BINGHAMTON REVIEW
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Amanda
From the Editor
Dear Readers,
Well, that just happened. Donald “Big D” Trump has, yet again, won the presidency. Some of you may be celebrating while others are scared for the future. No matter what side of this you are on, just know that the Binghamton Review will be there for you. We care so much about you guys that we even wanted to cheer you all up with our yearly Pet Issue. I hope you all ooh and ahh at all our lovely animals (including the rock). If you feel like stimming, we added a coloring page for all you failed artists out there. Now for all you jokesters out there, we added an extra special super duper long advice column completed with my three favorite albums of the year. I hope you all enjoy the Pet Issue and I can’t wait for you all to see what we have in store for next semester.
Don’t forget to read the articles too!
Also, last issue of the semester :)
Sincerely,
Aiden Miller
Our Mission
Binghamton Review is a non-partisan, student-run news magazine founded in 1987 at Binghamton University. A true liberal arts education expands a student’s horizons and opens one’s mind to a vast array of divergent perspectives. The mark of true maturity is being able to engage with these perspectives rationally while maintaining one’s own convictions. In that spirit, we seek to promote the free and open exchange of ideas and offer alternative viewpoints not normally found on campus. We stand against dogma in all of its forms, both on campus and beyond. We believe in the tenents of free expression and believe all sudents should have a voice on campus to convey their thoughts. Finally, we understand that mutual respect is a necessary component of any prosperous society. We strive to inform, engage with, and perhaps even amuse our readers in carrying out this mission.
Views expressed by writers do not necessarily represent the views of the publication as a whole.
Advice Column
I offered to give you all life advice. These were your questions.
Will Trump pick Hawk Tuah Girl to be a part of his administration?
No, but Elon would, being the band kid he is
I can’t help but think that Trump somehow cheated the election. Do you think the results can change before he goes into office?
You know what to do. Make history repeat itself.
I texted AI Baxter and had the cops called on me. Am I in the wrong?
I’m for free speech and all, but I think sending a picture of your shmeat to GPT-4 might not have been the best idea.
There’s five yn’s at my front door with glocks singing “We wish you a Merry Switchmas”. Do I open the door?
Well, they’re either gonna spread holiday cheer or turn you into Swiss cheese. So why don’t you take a chance? Live a little?
I still have to do TWO MORE HOMEWORKS and a WHOLE ASS PROJECT for ONE class. Can I sue the professor for torturing me?
No, but you can always drop out and work at McDonalds like Trump did, only you’d be doing it for the rest of your life.
How to survive finals?
Copious amounts of alcohol. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and it is Tom’s.
I’ve been trying so hard with this NNN stuff but I unfortunately messed up and stuffed my turkey. Any way I can redeem myself?
Nope, you know the rules. Don’t tilt too hard; I failed too after the election.
Which Santacon weekend should I shit my pants at? I’m talking stinky, liquidy, leg running diarrhea.
There’s only one right? Unless those God damn progressive liberals are trying to make it last longer like they’re doing with Pride YEAR.
Is Jack Black considered fine shyt or chopped shyt?
Written by our Staff
Nacho Libre is a cinematic masterpiece. Fine shyt fr.
How do I gain more reddit karma to impress the huzz?
Do an “Ask Me Anything” with Young Sheldon
Now that Trump’s gonna be president, does that mean I’m gonna get more presents this Christmas?
Simple! Grab a dictionary and look up ‘tariff’ and ‘inflation’ and you can answer this one yourself buddy.
How do I cook a Thanksgiving dinner?
I think wegmans sells pies, or maybe ask your mom once I’m done making out with her.
How do I NOT cook a Thanksgiving dinner?
Freaky stinky in that can of corn and microwave it.
I am not into politics, how can I prepare for Thanksgiving?
Just follow your YouTube recommendations for a few hours and you’ll be a radical just like the rest of your family.
Guys, can you believe Christmas is only a month away? What can I do to celebrate?
Find those trees Bing tore down on the spine and talk to an old hag and maybe it’ll come to life and scream in pain when you hang bobbles or whatever off it and yeah that seems festive.
How can I make my chastity cage more comfortable?
You didn’t invest in the CockLock Pro Model 32B Ergonomic Wiener Cage? You deserve the pain, cheapskate.
If I ask Satan for a gf will he give me one?
Yeah but she’ll be freaky with it and as a Bing Review reader you won’t handle it and she will dislike you like everyone else so all your worst fears will come true, happy holidays.
How do I motivate my fatass roommate to take the stairs once in his life or walk to the east gym? (we live in Newing the gym is literally right there dude)
Pay the $100 membership fee for him. He’ll totally go, trust me.
Does anyone actually celebrate Kwanzaa?
The number one rule of Kwanzaa is that no one is supposed to know you celebrate it, lest you be banned from Kwanzaa forever. That’s why you never hear people talking about it.
I’m going to do SantaCon this year. How do I not die of frostbite?
1.75 L Svedka, enjoy.
I’m bisexual. How can I get out of this country before Trump personally sends his death squad to eliminate me?
Paint your nails and he’ll probably deport you first dw.
If I ask Santa* for a gf will he give me one? Sorry for typo
Wow I didn’t even notice that. I guess I should resign from the e-board now
How can I get into Red Jug if I’m under 21?
Show the bouncer this copy of the Review. Only the most sophisticated and mature students are capable of comprehending such literature.
How can I get invited to Biden and Harris’s final freak-off before they leave office?
Unfortunately, assuming you’re not a famous YouTuber, they won’t let you in. You’ll have to crash it by getting your own boat and navigating it to Little Saint James. Good luck!
Should I join the 4B Movement?
Oh so now you’re celibate by choice? Go for it.
Is Dr. Umar the most intelligent man of our time?
Black Queens forever, snowbunnies never
What exactly is the cheese club a front for?
They pretend to like cheese, but they’re really into cupcakes, if you know what I mean.
Need life advice? Email manager@binghamtonreview.com for more wacky, quirky, and zany responses.
Aiden’s Top Picks of 2024
The New Sound: Pinkerton’s little brother. Former Black Midi frontman Geordie Greep brings his best with the release of his first-ever solo album The New Sound Greep blends the iconic sounds of Black Midi, jazz fusion, and Brazilian samba to create an incel masterpiece. You can tell Greep was influenced by his time recording in Sāo Paula. Truly a fun and catchy rocker that ends triumphantly with “The Magician.”
Songs of a Lost World: After a 16-year hiatus, numerous tours, and much speculation, The Cure has finally released their long-awaited album Songs of a Lost World. Songs of a Lost World is brutally beautiful, depressingly dark, and melodic as ever. It’s a perfect mix between Pornography (1982) and Bloodflowers (2000). Truly an awesome comeback, with “Endsong” being the clear standout.
Imaginal Disk: The second album from pop duo sensation Magdalena Bay is truly a work of art. The only way to properly describe this album is to say this is what they would probably play when you enter heaven. The storytelling, the mixing, the musicality, and the engineering of this album are truly top-tier and exactly what you would want from a synth-pop album. Imaginal Disk is easily the album of the year for me.
How Trump Mounted the Greatest Comeback Ever
With the dust settled from the election, President Trump’s battleground sweep has shocked those expecting a repeat of the drawn-out counting seen in 2020. Unlike that election, Trump won decisively with a significant margin in the swing states, and the race was called within the night. Even in reliably blue states, Democratic support faltered and Donald Trump managed to tighten the race to a 6% margin in Minnesota, New Jersey, and Virginia. Many key demographics which Vice President Harris needed to win had significant shifts to the right. According to CNN exit polling, Trump votes increased with 18-29-year-old Americans by thirteen points, and Latino men shifted from Biden to Trump by a 24-point swing. Critics and supporters alike have declared the 2024 campaign the best campaign Donald Trump has run out of the three elections. But it is worth examining the change from former President Trump, to President-Elect Donald Trump.
The American people, fed up with the political polarization amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, had picked former Vice President Joe Biden in record numbers to lead the country. President Trump decided to wage a legal war disputing these results in 6 states. This legal war climaxed with the dramatic riot at the US Capitol building on January 6th, 2021. After leaving office, Donald Trump was at his lowest political point, and it seemed impossible for him to be relevant in politics again. Trump-backed candidates like Herschel Walker, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Kari Lake, Blake Masters, and Doug Mastriano were beaten badly in the 2022 midterms; some Republicans signaled their readiness to move on from Trump. Challengers threw their hats in the ring to fight for the party’s nomination. USA Today and Suffolk University surveys from December 2022 showed Ron DeSantis leading Trump by 23 points after the former President declared his intent to run again. So what changed?
It started at the party level. Republicans were out of power in the presidency, the House, and the Senate. The Democratic agenda had begun its implementation, leaving Republicans to do nothing but complain. Frustrated and defeated, the party started to fragment. Within 2023, after the “red wave” manifested into a red puddle, the primary voters had a decision to make: stick with MAGA politics, championed by presidential candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis, or revert to neoconservatism carried on by Nikki Haley and Chris Christie. If the choice was for MAGA, then why not choose the former president? In comparison to the other candidates who had his agenda, Trump beat them by having the MAGA agenda politically “trademarked” to him, a perceived authenticity, and unpolished rhetoric—the same characteristics which made Republicans vote for him in 2016. The Republicans made the decision to stand by their man.
Inversely, former President Trump made some personality changes too. While he still maintained his propensity for
By Nicholas Aparicio
name-calling and rambling, it had dialed down significantly. He wasn’t a talented orator, yet Trump got his message across by plainly speaking and omitting some of the trash talk. Case in point, the June 2024 CNN Presidential Debate between him and President Biden. The debate illustrated two images to viewers. The first image depicted a frail and incoherent Biden juxtaposed with a confident and focused Trump. The second image was the difference between the belligerent and loud Trump the American people had grown accustomed to and the more reserved and agenda-driven candidate he presented. That debate tanked Biden’s reelection bid, shifting momentum into the Republicans’ favor. Trump maintained that composure through most of the campaign, slipping at times such as campaign rallies and the debate between him and Vice President Harris. Trump didn’t just change in his delivery, but he also expanded his reach by appearing on various podcasts catered to younger audiences. The Nelk Boys, Logan Paul, Adin Ross, Theo Von, and Joe Rogan all hosted Trump on their shows. The effects for Trump were at worst just generating simple buzz, and at best driving up support with young males.
Nevertheless, the largest change was among the American people. The Biden administration had overseen many disasters. The CPI recorded inflation highs throughout Biden’s presidency, peaking with a 9.1% inflation rate in June of 2022. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) estimate 7.8 million border crossings since the beginning of the Biden administration. The withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Russo-Ukrainian war, and the Israeli-Gazan war have all been stains on the foreign policy list for President Biden and the Democrats too. All this was happening while President Trump was fighting off indictments, an effort to keep him off the ballot, personal slander, and surviving a nearly successful assassination attempt, all helping to humanize him in a greater way than any stunt he could ever imagine. Suddenly Donald Trump didn’t look that bad to many voters, especially those who fondly remembered his economy and policies. When those two factors combined, many Americans became desensitized to whatever unsavory comments Trump made or what his opponents had to say about him. He maintained a significant lead in RCP polling averages, only falling behind in August and September to Vice President Harris, then rebounding shortly thereafter to the election.
Regardless of how somebody feels about Donald Trump, what he has accomplished is no small task. He rose from the ashes to secure his legacy in history as only the second president to serve non-consecutive terms. When he leaves office in 2029, Trump will have been in politics for as long as Franklin Roosevelt was president. The impact he will leave behind will reshape this nation. Future generations of historians may study this return of Trump, but the reasons behind it are clear for many Americans today.
The Crusty Chronicles
By Angelo DiTocco
Have you ever been enjoying your meal at Blaze, CopperTop, or even the dining hall, only to look into the trash can and see dozens of un-eaten crusts, instantly ruining your day? Although this behavior isn’t very common, there are still millions of self-proclaimed “grown adults” who actively engage in the second-worst culinary sin of all time (only surpassed by the act of ordering a scooped bagel). Not only is throwing the crust away a disrespect to the chefs and to society as a whole, but it doesn’t even make sense. The following is an argument for why eating the crust is one’s duty, as well as a discussion of how throwing the crust away is reflective of society’s failure as a whole to move on from its childish behaviors.
The act of making a pizza is pretty simple, right? All you have to do is roll out the dough, put the toppings on, and then stick it in the oven. At least, that’s what you think if you’re a normie who uses frozen pizza dough. The reality is that making a pizza crust is actually a science. Real pizza chefs have to decide between which types of flour and/or oil to use, carefully measure out the water-to-flour ratio, and knead the dough to just the right consistency. All that and it’s still not ready to go— it has to sit in the fridge for upwards of 12 hours so that the yeast can eat the sugar and poop out the carbon dioxide, making the dough rise. A friend of mine once spent three days making a specialty pizza dough for a staff meal at his job, only for one of his coworkers to throw his hard work right in the trash. You can’t get any more disrespectful than that. Just remember that when you approach the outer edge of your slice of pizza, a real person probably worked hard on it. Don’t take that information lightly.
From a utilitarian perspective, throwing away the crust defies all logic as well. Why the hell would you discard a part of the pizza that you paid for that contains an ingredient you’ve already eaten? By throwing away the crust, you’re handing over a fat L to your stomach, your wallet, the environment, and the poor worker who has to touch your saliva because you missed the trash can and couldn’t be bothered to fix your mistake. You’re doing the whole world a disservice. The only reason I can possibly think for anyone to forgo this perfectly valid part of the pizza is that they’re stuck with this barbaric, picky mindset that goes, “ooga booga, crust no have sauce, me no eat crust” (ignoring the fact that you can literally just dip the crust in sauces if that’s what you want). These non-crust-eaters are like your spoiled younger cousin at the Thanksgiving dinner table who refuses to eat his mashed potatoes because a little part of them touched the stuffing.
Sure, I don’t need to get wasted, but is it too much to ask to be able to hang out in a setting that doesn’t make any self-respecting adult feel embarrassed?
However, it doesn’t end at the act of throwing the crust away. The spoiled younger cousin can be seen in a lot of people,
crust-eaters and non-crust-eaters alike. Whether it’s throwing a tantrum over election results, collecting Funko Pops, or making funny Minecraft videos, it seems that nearly all of us have at least some childish behaviors that we can’t let go of. I could go on to rant about the sheltered modern parenting style and how it’s resulted in Gen Z’s apparent “failure to launch,” but I wouldn’t be saying anything that hasn’t already been said. Instead, I’d like to point out where this societal immaturity is easily seen in Binghamton’s campus life.
On Saturday, October 28th, 2023, my friends with “fakes” all decided, “Let’s just go to the bar instead,” suddenly cancelling the Halloween plans I was looking forward to. (I don’t blame them; it just be like that sometimes.) Sitting alone in my room with my metaphorical willy in my hand, I figured I’d check out the Late Nite event at the Union as a backup. But when I arrived, I realized that everything to do there was pretty much the exact opposite of what I had originally planned. Activities ranged from arts and crafts to stuff-a-plush to riding whatever the “zombie bull” was. This was kiddie shit!
Now, I don’t mean to disrespect the Late Nite workers (mostly ‘cause Midas is one of them), but at some point, you have to differentiate between what is nostalgic and what is just plain stupid. Sure, I don’t need to get wasted, but is it too much to ask to be able to hang out in a setting that doesn’t make any self-respecting adult feel embarrassed? It’s not just limited to these particular events either—look at what I saw when I walked past my dorm building a few weeks ago:
I wouldn’t be caught dead in one of these. In fact, I’d be caught killing.
Conservative students might find it absurd that the money from our fees is going to things like the MRC and the Q Center, but this kind of stuff should have bipartisan opposition. It’s clear that society is enabling today’s young adults to become immature brats who refuse to grow up. From there, you’re just a short step away from seeing your own trash can filled to the brim with chewed-up doughy arcs.
Reality Check
By Comson Cao
The morning of November 6th, 2024 was when it all began. Or perhaps, it’s more fitting to say that’s when the end times finally dawned upon us. How could it have happened? By the will of the people, through both the Electoral College and the popular vote, democracy has ended, and fascism has come to America. The Orange Man is soon to return to the White House to assume his eternal throne and bring forth the Trump Dynasty for millennia. Where did it all go wrong? The most racist president in all of American history who bragged about how low the black unemployment rate was under his administration and the horrific misogynist who claimed his administration would be great for women’s reproductive rights has not only won, but won by the biggest margins Republicans have ever achieved in 20 years. My fellow Americans, what does this tell us about how far away true progress and equity still is? Moreover, what does this tell us about our so-called “allies” who were supposed to be in on the struggle with us to achieve our utopian vision? Utterly betrayed we were. Male Latinxs voted on net for Trump, Muslim voters in Dearborn, Michigan helped him secure a victory over the corresponding state, young men flocked over to him by a 28-point margin compared to 2020, and even young women supported Trump by 14 points more than they used to—what has this country come to? How could it be that in spite of decades of effort, this white supremacist patriarchal nation has managed to convince marginalized communities into enthusiastically supporting their own oppression? Truly, I’m sure we are all at a loss for words. Even more importantly, what should our steps be moving forward? It’s evidently clear now that our intersectional coalition is more tenuous than previously thought. Male Latinxs outright betrayed the coalition, so perhaps they should be put into diversity and tolerance training. It works on white Americans, increasing their racial awareness and guilt, so it would probably work on Latinxs as well. It’s also evidently clear that their community is rife with disgustingly reactionary ideals, given that part of the reason why the voters shifted towards Trump was specifically due to their dislike of the term “Latinx”, as our friends from the Washington Post tell us. Their inability to embrace gender inclusivity makes them complicit in perpetuating the cycle of hate and bigotry, and that must be corrected. Heck, now that they’ve betrayed us, perhaps we should just kick them out of our BIPOC alliance entirely. After all, they’re no better than wh*te people, and it’s either us or them, just like how we lodged Asians together with wh*tes in Washington state in the North Thurston Public Schools. It goes without saying that this applies to Muslim Americans as well, they must tread carefully or there will be severe consequences to pay for disloyalty.
Alright, now that I’ve gone through a fourth of this article trolling, I want to spend the remainder of the word count that I have available to seriously discuss the election outcome and my observations surrounding the way the left has approached it. Yes, a year ago, I would not have bet money on Trump ever making a return to the presidency, because as I explained in my article “How Not To Win: A Case Study of American Conservatism”,
conservatives have lost control over elite institutions and their support base is largely on borrowed time (older white voters). In complete defiance of my expectations, Trump is the first president in American history to have seemingly caused racial depolarization to occur among non-white voters. Only time will tell if this is the beginning of a permanent change or if it was simply due to how disliked Kamala Harris was as a candidate. The difference between my shock and that of a liberal who’s probably gone through their third box of tissues by now is that my shock is in terms of the grand scheme of American politics. Once election season started rolling around, I was already predicting a Trump victory as the most probable outcome, even if I was uncertain of the exact mechanisms behind the victory. For liberals, this was clearly not the case. They were pointing to the results of various statewide polls, including the now-infamous one purporting to show Harris leading Iowa by 3 points over Trump. Meanwhile, I was busy sitting on my bed doing my own guesstimates during my free time for how much Trump would be winning by using those same polls that liberals were touting around all this time, but with one simple adjustment: the margins of polling bias. You see, in both the 2016 and 2020 elections, polls had a tendency to overestimate the performance of Democrats, and this polling bias has only increased between these two presidential election cycles, such that in the 2020 polling, every state except for Hawaii had a pro-Democrat bias. This systematic error by pollsters was not reflected in betting markets, which has had remarkable prediction accuracy on elections, and had been swinging in favor of Trump. This is due to the fact that “wisdom of the crowds”, whereby independent random errors from individual guesses cancel out, resulting in minimal biases for the averages, applies to betting markets. So, from those two factors alone, I was already fairly confident that Trump would win the election.
Unsurprisingly, political commentators thought what Trump said sounded insane. The only problem here: Trump was actually telling the truth...
Now, let’s talk a bit about the other side of the political aisle and how they’ve been treating this entire bread and circus. Here’s a fun one: the much-beloved media had overwhelmingly negative coverage of Trump compared to Harris, as has mostly been the case for decades. Trump’s coverage was 85% negative in 2024, whereas Harris’ was 78% positive. However, since trust in the media has been rapidly collapsing from 70% in 1972 to 31% this year, we can only speculate as to how many people’s opinions were really swayed by them this time. This trend parallels the state of higher education, which, as of 2023, just 36% of Americans had “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence in. Now, unsurprisingly, Democrats had much higher levels of trust in both than the average, and Republicans had much lower levels of trust, but the margins are closer for Republicans to the average, which I think is quite telling. I made the case in my last article “Saving
Our ‘Democracy’” that liberals are the elite in the United States and therefore hold most of the power since government responsiveness is heavily biased in favor of elite preferences. Combine this with the evidence that liberals are less willing to engage with someone who disagrees with them than conservatives are, and you have the perfect formula for creating a group of self-entitled narcissists who live in a delusional fantasyland. A report from this year by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity was released in which they surveyed average Americans, Ivy League graduates, and the top 1% on their attitudes towards various issues. For instance, individual freedom and climate change:
What about their oft-preached notions of tolerance and condemning violence in political discourse, with the January 6th riot being their go-to? As it turns out, it’s only a one-way street. Survey results by Eric Kaufmann of Democrat voters show that a third of Democrats wished that the assassination attempt on Trump was successful. Now, one might retort that “one third is less than a majority,” which is true, as proven by the law of counting, but where was that same leniency for the average Republican? Kaufmann also provides insights as to what the best predictor was for supporting the assassination attempt among Democrats: the extent to which they believed that white Republicans are racist (which a majority of the respondents agreed with). Among Democrats who strongly believed this was the case, the percentage supporting the assassination attempt rose to 71%, and the effect of this belief is so strong that all other variables used in his model were rendered statistically insignificant.
But of course, there’s more. Many are unaware of this, but Republican politicians have been frustrated with the Democrat’s “insanity defense”, which, as a Tablet Magazine article puts it, “Republican activists say they have to water down the reality of their opponents’ agenda in focus groups. ‘They just don’t believe it’s true. It can’t be.‘” An example of this comes from the infamous moment during the debate between Trump and Harris in which the former president claimed that “Now she [Harris] wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.” Unsurprisingly, political commentators thought what Trump said sounded insane. The only problem here: Trump was actually telling the truth, because as Tablet Magazine points out, reports from both CNN and The Washington Free Beacon revealed that, during her 2019 campaign, Harris indeed supported public funding for “gender-affirming care” for federal prisoners, including undocumented individuals. As California’s attorney general, she also implemented a policy funding sex reassignment surgeries for inmates, a stance she later promoted as part of her progressive agenda, which has since been used in Trump’s campaign ads. Look, I can get into a long rant about lots of things surrounding the way liberals approached this election and their reactions to the outcome. I could bash the “experts” all day long, trying to make my dear reader realize that the fact that economists dislike Trump’s proposed policies relative to Harris is only really meaningful if you believe that the forecasting ability of experts being comparable to dart-throwing chimpanzees is anything to ride home about, which is the reality that political scientist Philip E. Tetlock demonstrated in his research. I could also say a lot about how social pressure and ostracism through the use of pejorative labels like “racist,” “sexist,” “xenophobe,” “transphobe,” “homophobe,” and a million others are working increasingly less well when it’s becoming as crystal clear that all these narratives are perpetuated by a class of people whose entire worldview can be summed up as being a luxury belief, and that some of the strongest evidence we have from academic literature supports skepticism towards these grievance narratives. Whether or not you choose to accept that reality has grown so detached from everything you’ve probably been told your whole life is a decision only you can make. Just to be clear, I’m not saying that you should always believe me because I correctly predicted the outcome of this election while the pollsters failed, as great as that would be for my ego. What I am saying is that everyone would be better off if they could think more independently and critically instead of outsourcing what to believe to some perceived authority figure, given that it’s literally a fallacy. If you’re someone on the left who’s reading this article right now, I would like to clarify that this article is in no way intended to be constructive or to “teach a lesson” for you, because as someone who’s actually honest enough about politics to tell you bluntly that I have an interest in seeing your side lose, I would never encourage you to learn from your mistakes at all. In fact, treat my words as though they were delivered by soon-to-be God-Emperor Donald Trump himself and disregard every bit of it because it’s all just misinformation coming from a political extremist without any substance. After all, I’m just an autodidact without official credentials. Please make sure to double down on everything you’ve done up to this point, especially on the rhetoric, because I would never turn down an excuse to throw a bigger celebration party.
Gayle is I
By Beef Hutchins
The classic suburban mom is easy to picture. Today we might call her a ‘Karen,’ but ten years ago she was Gayle. Contrary to a haircut or rude tone of voice that might come to mind now, Gayle had neither of these. Gayle is a Being. Gayle is tall with a voice deeper than her passion for Yanni.
Chris Fleming’s YouTube series, “Gayle,” is likely to be remembered as a great feat of skit comedy as long as the absurdly specific style of comedy Fleming uses is relevant. The show follows Gayle Waters-Waters (she insisted on the hyphenation) through the most arbitrary parts of life: Getting her daughter into college, watching her husband’s small business grow, and selling her son on Ebay. Every part of the average mom is turned up to eleven, but the real genius in it is that it’s so absurd that no one could even think to be offended. Not even the most WASPish person snorts granola with a Panera card and cuts someone’s brakes for bringing too many items to a self checkout. Gayle is unhinged, and she is glorious for it.
this day, Fleming laments over the people who ask for more Gayle episodes because the 41 that exist just aren’t enough. Freud (I know, yikes) theorized laughter as a release of nervousness. When things are viewed as inappropriate, but the energy needed to suppress the thoughts of the ideas is no longer needed because someone else has normalized it into a joke, we laugh. But what does this mean about Gayle? Does watching “Gayle” expel our secret fears that people can be so extreme that it becomes laughable? Is it the pervasive idea that a person whose life presides mostly in the home cannot be fulfilled and this lack of fulfillment will drive them to wild lengths in the areas of their life they do control? Maybe the body language Fleming brings to the role is reminiscent of Keaton, and we were all holding our breath wondering if anyone could ever bring just the right amount of physical humor to a non-silent film. I don’t know. Freud’s honestly probably wrong, but Fleming’s still funny.
The issue with shows like Friends or How I Met Your Mother are not the arguments about unrealistic apartment sizes or incestuous friend groups, but the fact that they’re so normal your mind numbs after an hour of watching. Even the most devout fan will feel their head aching from laugh tracks.
But with “Gayle” there’s no such problem. You come in knowing some typical jokes about moms, New England, the general agenda of people with no real drama in life, and this is taken and run with until you forget that you started anywhere true. Yeah, maybe you had an SAT tutor, but I doubt they were hired when you were 6, chained to a radiator, and then ignored when your mom took the test for you anyway.
But it’s not a surprise, really; Chris Fleming’s humor has always relied on his ability to pinpoint the exact specifics that give you a vibe. Would I have come up with a freaky little plastic, polyamorous, hairy, owl-ish creature that owns Patagonia? No, but it makes complete sense. Everytime I wear my fleece I know, deep in my soul, that that is who I join the ranks of. Even recently, Fleming posted a video of one of his shows where he explains the idea that there are snacks in Trader Joe’s that only women can see. On its own, this statement is silly. In his words, my abdomen hurts and I suddenly think of the okra chips I found and others are still unaware of.
Why does specificity actually speak to so many people though? The first episode of “Gayle” on YouTube has over 3 million views despite being less than four minutes long. To
Yeah, maybe you had an SAT tutor, but I doubt they were hired when you were 6, chained to a radiator, and then ignored when your mom took the test for you anyway.
I think the answer may be far simpler than any of that. I ask you to explore what it means to be able to find a grain of truth in a character who will go to such extreme lengths to gain some benign approval from someone who was never really watching. In this way, I too am Gayle. How could I not be? Have I not stayed awake twenty-two hours a day to attempt to work, to attempt to get some great grade that may prove my worth and acceptance? Acceptance to who? Or, where? I’m in college – so, grad school? After that?
Do I not dress in a silly, revealing costume on Halloween and blend in with the other college students in silly, revealing costumes? Will someone not ignore the weather, take it too far, and shiver the entire night? Will someone not drink too much, as they watch their peers do, and puke? Are they not Gayle as well? Are they really so far from crying in a support group about Trader Joe’s employees being too personal?
I implore you to watch “Gayle” and truly ask yourself: What would you have done? You would crumble. You wouldn’t last a day in Gayle’s minivan.
The Many Pets of Bing Review
The Joys of Fishkeeping
By Liam Steele
Dogs and cats are of course what first comes to mind when you think of a pet, and while far less common, lizards, snakes, spiders, and bugs are slowly gaining traction everywhere, and are somehow better understood and loved than most fish! Popular media, in its typical ham-handed approach, makes fish out to be a boring, stupid pet, reducing an entire hobby of its own with thousands of unique species and setups to a mere goldfish in a bowl. While I could write a solid two pages of reviewing poor portrayals of fishkeeping and the widespread animal abuse they inspire (and I may just do that in the future), allow me to instead relieve your end-of-semester stresses with the beauty and complexity of the aquarium hobby.
I got into fishkeeping when I was given a betta in a 3-gallon tank for Christmas by my parents, who, in keeping with the fashion of anything to do with fishkeeping, did not do research. After getting attached to my fish, whom I named Poseidon (I absolutely suck at coming up with normal names), I did a bit of research into fishkeeping and discovered its true complexity—dazzling aquascapes of lush green plants flowing like brushstrokes on a canvas, with playful splotches of color in the form of charming tropical fish I’d never seen before, all encased in a glass box. Oh, and the fact that bettas need a minimum of a 5-gallon tank to thrive was a pretty important detail as well. The fishkeeping community on YouTube had immersed me into a watery world beyond the fumblings of popular media and beyond what my feeble mind could imagine. Fishkeepers were essentially creating their own ecosystems, with tanks populated with both live plants and fish becoming almost self-sufficient. Learning the basics of the nitrogen cycle was only the beginning, and soon I was doing the very same. I had set aside my humble 3-gallon for a dependable 10-gallon tank, which I populated with lush plants originating from the mighty Amazon river and beyond. I even gave Poseidon company with a set of guppies and a few otocinclus (a charming little species of catfish native to the Amazon, and also pictured somewhere in this issue with any luck).
At this point, the hobby was incredibly gratifying for me, as I had watched Poseidon’s electric blue hues and silky white fins grow even bolder since he had left the confines of his 3-gallon tank, and even before that, literal ounces of water he was originally sold in from PetCo. I had also seen the guppies slowly integrate with Poseidon’s realm and become comfortable enough to begin breeding, which they, in their species’ tradition, never ceased afterward. When the waste and uneaten food of all the fish accumulated, the plants happily soaked up the nutrients, leaving spare nutrients and waste for enough algae to grow to sustain the herbivorous diet of the otocinclus. My little ecosystem was so whole and interconnected that I would only have to top the tank
off with clean water every now and then as opposed to the weekly minimum 25% water change required of unplanted tanks of the same volume.
What popular media also does not tell you about fish is the full extent of their charming personalities. Male guppies will fight and do beautiful courtship dances to win over the mature females and defend what territory they feel is theirs in Poseidon’s realm, while otocinclus curiously root through the substrate for food and stick to the glass after they overcome their skittish nature and learn not to fear giant human hands and their tankmates. Poseidon, being the largest and possibly most intelligent fish in the tank, would stare at me at my desk from the corner of his tank, and follow me from inside his tank when he saw me enter the room, expecting food. Perhaps the most minor yet most charming part of keeping a betta was the way you would hear his tiny mouth munching on fish pellets if the room was quiet enough, since they have a second smaller set of jaws in the back of their throat for properly breaking down food and subduing prey. In a healthy and thriving tank like mine, interactions and habits of the fish were just as interesting as anything more conventional pets can muster.
Unfortunately, I had to give away my fish and take down my tank before starting university, which was a pretty firm pause to my fishkeeping journey, but I had really only scratched the surface at that point. I hadn’t kept any fish bigger than my thumb, I’d never purposefully bred any fish for profit, never selectively bred a new morph, never kept any of the cooler exotic species, never had a coldwater tank, never kept crustaceans, never raised the largest species of domesticated fish, and never even kept a saltwater aquarium, but I plan to do it all someday because this beautiful hobby was one of the best things to ever happen to me.
Our Future Remains Firmly in Our Hands
For the past four years, we have been subjected to the worst administration in American history. They failed to follow even the most basic rules of governing a nation. Concerns were ignored instead of listened to. The results of this year’s election show the American people taking the mandate away from people who governed poorly, reflecting the beginning of America’s resurgence and the downfall of our elite mainstream media.
Instead of taking accountability for their failures, the current administration has engaged in endless fear-mongering. Let’s take a look at Democrats now admitting, albeit anonymously, that their own administration was awful. Axios reported a former Biden-Harris staff member as having said, “It’s very clear we got it wrong on economic policy. People feel squeezed and when they do, they pick change. Our policy position and execution wasn’t palpable to voters.” It would have been nice if they admitted this earlier instead of running on Bidenomics and claiming that we have the strongest economy ever.
On the border, it gets even worse. Axios also reported one lawmaker saying “Democrats just literally attacked everything [Trump] did. We could never agree with anything, never give him credit for anything, could never say, ‘Well actually securing the border is a good idea, I just disagree with how he’s doing it.’” Nearly everyone in America knows that the Biden administration mishandled the border and is responsible for the crisis. Either they thought that an open border was a good thing or that the awful border bill they tried pushing through was blocked by Republicans. But is anyone seriously arguing that they handled immigration well? Of course not.
Despite the emphasis the Harris campaign put on Trump’s threat to abortion rights and democracy, no one really bought it. Abortion rights now depend on the states, and a federal ban would be suicide for the Republican Party. Although Biden called the MAGA movement extremist and a threat to democracy, he is now openly supporting and helping the transition to the President-Elect. Why would he peacefully transfer his power to a fascist? Maybe they never believed any of it after all.
By Shane Rossi
To understand the Harris campaign strategy, we have to go back to the 2022 midterm elections. Following the Dobbs decision and January 6th, there were serious concerns from the American people that Trump was a threat to abortion rights and democracy. Democrats across the country ran on these issues and denied the Republicans the Senate, leaving them with a very slim House majority. However, the interest in these issues diminished by 2024, as the effects of illegal immigration began to emerge and the gas reserves Biden used to reduce costs withered away. It should also be mentioned that Biden’s decision to endorse Kamala Harris in spite of Pelosi and Obama likely cost the Democratic Party the presidency. They lost because they failed to govern, ran a campaign off of fear rather than hope, and in the end had no real message.
In contrast, the Trump campaign ran on a simple message: Were you better off than you were 4 years ago? This was very powerful for a few reasons. This is the first time in recent memory we can analyze how two different administrations governed and pick the best one. Once Biden and Harris were elected, the contrast could not be clearer. They disastrously mishandled immigration and allowed 15-20 million people to illegally enter the United States. They failed to keep peace through strength and presided over the war in Ukraine and the War in Gaza. The economy suffered, gas prices rose, and foreign nations, which once listened to America, went back to screwing us over. The people of our nation rejected the gaslighting on how the Biden administration has governed, and voted for change.
The future remains firmly in our hands. We will now move forward as one people, one nation. And we will Make America Great Again!
Remembering Cimino’s The Deer Hunter
Micheal
Cimino’s 1978 war drama, The Deer Hunter, will be 46 years old this December and remains, as Roger Ebert once described, an American epic that is in the league of films like The Godfather. The consensus among critics is that it is Cimino’s best film and his one-hit wonder, so to speak. This three-hour movie is so well written and filmed that it makes the director, in the context of his other, lesser work, a confusing anomaly. But—and not to disregard them—who cares about his other films? As far as I’m concerned, you can make The Room, Babylon, or a thousand Neil Breen pictures, but as long as you have made The Deer Hunter, you’re one of the greats, period. And while it is called a masterpiece by many, its reputation has taken a slight beating in years since despite this label; and this is a reputation that I’d like to defend here.
If you’ve committed the sin of having never heard of it, these are the details: it stars Robert De Niro as Michael, Christopher Walken as Nick and John Savage as Steven—three friends from a steel mill town of (all-American) Russians in rural Pennsylvania who join the army to fight in Vietnam. Very shortly after Steven’s wedding ceremony, the trio leave their friends Stanley (John Cazale), Axel (Chuck Aspegren), John (George Dzundza) and Nick’s lover, Linda, played by Meryl Streep. In Vietnam, the trio go through hell together as expected by the audience, but not so much the characters. This hell mostly involves sick games of Russian roulette where Viet Cong soldiers, holding them as prisoners, force the protagonists to gamble with their lives as their captors do with money. The film follows these characters as they deal with the horrific tragedy of the war which itself, of course, is a dangerous gamble from the beginning.
For those who expect a conventional war film or even a war film at all, this picture may be a disappointment. There is no rush in The Deer Hunter. The first hour of the film is used to build a very real cast of characters, their community, and the relationship they have with each other with a meditative pace that resembles the Orthodox hymns heard over De Niro’s mountaineering in the first act—slow but eventually overwhelming in its emotion. The nature of the protagonists’ brotherhood and wider community’s dynamic in unabashedly showing their flaws and virtues is deeply realistic in a way that the coming acts of the film are not consistent with. This is done on purpose (or it at least works). The audience takes an almost unusual amount of time familiarizing themselves with the characters to emphasize the total juxtaposition of Vietnam with its horror and tension. This is done differently than overly edgy anti-war films like All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) because Cimino’s focus is so much more on the beauty of one’s homeland than many of its counterparts in the war genre. Whereas your average anti-war film is a particularly moving public service announcement, The Deer Hunter doesn’t care about the war much
By Victor Ostling
more than any other trial its characters go through. Rather, its main focus is the characters and their arcs, which ought to be that of any story. It has no statement on the idea of war, and if it does, this is secondary. Its characters and their tragedy are not there for the primary goal of some didactic, semi-political message. Thus, it cannot really be called an anti-war film at all, as this is essentially the goal of films from that subgenre.
This can be seen in the motif of Russian roulette games, which is certainly the main tribulation of the story. The film’s original script was titled The Man Who Came to Play and centered around Russian roulette games in Las Vegas. Its reimagining as a war story came as, essentially, a more serious and sober exploration of that idea. Many have deeply criticized the Russian roulette element of the story for being contrived, but usually don’t realize the existence of its original form and that, consequently, this game is what is thematically central to the picture, not the Vietnam War. The war is, in the deeper realm of the film, a backdrop for its themes of chance, life and homeland. It nevertheless elevates the effect of these themes to the maximum and is not arbitrary to the story in any sense, so you can definitely see why the screenplay was altered so radically. In addition to being contrived, a criticism of this Russian roulette motif is its oh-so-horrid treatment of Vietnamese soldiers as comically evil goons, as if the same hasn’t been done of our other enemies in pornographically violent films like Inglourious Basterds (there is a way of seeing, however, that film as a critique of all of that) or Saving Private Ryan, which, I’m sure, many of these same critics praise, and deservingly so.
If you gave me the textual equivalent of The Deer Hunter’s runtime, I could tell you so much about the many parallel motifs and symbols of gambling, animals, bullets and others. I could tell you about the deep complexity of its characters and the amazing portrayal of them by their respective actors. However, the best way to learn about all of that is to watch it, and I strongly recommend that you do. As of the time of the writing of this article, it’s on Netflix, so you have a great opportunity to go through some of the most emotional and enjoyable 3 hours of your life.
