The (Rotten) Fruits of my Labor

I live in West Hartford, which is pretty much the middle of nowhere Connecticut. The best way to describe its location is "in-between Boston and New York City". In fact, most of the people who grew up in this area feel as if the equidistance between the two major cities gives them the right to pick and choose the sports teams that they like. You have New York Jets fans who also like the Boston Red Sox, New England Patriots fans who also root for the New York Rangers, etc. Quite frankly I find the whole notion despicable. You can't have it both ways. You need to pick one city and root for its teams. I mean, hell, Boston and New York are rivals in just about every sport.

I tell you this because, as a West Hartford resident, I have taken this liberty, but in a way that only marginally deals with sports. As many of you know I received my highest form of education at Fairfield University in Fairfield, CT, which is closer to New York than Boston, but a lot of kids from the surrounding Boston area go there. As a senior (junior? I'm not really sure. I'm getting old) in college many of my classmates began reading a Boston based website called barstoolsports.com. Despite the almost unbearable slant to Boston's professional sports teams it was a great website because of its largely male humor, pictures of hot chicks, relevant sports talk, gambling advice, etc.

In fact, the website became increasingly popular when one of our female classmates was featured as the bartender/model of the month. There was an interview, a bunch of racy pictures, and a video of the photo shoot set to the tune of the John Fogerty classic "Center Field" (I dare you to find a male from the Fairfield class of '08 that hears that song and doesn't think about this girl).

Quick sidenote- God bless Google for making those links so easy to find.

Not so quick sidenote- During my freshman year my buddy Robby and I co-hosted the best radio show in WVOF history. The station was located on the bottom floor of the campus center and right outside of it was a lounge area with chairs, couches, etc. Whatever was said on the radio was sent out not only on the airwaves, but also through a speaker directly outside the station (in the lounge area), but the volume was usually turned all the way down because people did their homework in this lounge area.

Well during one now infamous show this girl that was the bartender/model of the month for barstoolsports.com was sitting in a chair right outside the radio station and if memory serves she was looking particularly seductive. Sitting with her were two other complete smokehouses that were also in our grade. I forget how it happened exactly, but Robby or I must have briefly stumbled while trying to express some groundbreaking thought and when we were called on it (probably by Kyle Korver, who routinely sat in as our guest for hours at a time) we said something to the effect of how it was hard to focus when there were three incredibly hot girls sitting outside of the radio station (I probably should have mentioned this already, but the wall separating the station and the lounge area was made of glass). This (justified) excuse soon led to a little back and forth about how hot these girls were. As this was going on the future bartender/model of the month casually put her pen in her mouth, like most people do when they are trying to think of something. Well because radio is not a visual medium I, being the great broadcaster that I was, described the act by saying, "Oh my God...she just put her pen in her mouth. Her pen is now in her mouth."

Evidently the sound on the speakers wasn't turned all the way down that day because about 7 seconds after I made that comment (we broadcasted on delay in case anyone swore, etc.) all three girls turned and looked through the glass at Robby, Kyle Korver, and I. We quickly threw to our next song, but the awkwardness/embarassment level was at an all time high.

So a few years ago the barstoolsports empire expanded to New York and I have read both sites routinely ever since with the justification that I live directly in-between both cities. It has since expanded to Philadelphia and a site aimed at kids currently in college, but I don't read those.

Well this past Wednesday Barstool posted the following article that was written in the Fairfield student newspaper (The Mirror- which is a terrible way of signifying that the articles printed are a reflection of the student body as a whole. It should be noted that Fairfield annually ranks in the top five of “Most Homogenous Student Bodies” in all of those college review books because the student body is 88% white).

Barstool Sports.

Guys (dare I say gentlemen?) of Fairfield, please don’t tell me that your lives are so devoid of entertainment that you have to resort to staring at women whom you will never get anywhere near. And ladies, if you’ve just had a fight with your best friend, or you didn’t get that job you wanted, or you are feeling upset and/or suicidal and/or less than downright chipper in any way, DO NOT CHECK OUT THIS WEBSITE. Let’s make a website that makes women exploit themselves on the Internet so that guys can ogle for hours in front of the computer screen over strategically posed women and so girls can feel thoroughly insignificant despite their perfectly beautiful appearances. Yay! By the way, the tagline for Barstool Sports: “By the common man, for the common man.” How about, “By the desperate, unloved man, for the brainless, idiotic, male-chauvinistic, equally desperate and unloved man?” Yeah, I think that works. Of course, a few more profanities come to mind, but I don’t necessarily think they’re Stag-approved.

Naturally the Barstool writers ripped the girl that wrote this article to shreds, but I was none to pleased to see the article coming from my alma mater in the first place (someone tweeted me the link and someone else posted it on my Facebook wall). Seeing it caused me to feel slightly guilty because I know that I am least partially responsible for transforming Fairfield into a breeding ground for feminist idealogues.

As many of you know I wrote a gender driven weekly column for The Mirror as a senior at Fairfield. The roots of my egomaniacal, pompous, male chauvinist writing style trace back to this role (they actually can be traced a little further back, but who really cares that much?) My, for lack of a better term, incendiary writing caused a minor uproar on campus virtually from the get go. Shortly thereafter a class on feminist idealogy (I just threw up in my mouth as I typed that) devoted entire classes to dissecting my column. They even wrote an editorial to address the "hate speech" that they claimed I had used. I was asked and gladly attended a class on Race, Gender, and Ethics with my female editor to defend my column. As the weeks went on Facebook groups formed, letters to the editor came pouring in, and a new female group on campus, called "The Vagina Warriors" (I wish I was making this up), was formed.

The year after I graduated, as I was told by my former News Writing teacher, a new clause was added to the student handbook to address "hate speech". According to her, this was a direct result of my column. Probably because my shoes were too big to fill (that's just my ego talking) some twat took over my column and was neither funny nor controversial. The next year, though, a kid re-ignited the spark that I had lit and actually forced the administration to do away with the column altogether. A few females claimed sexual harassment (thanks to that new clause in the handbook) and after a little back and forth between the administration that was that. Quite frankly I thought this kid was writing specifically to stir up controversy (whereas I was writing to make guys laugh and my writing just so happened to incite females) and that he wasn't a good writer by any stretch of the imagination, but the uproar he caused far outweighed whatever I did back in '07-'08.

To deny that this recent feminist outcry is at least partially a byproduct of what I unintentionally started is simply inaccurate. It pains me to know that this army of femi-nazis is now part of my legacy (if you could even call it that).