Salmagundi

Butt-heads: So, a few days ago I was trudging past Sever through the cold and snow on my way to Robinson at an ungodly hour (9 am) for section. Normally, I am a well-adjusted and sunny individual...except when I have to get up at 8 am for section when it is less than 32 degrees Fahrenheit. And then I saw one of our janitorial staff--someone who got up much earlier than me and spends a lot more time in the cold cleaning the area in front of Sever. He washes the windows, mops the floors, and sweeps the steps. We exchange nods occasionally, and I try not to put fingerprints on the newly clean windows. This man puts in so much attention that the door handles gleam that early in the morning.

However, this particular day was special because I noticed yet another of the myriad tasks of our mysterious Sever janitor: cleaning up cigarette butts. His bin was filled with hundreds of cigarettes that students had cavalierly tossed out during the course of the previous day. It seems to me that smoking is an obnoxious enough activity without the disgusting discharge of refuse onto the ground. Although I, as well as many other right thinking people, believe that starting to smoke while in college indicates a startling lack of anything even approaching good judgment, the least that these would-be lung cancer victims can do is put their bloody stubs in a garbage can! Janitors have a much harder job than we do, let's try to help them out a little bit, eh?

--Patrick Taylor Smith

Rambo: An ordinary Monday not too many weeks ago, I went to a showing of Rambo First Blood: Part Two. This is one of the movie viewings that my fellow students of FC76: Mass Culture in Nazi Germany and I look forward to with much anticipation, since it is a welcome release from dreary anti-Semitism and war propaganda. It is a fun, jingoistic exercise in ultra-violent escapism; in other words, exactly the type of movie I like. I mean, who doesn't want to escape and be Rambo or Indiana Jones or James Bond? Unfortunately, the contemptuous braying and clapping of the rest of the audience ruined the whole experience.

Not that there aren't elements of the comedic or the absurd in the movie. When he blows up an entire village with explosive arrows or kills a dozen Russians in a whirlwind of choreographed blade strokes, one cannot help but laugh. I laughed along with the audience when these instantiations of martial hyperbole manifested.

However, at the end, Rambo says, "All I ever wanted was what all the other guys who spilled their guts out here wanted--to have a country love them as much as they loved it." When Stallone said this, it was greeted in the theater to howls of laughter. It is of course "funny" that a veteran of such an unpopular war would ask for respect and gratitude from the nation he defended. The abandonment of Vietnam veterans, both in Vietnam and in the United States, is perhaps the most shameful episode of an already shameful war. Despite the dubious ideological justifications of the conflict and the terrible behavior of the ruling military and political elites, the rank and file--the "grunts" who were usually poor, poorly educated, and very young--fought the war with a courage and endurance that their leaders never deserved. It is this issue that Rambo, however indirectly and ineptly, addresses. Watching rich children who haven't been anywhere near a real war and will undoubtedly serve in their respective National Guard units (if at all) laugh at the sentiment that people who fight and die for their country deserve a little respect is...off-putting to say the least.

--Patrick Taylor Smith

Questions? Comments? Please contact perspy@hcs.harvard.edu