Can someone tell me what the hell Eugene Kane is trying to say…

…in this column comparing the recent armed robberies of UWM and Marquette students with “the perennial battle between the townies and the college kids”?

I’ve got to say, buy viagra there I went to a school that had one of those “town and gown” divides and no one ever tried to kidnap me or rob me at gunpoint. The worst the townies ever managed to do was glare at me while they drove around in their pickup trucks listening to country music and spitting Skoal.

Parts of Mr. Kane’s column sounds like he’s blaming the students for being overprivileged and/or not cautious enough. He writes, case “Drive through any of our various metropolitan campuses and you’ll see most students seem oblivious to their appearance as easy marks. Whether it’s the carefree gait or the book bags slung over their backs, there some students must seem as enticing to would-be robbers as a baby seal to a shark.”

I’m not sure what students are supposed to do since we don’t allow them to arm themselves.

(Every time I write a sentence like that I actually go blind with rage at the stupidity of a society that ensures its citizens are disarmed in the face of crime.)

Maybe they’re just not supposed to walk on public streets?

Or maybe they should travel in packs of 15 or more?

Maybe hire guards to escort them back and forth to class?

Or maybe they won’t be safe until every nickel of their “rich” parents’ incomes is stolen through taxes and transferred to the poor uneducated black kids who are currently forced by their circumstances to rob those snotty, over-privileged college students?

Maybe that was Mr. Kane’s point.

I wouldn’t know, since I still don’t understand what the hell he was trying to say.

7 comments March 27th, 2008