correct way to refer to deaf people. Turns out, it isn’t. Thanks, liberal society. Somewhere, George Carlin is laughing at us.

“The last time we called attention to [their] incompetence… [they] revised their mission statement minimally to talk about how cool irrelevant things are…”

The word in the mission statement is ‘irreverence.’ Irreverence and irrelevance are two different things: Irreverence is mocking a beloved comic strip based on its unrecognized historical inaccuracy. Irrelevance is the likely effect that my comic will have on the societal perception of rape.

“If you were looking for ‘the progressive, alternative publication’… that provides ‘a voice for the oppressed and marginalized at PSU,” you’d be better off reading The Spectator… we spend enough of our time sober to pay attention to the people at PSU who are most marginalized: conservatives.”

I wouldn’t brag about your rebuttal being the product of “enough” sobriety. Plus, aren’t you only 18? You know, underage drinking is a big problem, and it would be a shame if you were using your student funding to get drunk even some of the time (see, I can be annoying and self-righteous too!). Most people at PSU are people who can laugh at themselves, who don’t engage in sanctimonious pageantry or assume to know what is best for everyone. They don’t subscribe to an easy, textbook morality because it makes them feel superior. I don’t think you want to represent those other people. If trying to make people laugh means I’m promoting “rape culture” or whatever, then so be it. But I’m not the one who is hanging up the fliers. You know who hang fliers? Promoters.

Now, if it’s a matter of my stipend, I would first say that despite all appearances, we work very hard to try to provide a paper every month that gives people something different. That being said, you should know that I make a paltry $127 writing for this institution, but anyone who is easily offended can stop by the Rearguard office and I will refund your contribution. This is a standing offer for anyone whose decorous self-satisfaction overrides any concept of humor. I wish my jokes were funny to everybody all of the time, but as that is unlikely, I will leave a jar of pennies by the door.