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Tuesday, April 27, 2004
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TO: Alliance Members (see too many UD posts to mention for background - or just scroll down a bit)
FROM: Janice SUBJECT: VILLANOVA Dear Guys: This is SO cute! I had to share it with you. Guess who's going to be the commencement speaker this year at Villanova University? BIG BIRD! Yeah. Check out WPVI.com, today's news. Apparently the decision has created something of a flap (haha!). A number of faculty and students on the Speakers Committee wanted Barney. They argued that he had more published work and was much wiser - "more of an educator," as one administrator on the committee put it. "Barney is always so moral, and he speaks clearly and well; whereas Big Bird is on occasion inarticulate and ethically confused." But others pointed out that Big Bird has also published a book - though it's important to say "published," because he didn't write it; the "writer" of the book did. This is a little confusing, but if you go to Big Bird's website (www.carollspinney.com), you'll see that on the book publicity page there are two categories - "author" - Big Bird - and "writer" - a guy whose name I forget - he's not Caroll Spinney, who's the man who dresses up as Bird Bird, because Caroll Spinney also can't write -- but he's, you know, a professional writer, which Big Bird isn't. ... Are you following this? Because actually now that I think about it there are three levels of "authorship" here - Big Bird himself (I think B.B. is male...), who of course can't write the book because he doesn't really exist as an entity; Caroll Spinney, who's not really Big Bird but a puppeteer who dresses up as Big Bird and says the lines that Sesame Street writers give him to say; and this guy, whose name I can't remember who's the actual writer of the book which Caroll Spinney "authored" and Big Bird, I guess, "inspired." Some people on the committee argued that the fact that Big Bird AND Caroll Spinney have authored a book that they haven't written is in itself an ethical problem - that Villanova shouldn't be seen as endorsing this misleading "as told to" instant-book business so prevalent in the publishing industry, not to mention implicitly giving Villanova students the impression that there's an actual Big Bird who actually writes books. But others who have read the book insist that, whoever wrote it, it is chockful of values-clarifying wisdom and heartwarming wit. They also point out that while Barney has more published material than Big Bird, it's mostly popup books. In his remarks introducing Big Bird, the president of Villanova reportedly plans to say that every year the university ends up choosing "some boring foreign policy type guy," which creates "a real downer of an effect, especially with the war on terror. This year I really 'bawked' at that! [The president plans to bawk like a chicken at this point.] After all, graduation's supposed to be fun." Big Bird, according to the university press release, will restrict his remarks to caring and sharing, as well as respect for all the peoples of the world. |