Dartblog

So our colleague and Dartblog writer Joe Asch informed me that the D has rejected our cunning advertising campaign. Uh-oh.

The Dartmouth is widely known as a breeding ground for instant New York Times successes, or at least low-level associates at start-up blogs focused on shoe designers. When a D staffer swoops into a campus situation, it is with a situational omniscience approaching God’s; when she unclams her MacBook to compose her report, the elders of Oxford decamp upon the keys and poise her knowing lily fingers—the ones not smoking—over just the right letters.

The D is famous for penetrating its tumescence into complex phenomena, making them relatable to ordinary people. “BlitzMail popular on campus,” a headline once blared, shining light where there was darkness. The D is also very aware of what “women” are doing, and this is related daily on the inside page, featuring edited quotations from deans and students no one has heard of. And for what is commonly perceived to be the widest existing collection of written strategies for avoiding the reporting of the actual number of people at an event the newspaper is justly famous.

But the most important thing the D’s scriveners learn is how to achieve the look of importance without actually having any. Educated in all the sweetest post modern writers, they project importance in order to achieve it. The medium is the message, you know? Take interviews. The D will not interview its victims by e-mail; but understand the D’s reasons; D writers are famous for their dexterity in oral exchange, and to deny one the ability to trap her prey in a dodge, a dissembly, a misdirection is like clipping the wings of a rufous-capped warbler and laughing at his slattern multicolored squirming. It is unjust in a cosmic sort of way, like having been dung from Sig Ep.

All of this economists call “barriers to entry.” In short it means that Dartmouth is so full-up and satisfied by the D’s writing, satisfied deep in its paunch, like after a large breast of turkey, that no other publication can compete. (Except for this column which, L.O.L., is as well trafficked as the D’s website.) So one is forced to wonder why the D’s Directorate Most High would reject this website’s forty-five dollars and the ad, featuring a photograph of delicious Junior Mints, it paid for. We were ready to fund at least two EBAs orders.

I do not know wherefore. I only know that “the nature of the ad directly conflicts with the editorial content of The Dartmouth” and that, therefore, they “have decided to not continue running the Dartblog ads.”

Where in Derrida’s name does one go from there? We have been not continued.