Kirk Smith ’15’s editorial notebook on the My Little Pony series was surprising, to say the least. I did not expect to read synopses on pony characters with names like Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie. My days largely consist of biomedical workloads; determining how much pressure one applies to a stethoscope chest-piece and studying how fiber spinning affects biodegradable tissue networks are just two of the things on my mind right now. So when I sit down with the school newspaper, I want to relax. However, I don’t want to find gray matter leaking out of my ears because my mind can’t focus on things like “Rainbow Dash is the tomboyish pony. She can be ridiculously lazy … floating on clouds …”
The Poly is a newspaper. That is a compound word. News. Paper. The paper part is done fantastically, well done you guys! The news part? Hmm. It’s interesting that one page away, one of my class senators is writing his resignation, saying that a report “showed a school that was on the brink of tearing itself apart.” Yet, an associate editor with the full ability to reproduce this report, or go interview people about it, feels the need to spout his love for My Little Pony, talking about dragons and powderpuffs. Am I the only one who finds this ridiculous? Investigative journalism is a breath away, a report written by an expelled Grand Marshal that could tear this Institute apart with its analysis is sitting in a drawer or e-mail inbox somewhere, and I am reading about cartoon ponies with names like Fluttershy?!
Dear Kirk. Dear anybody who works for this newspaper. You are a journalist. You are an editor, a writer. Do you put these things on your resume? Do you have your name printed proudly in the little editor list I see on page 4? You do! Okay then, write something stirring, write something about what’s going on outside your window, not something that you think might get you laid, not something that was really fun to write but doesn’t mean anything to anybody except yourself; write about what we want to hear. Tell us what we need to know that no one else is brave enough to say. That is your fucking job, journalists.
If you feel the need to write about My Little Pony, you could delve into our generation’s Freudian need to nostalgically return to pre-9/11 days where things were simpler and where our childhood lives. You could talk about the increasing ability to relate to animated characters even as adults (i.e., the dehumanization of people on-screen and off) and the black/white (good/evil) outlook that is more popular in America than in Europe, which could be leading to our downfall as we cannot make international decisions about gray areas. But do not sit there and believe I should listen to a waterfall of happy sparkly words and pretty princess pony names. Kindergarten fell a long time ago, so move on.
Look, I can take a few big words, and I can listen to manifestos. I can take leaps and bounds into the inner sanctums of the mind, I can sort through fact and fiction. Either you can’t, or you won’t. But I think you should. You must.
Sara Sass
BMED ’12