How Dumb Do They Think We Are?

I’ve been whining about newspapers for quite sometime, so I’m going to continue along that path today.

Here’s the good news: the Shapiro Campus Center now has a newspaper rack! With lots of free real-world newspapers! No longer will we have to rely upon the damnable Justice and Hoot for our information.

Here, however, is the bad news: All the newspapers are the USA Today. I know, right? If Hell exists, its newspaper racks are full of USA Todays. It’s a newspaper that is not only moronic, but proud of being moronic. At least the Wall Street Journal has pretensions. No newspaper has a smaller news-to-useless-infographic ratio than USA Today. Apparently Brandeis thinks we’re all completely stupid, and can’t handle the news unless it is delivered to us in Bright Colors and Big, Bold Headlines.

Here, take a look at the evidence I have captured:

Could there ever be a sadder picture than that? Not only are there approximately zero copies of the New York Times and the Boston Globe, but both of those newspapers are below the USA Today. It’s as if the papers have been ranked vertically in order of suckitude. Why should we have to bend down so far to reach the (nonexistent) Times? Make those imbecilic USA Today readers do the bending. Ugh.

Anyway, perhaps the lack of Times newspapers just means that Brandeis students are so thirsty for the news of the world, so desperate for the calming intellect of America’s newspaper of record, that they plucked all the Timeses from their shelf before the early afternoon. If this is true, congratulations Brandeis! But I’m not so sure. I saw several people in the SCC reading USA Todays. I gave them sneering, contemptuous looks, but they were too busy absorbed in their infographics and celebrity lifestyles articles to pay me any heed.

So, look, the bottom line is this. We need to switch the labels on the rack, so the Times is at the top where it should be. If the Times is just too popular to keep in stock, then we need to order way, way more (I am not going to get up before noon just so I can get there early enough to acquire a paper before they disappear). And, frankly, we should do away with the USA Today altogether, unless we are trying to turn Brandeis students as stupid as possible as quickly as possible.

The only advantage of having such a large stack of USA Todays freely available is that it makes them nice and easy to steal and burn. Anyone fancy a bonfire tonight?