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all porn, all errors, all the time
Issue 18.9: DOOM
Posted: April 22, 2003

He's Like Larry Flint, but Super Gay

Ned Ehrbar

I sat at the foot of the stage and watched as the young Asian girl in a soaked white t-shirt and a black thong decided to show everyone her tits. The crowd ate it up, whooping and yelling like the audience of the Arsenio Hall Show. I thought about how horrible this all seemed, and then I remembered that none of it would have been happening if it weren't for me.

My time at the Fed started innocently enough. For my first assignment, I was told to interview Columbia Men Against Violence and the Fiji fraternity and compare the two, hopefully to prove that they were not really so different. That's the kind of stuff the Fed did back then. Good clean fun. The only problem was that Fiji wasn't returning my calls and my deadline was getting closer. And then someone died.

Well, actually two people died, but we didn't know that just yet. I was sitting in front of Butler wondering why I'd ever thought of trying to write for the funny paper, when I noticed a Newsday reporter asking people if they knew Kathleen Roskot. I immediately snapped to attention and began stalking him until I found myself in the press pit outside of Ruggles. And there I was, covering Columbia's very own murder/suicide for... the Fed?

After a few more issues I stopped trying to be a real journalist and settled into the Fed state of mind. Before I knew it, I was calling Giuliani a Nazi, trashing Hanson, and interviewing people who dressed up like squirrels.

The Fed gave me one thing that I had yet to find at Columbia: friends. And to insure that this situation lasted, I started throwing lots of parties. I was living off-campus, and I imagine my filthy studio in Harlem (real Harlem, not this Morningside Heights crap) was something of a novelty to my fellow staffers. But I was never sure if it was my company or the sketchy neighborhood that kept them sticking around until the sun came up.

Maybe the partying and drinking weren't such a good idea, though. I've accrued many Fed-related injuries while inebriated. I've suffered sun poisoning and dehydration at countless Bacchanals and Activities Days. There was the time we got really hammered and decided we should drive to DC to cover the WTO protests, for example. I distinctly remember hearing a rousing "hey hey, ho ho..." before passing out on the lawn of the Red Cross. At least I had good aim.

Perhaps the most embarrassing incident was Fed Fight Club. At one particularly rousing soirée, a few of us drunkenly decided to go up to my roof and kick the shit out of each other, but in the friendliest way possible. I ended up with two black eyes and a sore ribcage. Man, those were the days.

One day I suggested that we set up a table on College Walk and hand out copies of the Fed. The next thing I knew, I was the Associate Editor of Publicity, whatever that meant. I figured that if I was going to manage publicity, we ought to throw a party. A big party with bands and live S&M. And so the Fed Bash was born. And profitable.

I was doing well, and figured my next stop would be Editor-in-Chief, and the first male EIC at that. But instead they made me Publisher just to shut me up.

Now, we didn't have a publisher at the time, so no one really knew what a publisher did. I imagined myself sipping scotch and soda while getting the market reports, firing columnists because they got out of line, and buying important elections. In actuality, the job was a bit different.

I've spent most of my two years as publisher doing damage control. On several occasions, I've found myself face to face with an administrator who just "needs something cleared up." No, I tell them, the Fed is not inherently racist. That's absurd, I assure them, as a card-carrying homosexual, I would never allow any content that maliciously bashes gays. No sir, I insist, I do not think the angry cell phone guy is really a threat to those around him. It always ends with the same explanation: we were just kidding. It's what we do. Some people, though, never seem to get the joke.

I've given four years of my life to this filthy rag. I've done my best to keep the staff drunk, hoping they will create and forget their own great Fed experiences. I've brought strippers back as a respectable form of entertainment at Columbia. And I've made us at least a little bit more tolerable in the eyes of the administration. At least we have a balanced budget. Take that, Black Organization of Soul Sisters!