Poll Finds Satirist M. Lau’s Approval Rating at All-Time Low
by Advocate Staff
Whether it’s because they never thought his “Back Page” “articles” were funny in the first place, or because they gradually began to discern the formulaic and insipid nature of most of his jokes and premises, or because he has cast aspersions on too many members of the fragile Graduate Center community, or because his articles have now reached a new low of self-referential aggrandizement — one thing is clear. According to a recent poll, satire columnist Matt Lau is persona non-grata at the Grad Center these days.
The poll was conducted by a group of students concerned about the diminishing levels of humor and wit in the official satire column of the university. The poll asked students whether they approved of Lau’s column, disapproved of it, or had no opinion. 90 percent of respondents had no opinion, while the other person who participated expressed vituperative disapproval.
Poll spokesperson, Mark Schiebe, who was coincidentally also the one person to disapprove of Lau in the anonymous poll, had this to say, “It would be is easy to tolerate the disreputable imagination of Lau if the offensive scenarios he came up with were at all funny.
“But what, may I ask, is funny about faculty freezing to death during a bikini car wash fundraiser in February or starving students once again eating the free computer paper in the library for their Thanksgiving meal or the History Department’s softball team medaling at the Special Olympics or the University President spooning with another professor for a promotional “Men of the GC” wall calendar or suggesting that the GC would be taken over by Interboro Technical College because it has superior job placement support?
“Generously speaking, perhaps these sordid and outrageous ideas could in themselves have made for useful satire premises, but again and again Lau has resorted to cheap bits, gags, puns, and when all else fails, the photoshop skills of the Advocate’s layout editor. Over and over he has relied for his premises on puns,” said a visibly angry Schiebe, who looked tired from a long day of polling himself again. “The Graduate Center and the Guitar Center, President Kelly and R&B singer R Kelly, Oral Examinations and the Freudian Oral Stage; respected Professor Jerry Watts and the Diogenes of Midtown Jerry Watts. These puns are about as funny as jokes about persons with no arms and legs or babies with spears in their heads. Sure, at first you laugh, but then you feel guilty and dirty, even after you’ve taken a few cold showers.”
When asked whether he had burned out or faded away, in a typical example of his lack of literary discipline, Lau attempted to quote both Peter Tosh and Bon Jovi at the same time in what he thought was a hilarious joke. “I’m a cowboy on a steel horse I ride, and I’m wanted dread or alive. Look I was just trying to make a little money to pay down my tab at O’Reilly’s. And yeah, it is kind of fun to slander good honest people; it makes me feel like a right-wing media commentator. But I can’t stop now, after all the shaming I did of how our boss, Advocate ‘editor at-large’ James Hoff, only paid us with his unused food stamps for writing for the paper, we’ve finally gotten a raise! In addition to our $50 dollars a month, I now get a Papa John’s pizza coupon book that James only made me pay $25 for! I can’t tell you how many half-eaten extra-large meat-lovers there are at Mark Schiebe’s apartment right now. And I’m not even talking about the pizzas!”
Don’t despair Matt; I still think your “articles” are as funny as ever. I just hope you didn’t think that coupon book was going to be a regular thing – that was your yearly review bonus.
As catcher and spokesperson for the History Program softball team, I commend M. Lau’s accurate reporting of our near win at the Special Olympics. We are delighted to bring home the bronze and hope to make a run at silver in 2010!