The Oregon Commentator’s book is coming along swimmingly. I am now in the stage of “take a vacation while I demand that alumni turn in articles”. Let me tell you, it’s great. Anyways, I figured I’d give the plebes a little taste of glory with a selected piece by Scott Camp. Enjoy.

This fall marks the 26^th Anniversary of our beloved Oregon Commentator, and my 18^th year as a member of University of Oregon’s most controversial journalistic enclave. It is also arguably U of O’s most widely misunderstood group. Our history is colorful and checkered, including concerted attempts to cut our funding, receiving national accolades, death threats, unrivaled preferential treatment, and performing totally pointless and fantastic indulgences of every weakness in the human condition. There were days when I found being a member of the Commentator more of an immutable genetic predisposition than anything else. It turns out that I was correct. I was not just on the staff of the Commentator – I was a Commentator, and still am today. It is not about politics or policy or economics. It is not about academics or journalistic recognition. As in 1991, the Commentator is about freedom, and the bare knuckles defense of the original American spirit. It is about one person’s right to think critically, without approval from group-think cabals or the sensitivity police, and the desire to engage in the ongoing war of ideas. The Commentator is the media representation of what happens when you try to stifle and intimidate intelligent people with views that do not subscribe to the conventional wisdom of mass idiocy.

(more…)