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In This Issue

• A Modest Proposal for Iraq
• An Indie-Rocker Falls Into the Gap
• Beware of People Selling Stuff, Except Us
• Women Need to be Vulnerable and Easy Again
• Marriage is the Perfect Career
• All The Cool Kids Are Doing It...
• Girl Sells Soul to Pour Investment Bankers' Coffee
• Wendy's Sells the Fuck Out: Lame With Mayo
• I Used to Listen to Jesus Christ, Before He Went Mainstream
• The Singing Senators: Behind the "Music"
• In Gateway, I Designed a 3-D Noose
• Barnard Woman Tries to Use, Not Give, Head
• Mexico: Taco Bell Without Plumbing
• Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200
• Wacky Fun Whitey Gets a Date
• Colombia Spectador
• Columbia Bookstore's Introduces New "Ghetto-fab" Line of Clothing

Ted Holden

Bill Clinton: ending world hunger one intern at a time

This summer, like many of my strong Barnard sisters (and probably most of you careerist Columbians), I'm looking for an internship. Sure, I'd like to change the world with my free labor while earning valuable workplace skills. Yes, it would be really cool to intern for the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, or the International Rescue Committee - all valuable, socially-conscious organizations. Unfortunately, the Constitution don't pay my bills, and let's face it, there's no money in refugees. I could use my education to affect real change in the world. But frankly, I'd rather eat.

With good paid internships so hard to find, my only option is to take a bad paid internship. An internship in an industry that no one really likes working in, not even the people currently on payroll. An internship so mind-numbingly boring (yet mind-blowingly profitable), that only a mind-numbingly boring business student would ever take it. An internship so truly terrible, so filled with photocopying and coffee-fetching, that the company has no choice but to bribe unskilled student labor with the ridiculous profit potential. I'm talking about an internship in investment banking.

It may sound cold and callous; it may sound like I'm selling my soul. However, I have to be realistic. Merrill Lynch will be my sugar daddy like the ACLU never could, and they pay a pretty penny for a gently used human soul. If I don't earn a living somehow, I won't be able to afford to feed my yet-unborn children, or at least pay to them (those clinics are expensive!). See, it's not like I've entirely sacrificed my ideals. Taking this internship will allow me to one day actively support my right to freedom of choice.

And now that I think about it, did the women of yesteryear not fight and die (well, fight and chant) for the right to earn and spend money? Every dirty paycheck I place into a bank account with my own name on it is really a deposit in the name of social justice. I'm a regular champion of women's rights. And during my summer at Merrill Lynch , I vow to wear pants with my suit every day. No skirts or bloomers for this civil rights activist!

While it may seem decidedly un-liberated for me to be taking a job making coffee for powerful men, keep in mind that this is just a temporary position. Why, under the right boss, a pretty girl like me could go far in Merrill Lynch. Someday I'll reach a position of corporate power, ball-busting with the best of 'em, and then I can use my influence to lobby for social change. Not the silly things I supported in my youth, before I really understood how the world worked, but things that matter. Like tax cuts for working stiffs like me. And business subsidies, which totally help the poor way more than most of those dreamy-eyed, soft-hearted social programs do.

I'll still be concerned about all of those poverty-stricken people and refugees that I never helped in college, of course, but now I'll be able to help on a much larger scale. Everything I buy creates American jobs, and every day, I'll make sure to tip at least 20% to the waitress at lunch. She looks dark-- she's probably a refugee from someplace. Don't forget about all of those cabs I'll take! I fully support giving displaced foreigners rewarding jobs. I'll tip them well, too, unless the fare comes close to $20 and I don't have any small bills.

Maybe I'll even donate a few bucks to the ACLU once in a while, in recognition of all the work they did to help broads like me make it big. Not because I owe those cheap bastards a cent, but because I'm just that big of a person, and I truly care about our society. And it's a decent tax write off. Someday, maybe I can return the favor that Merrill Lynch once did for me. Maybe I can provide an underprivileged, Ivy League-educated girl, much like the one I once was, with a paid internship to help her make it through college. Now that's social consciousness!