NassWatch

Every few months, the Nass runs a section called “Prince Watch” in which it highlights the sins committed by ‘Prince’ reporters and columnists. The last time it did so, in April, an author calling himself Alfred Prufrock, in a nod to T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” spent a page critiquing five ‘Prince’ articles from last spring. Incidentally, all five of those articles came from this section, so I think it’s only fair that someone from Opinion take a look at Mr. Prufrock’s publication in all its pot-induced stream-of-consciousness glory. (Oh, and a note to J. Alfred: Hiding under a pseudonym that, while cultured, is completely and totally unrelated to the content of your criticism just makes you seem lame.) And so, two years after Brandon Lowden ’09 started the tradition, here’s another installment of NassWatch.

The first article I ran across in NassLand — from this week’s edition — was a review of former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens’ recent public lecture in Richardson Auditorium, written by Rafael Abrahams ’13. Actually, calling Justice Stevens’ lecture “recent” is unfair: It happened more than a month before this week’s edition of the Nass was published. Abrahams begins his piece by admitting that he fell asleep during the lecture and was passed out for roughly half of it. He also concedes that he is “less than an amateur when it comes to judiciary politics or constitutional law or the career of John Paul Stevens.” Any guesses as to the topic of Stevens’ lecture? I’ll give you a hint: judiciary politics, constitutional law and the career of John Paul Stevens.

None of these admitted shortcomings stop Abrahams from complaining bitterly about how he found the lecture uninteresting — or from waxing poetically about other similarly boring lectures he’s been to. At which, big surprise, he also fell asleep. He closes his review by telling the reader (by which I mean the one dude in Williamsburg who actually reads the Nass) that (sigh) we should all still go to public lectures as part of an eternal quest to find one that truly resonates with us. Or because they’ll put us to sleep. No need to go to Richardson for that — by paragraph four of Abrahams’ piece I was fighting to stay awake.

In the preceding week’s Nass, Stephanie Velazquez ’14 wrote about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Though I read her article three or four times, I still don’t have any idea what its point was. Her paragraphs all follow the same irritating pattern: She begins by referring to some controversial element of #OWS (e.g. “By now, many people have seen the picture of Dr. Cornel West at Occupy Wall Street,” or “The movement, which began in mid-September, is focused on this idea of the national interest having been construed to satisfy the top 1 percent first”) and gets tantalizingly close to saying something argumentative. Each time, though, instead of making a claim of her own, like, say, “police brutality is an example of the system fighting back against attempts to change it” or “concentration of wealth in the hands of a few is immoral,” she relays a few more facts about the controversy and then changes topic. At the end of the article she hangs her hat on this: “There is no denying that it [Occupy Wall Street] is commanding the attention of people across the nation and around the world.” That’s it? She also refers to the “Arab Spring Raid.” Any idea what that is? Your guess is as good as mine.

But what surprised me most about the editions of the Nass that I read wasn’t the weird wolf poetry or the picture of Joakim Noah on draft day (as a Floridian, I love Joakim Noah). It was instead the general level of — gasp — coherence. The leadoff article from “Stay Foolish” (Oct. 13, 2011) was a mostly reasonable discussion of the history of the Muppets. The week before, Tom Markham ’15 wrote a piece on R.E.M. that was almost sensible. There’s still loads of drivel, but some articles now even seem to have structure or theses.

Wait. Structure? Near coherence? This is — hang on — WARNING! WARNING! The Nass is coming dangerously close to selling out! This is dire. If the Nass tries to behave like a real publication, where else will the campus community get critical reviews of KidzBop? Or reinventions of the game Mafia which, though endless, still manage to be unfunny? Or lines like this:

But what surprised me most about the Charlie Metzger that I read wasn’t the weird poetry or the picture of The Nassau Weekly on draft day.

Charlie Metzger is a Wilson School major from Palm Beach, Fla. He can be reached at cmetzger@princeton.edu.