Douchebag du jour (V)

Today's douchebag is Mark Rowan, editor for the CCSU student newspaper (The Recorder).

Back in February, CCSU Recorder opinion editor John Petroski wrote a column called "Rape only hurts if you fight it" (text is here). After intense and wide spread protests of the paper's decision to run the column, apologies were issued.

One of those "apologies" came from Mark Rowan. It was a "We're sorry if..." apology, the kind which should be like a razor blade to the tongue of the sincerely contrite person but which literally slithers out of the mouths of remorseless douchebags.

Today, Rowan was in the paper again. The context was an article about the findings of a committee formed at CCSU which was meant to identify ways to ensure "...greater journalistic responsibility on the part of the newspaper". My summary of the findings as presented in today's news is that they don't even count as a slap on the wrist. In short, the committe decided that those who write for the paper are accountable only to what passes for personal conscience to guide a set of sophomoric, shock-jock informed standards of misogynist journal-tainment.

Here's what Mr. Rowan said in repsonse to the findings of the committee.

Recorder editor Mark Rowan...said the task force's recommendations would help the newspaper become more accountable to the student body. But he added that he felt the newspaper was already moving in that direction before the furor over the rape article.

Rowan added that he felt that some segments of the campus population would never be satisfied, no matter what steps the newspaper took.

"There's been a witch hunt from the day the article appeared," he said. "This should be about improving the paper, not punishment."

And here's some of the text of the column which kicked off this "witch hunt". I'm missing it. What part of this reflects the trend of moving in a direction of being more accountable to the student body?
In actuality, rape’s advantages can very much be seen today. Take ugly women, for example. If it weren’t for rape, how would they ever know the joy of intercourse with a man who isn’t drunk? In a society as plastic-conscious as our own, are we really to believe that some man would ever sleep with a girl resembling a wildebeest if he didn’t have a few schnapps in him? Of course he wouldn’t—at least no self-respecting man would—but there in lies the beauty of rape. No self-respecting man would rape in the first place, so ugly women are guaranteed a romp with not only a sober man, but a bad boy too; and we all know how much ladies like the bad boy.

Thank god for free speech. Because of that I can say Mr. Rowan is a douchebag. I can go on to explain he's a douchebag because he has fulfilled numerous douchebag requirements such as being a man who, in response to valid, shared community perceptions of his committing/defending injurious sexism, cries "WITCH HUNT!!!"

Why do I find it so irksome when men use the term "witch hunt" in a situation like this one? Aside from the illogical and utterly contradictory inversion of victim and perpetrator which it necessarily entails in such cases, I am overwhelmed by the irony of a man claiming alleigance with the victims - predominantly female - of exactly the same kind of callous, violent sexism he himself is being censured for advocating and advancing.

Unlike today's douchebag, as a reasonable and thinking person, I take comfort in the idea that there is a significant portion of the campus population which will not be placated by soft pedaled slithery platitudes like Mr. Rowan's.